Costume Design 

This costume design was made by Erte, who was active throughout most of the 20th century. It’s rendered in a style we associate with Art Deco: highly stylized, decorative, and with a great degree of emphasis on line. Consider the making. Erte was a master of pochoir, a printmaking technique related to stenciling. Each color you see here would have been applied separately by hand, one after the other, to build up this image. As you can imagine, this was highly labor intensive. Each print became precious through the effort and the precision involved in its manufacture. Think about the skilled labor required to produce the net-like mantle, and its playful tassels. Note too the remarkable, almost architectural headdress. Erte was interested in fashion as a form of engineering. By emphasizing the virtuosity of making, he brings fashion into dialogue with fine art.