At New York City Ballet, Gilles Mendel Melds Couture and Costume

Earlier this fall, on the first day of New York Fashion Week, father-daughter duo Gilles Mendel and Chloe Mendel Morgan presented their debut House of Gilles couture collection at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. It was an apt setting given that by that point, Mendel had spent months immersed in the world of New York City Ballet to prepare for his commission to costume its dancers at the Oct. 9 world premiere of rising choreographer Caili Quan’s “Beneath the Tides” for the company’s annual Fall Fashion Gala benefit.

In speaking with New York City Ballet’s creative collaborators from outside of the dance world, certain themes have a way of repeating themselves. For one, there’s a recurring fascination with the idea of rigidity and restraint—a stark contrast to the expansive patterns of movement instilled in the company by founding choreographer George Balanchine. Then there’s the simple fact that great clothing doesn’t always make for an intuitive performance costume. In a film preceding “Signs,” at her own Fall Fashion Gala premiere, the 26-year-old choreographer Gianna Reisen expressed gratitude for her numerous “high fashion” collaborations—and for the opportunity to work solely with New York City Ballet’s director of costumes Marc Happel on outfitting the company for “Signs.” 

It all suggests the Fall Fashion Gala is a more complex commission than it may first appear. This year’s was no exception. While the company is usually tight-lipped about its guest designers’ work with Happel in advance of the gala, one or two details had trickled out from the costume shop before the premiere. Namely, every performer would don corsets (also referred to by Gilles as bustiers) inspired by the extreme wasp-waisted shape pioneered by Mr. Pearl in the 20th century.

“Dancers don’t want to be constrained by anything. They want to be comfortable, to be able to perform,” Mendel told Surface during a costume shop walkthrough in advance of the performance. “To me, that’s the beauty of it: a fight between the solidity of this corset and the athleticism of the dancers.” 

The 2024 Fall Fashion Gala marked Gilles’ third collaboration with Happel and the company, making the couturier well-versed in the challenges the costume shop overcame to adapt his designs for the rigors of Quan’s choreography. Prioritizing the dancers’ comfort meant removing structure-giving boning from the corsets and recreating their shape, along with sourcing stretchier and more resilient materials. To prove the point, principal dancer Tiler Peck demonstrated a side extension during one of her final costume fittings, in which the corset moved with—rather than against—her. “That’s a fun part for me,” Gilles says, “trying to adapt something that normally doesn’t work for ballet.”

On the company’s women, Mendel’s corsets were complemented by gauzy plissé skirts whose dégradé dye patterns evoke an heirloom gown pulled “from the attic,” in the designer’s words. The effect was best realized on Peck, who resembled a haunting jewel-box ballerina during an eerily quiet turning sequence in “Beneath the Tides.” The men, by contrast, were topless under their corsets, revealing to the audience the sheer effort of the art form and the strength that inspired Quan to work with the company for “Tides.”

In combination with the rest of the night’s programming—a historic lineup of three contemporary ballets by women choreographers in their 20s and 30s—the night represented a thrilling step forward for the company. Coming off of its retrospective-focused 75th anniversary season, the company seems to be taking stock of its present talent and making first strides towards defining its future.