At the turn of the 20th century, the theories of the Swiss stage designer Adolphe Appia and the English actor and designer Edward Gordon Craig called for symbolism and voiced a strong reaction against the naturalism of the Meiningen Company and the Moscow Art Theatre. Appia advocated that stage costume evoke and suggest but never copy historical lines.

A painters’ theatre arose after Serge Diaghilev’s presentation of the Ballets Russes in 1909 in Paris. The brilliant palettes and well-coordinated decors of this ballet—by Léon Bakst, Alexandre Benois, and Nicholas Roerich—were praised. Natalya Goncharova’s design for Le Coq d’or in 1914 was unprecedented in its use of vivid colours, chiefly shades of red, yellow, and orange, with other colours for discordant emphasis. The forms of the costumes and their decorations were based on traditional Russian folk dress, though that dress was transformed and made uniquely of their epoch by the jagged influence of Cubism. Avant-garde artists of many of the flourishing movements of modern art—Cubists, Constructivists, and Surrealists—brought about an acceleration of innovation in design concepts, which in previous centuries had evolved gradually throughout Europe.

Appia, Craig, and Diaghilev led others to experiment. Vsevolod Meyerhold’s 1907 production of Leonid Andreyev’s play The Life of Man, with expressionistic costumes designed by Theodore Komisarjevsky, was purely mechanical in its design. German advocates reasoned that, since the actor is enclosed in the space of the stage, either the stage must be arranged according to the illusion of reality so as to fit the actor as a “natural” human being, or the actor must be transformed to match the cubist and abstract space of the stage.

As modern dance evolved, its rapid rhythms and pace offered the costume designer new challenges and scope for original work. The productions of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais in New York City presented unique shapes that attempted to express the exploration of time and space. Nikolais made his costumes part of a total stage design, a theatrical abstraction of the way he saw humankind, as part of a socioeconomic mechanism—an agreeable but not a central part. Accused of dehumanizing the dancers, he maintained that their role was to be an expression of a greater state of being for humankind, of the experience of living in a world of motion, sound, colour, and action that strongly affects them and is affected by them.

The rise of the American musical owes much to the close collaboration of composers, writers, and choreographers with designers. In a musical the costume designer’s task is manifold. The designs must capture the spirit of the music and lyrics, interpret the period, heighten the characterization of the actors, and help the dancers in their varied, often athletic routines. The costumes for My Fair Lady (1956) and West Side Story (1957) were especially successful in these respects.

The radical creative talents of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht created new production concepts and styles; the clothes worn conveyed to the audience in a satirical fashion not only a characterization of the wearer but also his social status. Another compelling force in 20th-century experimental theatre, Jerzy Grotowski, conceived his production of Akropolis at the Polish Laboratory Theatre in 1962 as a poetic paraphrase of an extermination camp. There is no hero—and no individuality—among the characters. The costumes were bags full of holes covering naked bodies, and the holes were lined with material suggesting torn flesh; wooden shoes covered the feet, and anonymous berets the heads. The second half of the 20th century was a time of social upheaval throughout the world, but particularly in the United States and Europe, where costume design reflected the changes. Directors such as Jean-Louis Barrault in France and Jürgen Flimm in Germany as well as theatre groups such as the Living Theatre explored political and social themes with innovative methods and techniques to which costume was essential. Regardless of how societal changes affected the manner in which stories were told in the theatre, the one constant across the diverse range of presentational modes was the design dictum that costume had to express the mood and spirit of a play. That design philosophy persisted through the turn of the 21st century.

Costume in Noh and Kabuki theatre

In Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, almost every element of a production is dictated by tradition. Noh costumes, which evolved into their modern form in the 14th and 15th centuries, are no exception. The type of character being portrayed is revealed through the application of conventions in the design and construction of a costume. The details of the design—the silhouette chosen, the colour combinations, the richness and texture of the fabric, and the type and amount of detail—all combine to give indications of character as well as to make a strong visual impact.

From its origins in the early 17th century, Kabuki was to a great extent shaped by governmental restrictions. While scripts frequently called for aristocratic characters—nobles or samurai—it was prohibited to imitate the dress of either of these classes. Kabuki production companies responded by exaggerating the colour and fabrics of that dress. As a result, theatrical costumes typically became more colourful and more sumptuous than the clothing styles on which they were based. The silhouette of robes and gowns was also overstated: if the shoulders of the original robes were slightly padded, the shoulders of the costume were higher and wider. So too, to evade restrictions on the use of printed silk, a fabric commonly used by the aristocracy, production companies often embroidered rich patterns onto silk or used appliqués. Most of the classical traditions of Kabuki, including costuming, date from the first half of the 17th century. While the governmental prohibitions that created these traditions disappeared over the ensuing centuries, the style of Kabuki has remained relatively unchanged since that time. Despite their visual extravagance, however, Kabuki costumes are even today full of subtlety, illusion, and hidden meaning, all of which help to clarify a character’s role for a knowledgeable audience.