EN POINTE: Pierre Hardy, Schiaparelli design director Bertrand Guyon and jewelry designer Charlotte Chesnais were among guests mingling with dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet production of the George Balanchine ballet, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” on Wednesday night.
The enchanting show features sets, more than 200 costumes and 90 tiaras and crowns designed by Christian Lacroix in collaboration with Swarovski, an effort that involved a team of 70 people and around 10,000 hours of handiwork, with close to one million Swarovski crystals used.
A buzzing Hardy revealed he had trained as a ballet dancer for 10 years from his early teens, but had “started too late” and ended up switching to contemporary dance. “The show was incredibly beautiful, and it’s so rare to see a piece like this, from the conservatoire. It’s such a deep part of our culture. Even if you know it already, or have seen it before, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“I would have loved to have been a dancer, I regret not having taken lessons,” said Guyon, who worked alongside Lacroix for several years, but never on costume designs for the opera or ballet. “It’s another world, it’s amazing.”
Aurélie Dupont, director of dance at the Paris Opera Ballet, had already collaborated with Lacroix on her wardrobe in the “Rubies” section of a production of Balanchine’s ballet “Jewels” in 2006.
“The love he has for the dancers, and for the Paris Opera, is so special. He understands the need for freedom of movement in a costume, he knows how to adapt the designs to the bodies of the dancers,” she said. “I still have my Christian Lacroix costume.”
Her other dream designer hookups, she added, would be with Hedi Slimane and Azzedine Alaïa. “I’m interested in working with designers who are willing to adapt what they do to the world of dance, who are up for doing a pas de deux with the dancers,” she said.