A galaxy of specialists joined the courts of the French kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, with Giacomo Torelli, the chief originator of Baroque theatre, arriving from Venice. This monumental scenic style included magnificent colonnades, temples, palaces, and scenes so lavish that only the great ruling houses could afford them. Designers such as Torelli brought great prestige to their patrons. An outburst of Baroque opulence bore witness to the power and splendour of the Sun King. In France in the early 17th century, the designer Daniel Rabel worked inventively, producing many witty and droll effects and costumes of grotesque conception. Burlesque costume had found its way to amuse the court.

Berain and Henri Gissey were attached to the Royal Cabinet of Louis XIV. Gissey is most famous for his celebrated Carrousel (1662), a horse spectacular never since surpassed in its magnificence—500 noblemen in plumed regalia escorted by a greater number of elaborately dressed attendants. Costumes represented different nations, each having a particular colour scheme: the Romans, led by the king, were in red and gold, the Ottomans in black and yellow, the Indians in white and gold, and the Americans in green and gold. The scene, played in front of the Louvre, was indeed the grandest fantasy in costuming, with both horses and riders decorated in full Baroque trappings.

Chroniclers record gorgeous costumes appearing in 17th-century ballet, opera, and dramatic offerings; gold brocades covered with lace, diamonds, emeralds, ribbons, and immense trains graced the stages of France. The French surpassed the Italians in their opera costumes, which were richer than any elsewhere. In the designs of Berain there is a homogeneity of style that is the mark of a great master. Berain’s costumes for women, which were based on contemporary court dress, were serious and noble in style. Their tight bodices and flared basque shirts had decorative overskirts with trains; they followed an almost uniform silhouette. The headdress, also carefully designed, was a formal arrangement of feathers or lace. Male garments were in the Roman style, the tunic fitting tightly to the chest, worn with tonneler (short skirt), high boots, and cape. To avoid monotony, Berain devised an amazing variety of ingenious trimmings—embroideries, fringes, slashings, puffs and paddings, inlaid ornamental motifs, pastes, and semiprecious stones to punctuate every small decorative panel and part. Scaly or bejeweled bodies, serrated leaves—every elegant or fantastic theatrical device was used to create a sophisticated ensemble. Berain coordinated all aspects of scenic decor in an equally industrious way and as a decorative artist dominated French and European taste and costume design. After Berain died in 1711, the sumptuous Baroque of the early years of Louis XIV declined. Berain’s son Jean succeeded his father as court designer and carefully documented his father’s drawings.

Created in 1721, Claude Gillot’s designs for the ballet Les Éléments showed a great change in taste. The heavy fabrics and embroideries used by Berain were replaced by lighter, more delicate weights and appliqués. Ladies’ costumes, following the caprices of the contemporary modes, included a pannier. Peasant and rustic characters began to appear and were most popular with the court, in beribboned garments of pastel satins and silks. Extensive records of these costumes exist in the form of engravings.

Costume of the 18th and 19th centuries

Jean-Baptiste Martin, who was appointed designer for the Paris Opéra in 1748, devised decorative and amusing Rococo variations for the male dancer’s traditional costume. Martin utilized Inca, African, Chinese, and Mexican motifs in his ballets, and under his direction the tonneler took on an elliptical shape.

All the elegance and sophistication seen in the Rococo court circles of Louis XV were brought to the stage by Martin’s successor, Louis-René Boquet. His designs were theatricalized versions of the new fashionable silhouette. Boquet clothes were delicate, artificial, and pale in tone, trimmed with garlands and Rococo finery. All of Europe imitated the French ideas, although the English and German facsimiles lacked Boquet’s innate good taste.

French philosophe Denis Diderot wrote in 1758 of the fashions then current in the French theatre:

Ostentation spoils everything…. Wealth has too many caprices: it can dazzle the eye, but not touch the heart. Beneath the garment that is overloaded with gilding, I never see more than a rich man, and it is a man I look for….

Comedy ought to be played in informal dress. On the stage it is not necessary to be either more or less dressed up than one is at home….

The more serious the play, the more austerity there must be in costume….

What expense were not our actors put to for the production of l’Orphelin de la Chine? How much has it not cost them to rob this work of part of its effect?

