Costume, Theatrical, clothing specifically designed and worn for dramatic performances. Costume design has its origins in the special clothing worn for religious rituals. Modern drama originated in ceremonies celebrating the god Dionysus, held in amphitheatres, where plays were performed at annual festivals. The first theatre costumes were for actors performing in bawdy satiric comedies, who wore grotesque masks, padded costumes, and phallic extremities. Tragic dramas were also performed, in which the actors wore masks and specially built-up boots, along with elaborate costumes, paid for by wealthy sponsors. The habit of disguising the face by means of masks or stylized make-up is shared by other traditional dramatic forms, the Kathakali dance dramas of India, the Noh theatre and Kabuki theatre of Japan, and the Peking Opera, where colour symbolism in costume also plays a large part.

The Christian Church disapproved of the Classical theatre and by the 6th century ad all theatres were closed and the remaining performers took to the road to become strolling players. It was the Church itself, however, that eventually reintroduced drama and theatrical costumes by staging religious playlets in churches. Later, the town guilds mounted miracle, mystery, and morality plays in the streets where devils cavorted in elaborate leather costumes, angels hovered with feathery wings, and God appeared in a cloth of gold. The designers were, as ever, anonymous.

The princes of Renaissance Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries used their court artists for propaganda purposes, to advertise their power and glory. Major artists were set to designing tableaux, ballets, and musical entertainment to celebrate major events. The costume designs by Leonardo da Vinci for “Il Festa de Paradiso”, an entertainment performed at a wedding, have survived, as have those of Giorgio Vasari for “The Genealogy of the Gods” for which there were 265 special costumes. When Giacomo Torelli travelled to the Court of Louis XIII, in France to mount theatrical productions there, the profession of stage designer had arrived. Louis XIII and Louis XIV both loved dancing in ballets and masques, and it was not long before French designers emerged, first Jean Berain and later Louis-René Boquet. Their costume designs were kept in the royal archives and have survived; this is unusual, for few costume designs on paper from this time are extant, as they tended to be discarded once the costume was made.

Although England had a flourishing popular theatre, the court of Elizabeth I kept a relatively low profile as far as theatrical spectacle was concerned, but James I, her heir, sent his court architect to Italy. Inigo Jones was greatly impressed by the architecture and theatre designs of Andrea Palladio. On his return, the masques and entertainments he devised for the court introduced the Italian style to Britain. His costume designs, some for Queen Henrietta Maria herself, are the first autograph English costume designs that exist.

The Commonwealth put an end to court masques, and public theatres were also closed. When the monarchy was eventually restored, theatres were reopened and actresses were allowed for the first time to appear on the English stage. When Nell Gwyn appeared on stage in a huge hat the size of a cartwheel she was the talk of London. Although there were not many public theatres in the 17th century, there were many touring companies, particularly in Italy, where troupes of comedians performed improvised comedies with stock characters including Arlecchino, Columbina, and Pulcinella. They were masked, and some think that they traced their ancestry back to the 6th-century diaspora. The French adopted their style, with Les Comediens Italiennes and their costumes were faithfully recorded by Antoine Watteau and Nicolas Lancret. The British adopted them too for their 18th-century pantomimes as Harlequin and Columbine, and Pulcinella became Mr Punch.

By the 18th century there were many public theatres. Historical accuracy in dress was not considered important at this time; instead, current fashions were used, with the addition of a plumed helmet, a Tudor ruff, or an elaborate cloak to give a period touch. When David Garrick appeared as Macbeth in Scottish highland dress it was considered a daring innovation, and in France in 1789 the tragedian François-Joseph Talma played Brutus in a Roman toga, to great controversy. By the 1830s, however, J. R. Planché’s costumes for Shakespeare’s King John looked, arguably, completely authentic. The success of the novels of Sir Walter Scott had resulted in a general enthusiasm for medievalism. Other actor-managers vied with each other to mount historically faithful productions. By the end of the 19th century a weariness of period detail had set in and there was a demand for stylized and less restricting costume. The costumes of Edward Craig, Adolphe Appia, and Andrei Roller emphasized simplicity of line and fluidity of movement. However, the real cultural revolution arrived from Russia around 1910, when Sergei Diaghilev and Ballets Russes visited Paris with designs by the modern and very avant-garde young Russian artists Léon Bakst, Alexandra Benois, and Natalia Goncharova. Bakst in particular caused a sensation, the effects of which have influenced costume design ever since. His designs, with their use of vivid, almost savage, Oriental colour and swirling ornament, amazed Europe. When Diaghilev invited such Cubist painters as André Derain, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Joan Miró, among them, to design ballets, art deco was born.

In 1920, Claude Lovat Fraser designed The Beggar’s Opera in London with correct 18th-century costumes, but made of very simple cottons and linens, with dyed and painted decoration. The freshness and wit of his drawings influenced other young designers, like a group who called themselves “Motley”, the Zinkeisen Sisters, and Rex Whistler. In America the great impresario Florenz Ziegfeld was so impressed by the Parisian Folies Bergère that he produced an American version, emulating the work of costume designer Erté with showgirl costumes of astounding elaboration. The French painters continued to design for the theatre during the 1930s, with Christian Bérard and Jean-Denis Malclés continuing that decorative tradition. In England, Oliver Messel and Sir Cecil Beaton made their names with the “English Ziegfeld”, C. B. Cochran. Beaton was to make his greatest success with the Broadway production of My Fair Lady, where his black and white Ascot clothes temporarily stopped the show. Modern painterly styles do not on the whole lend themselves to theatre design, with the exception of those of David Hockney, whose costume designs for The Rake’s Progress place him in the tradition of Lovat Fraser and Rex Whistler.

In recent years it has been in the field of musicals that costume design has been most significant. The American musicals with costumes designed by Tony Walton (Pippin), Irene Sharaff (The King and I, West Side Story), and British designers like Maria Bjornson (Phantom of the Opera) and Anthony Powell (Sunset Boulevard) continue the grand tradition, as do couture designers Giorgio Armani for Così Fan Tutte in London and Gianni Versace for Capriccio in San Francisco.