Ballets Russes Style: Diaghilev's Dancers and Paris Fashion

by Mary E. Davis

In the two decades between its debut performance and the death of impresario Sergei Diaghilev in 1929, the Ballets Russes was an unrivalled sensation in Paris and around the world. But while scholarly attention has often centered on the links between Diaghilev’s troupe and modernist art and music, there has been surprisingly little analysis of the Ballets’ role in the area of tastemaking and trendsetting. Ballets Russes Style addresses this gap, revealing the extent of the ensemble’s influence in arenas of high style—including fashion, interior design, advertising, and the decorative arts. In Ballets Russes Style ,  Mary E. Davis explores how the Ballets Russes performances were a laboratory for ambitious cultural experiments, often grounded in the aesthetic confrontation of Russian artists who traveled with the troupe from St. Petersburg—Bakst, Benois, and Stravinsky among them—and the Parisian avant-garde, including Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Satie, Debussy, and Ravel. She focuses on how the ensemble brought the stage and everyday life into direct contact, most noticeably in the world of fashion. The Ballets Russes and its audience played a key role in defining Paris style, which would echo in fashions throughout the century. Beautifully illustrated, and drawing on unpublished images and memorabilia, this book illuminates the ways in which the troupe’s innovations in dance, music, and design mirrored and invigorated contemporary culture.

Genres: Fashion, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2010

Reviews

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know some people have compared this unfavorably to the Purvis book The Ballets Russes and the Art of Design, and it's true that Ballets Russes Style is less impressively put together - it's not as large as an art book generally is, for one thing. The reproductions are huge, and that is kind of a shame, since Davis incorporates newspaper ads and things which don't show up that well. But the art reproductions are beautiful and vivid, if small. And Ballets Russes Style is really not an art book, right, it's a monograph. And Davis does a good job with that project, explaining the relationship between the art, the ballets, and the clothes - and dynamics like Orientalism, exoticism, and modernism. It's a good book, insightful, readable, and extremely interesting.