In 1755, in the first production of Voltaire’s play L’Orphelin de la Chine (The Orphan of China), the great French actors Lekain and Mlle Clairon—who, like Diderot, were bent on more simplicity and historical accuracy—performed without the hoops or overskirts of then fashionable dress. Similarly, the men appeared dressed as Tatars and Chinese. In 1789 the French tragedian François-Joseph Talma provoked a scandal by appearing in Voltaire’s Brutus (first performed 1730) in a severely simple toga appropriate to the ancient Roman setting of the play.

In England David Garrick abandoned heroic Roman garments in favour of realistic contemporary dress, which he designed himself to ensure the simplicity he desired. The Irish actor Charles Macklin became the first to play Shakespeare in authentic “ancient dress” when he appeared on the stage in 1773 as Macbeth in a Highland military habit.

Public knowledge of historical costume was increasing by the 19th century, though some critics disapproved, believing it weakened the plot. But the thirst for historical accuracy won the day, in part because of the efforts of its major champion, the 19th-century English playwright and antiquary James Robinson Planché. A playbill of a Planché production of 1824 read:

Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King John with an attention to Costume never equalled on the English Stage. Every Character will appear in the precise HABIT OF THE PERIOD, the whole of the Dresses and Decorations being executed from indisputable Authorities.…King John’s Effigy in Worcester Cathedral…Queen Elinor’s Effigy in the Abbey of Fontevraud.…Illuminated Mss in the British Museum, Bodleian and Bennet College Libraries…&c.

Planché’s success amply reimbursed the management for the enormous expenditures required to make even the meanest extra’s garments authentic. Correct costumes became the order of the day. The actor-manager Charles Kean splendidly mounted a series of Shakespearean productions in London in the 1850s. In Germany, August Wilhelm Iffland’s productions closely followed the same reforms, and costume designers were urged to emulate the past.

Dancers too wished to be liberated from the pannier and tonneler. In Pygmalion, a ballet of her own composition, Marie Sallé danced in London in 1734 dressed only in a muslin robe like that of a Greek statue; she wore no panniers, petticoat, or bodice, and her hair was loose and without ornament. The French ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre had advocated drastic reform in dance dress as early as 1760. He proposed to put his dancers in simple draperies of contrasting colours, worn in such a manner as to reveal the figure in movement. Both male and female dancers became increasingly impatient with the hampering Rococo conventions, and, as dancing technique grew more intricate, designers prepared innovations that anticipated general developments in fashion. By the end of the 18th century, every woman had abandoned her panniers.

Civil codes at the start of the 19th century greatly aided those who would reform theatrical costume. The fashion for classical robes and tunics modeled on Greek and Roman patterns took to the streets; the high-heeled shoe was replaced by a flat slipper.

Auguste Garneray and Hippolyte Lecomte were leading French ballet designers in the 19th century. The former’s work shows ingenuity in adapting contemporary dress to suggest different lands and other periods. The latter was originally a painter of historical episodes; accuracy rather than imagination is the distinguishing quality of his designs. In 1832 the influence of the Romantic period was first seen in ballet with a production of La Sylphide. Eugène Lami designed a muslin dress, an ethereal costume that became the new uniform of the classical dancer, for Marie Taglioni, the greatest dancer of her day.

Opera and dramatic productions followed Planché’s regard for period and regional detail. Unfortunately, the elaborate stage settings and the costumes were seldom coordinated successfully. This led George II, duke of Saxe-Meiningen, to design his own productions, as he wished to achieve an integrated style. He was the first of the directors who controlled all aspects of production. His example was followed by the most prominent directors of the 20th century.

Amid spectacular scenery, large ensembles danced and mimed in fanciful versions of contemporary and historical dress in the ballet extravaganzas of the 1880s (forerunners of the Folies-Bergère revues of Paris) that played at La Scala in Milan and the London Alhambra. The ingenious designer C. Wilhelm (original name C. Pitcher) translated insects, flowers, birds, and reptiles into dance costumes. The main interest of most designers, however, lay in framing the female figure, and many theatrical costumes were designed to reveal as much as the law permitted.