Barbara Karinska
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Varvara Zhmoudsky, better known as Barbara Karinska or simply Karinska (1886–1983), was costumer of the New York City Ballet, and the first costume designer ever to win the Capezio Dance Award, for costumes "of visual beauty for the spectator and complete delight for the dancer". [1]
However, she designed the costumes for a few non-musical films as well, such as the 1953 French adaptation of La Dame aux Camélias. Along with Dorothy Jeakins, she won the 1948 Oscar for the costumes for Joan of Arc, and was nominated in 1952 for the Samuel Goldwyn musical Hans Christian Andersen, starring Danny Kaye. She divided her time between homes in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Domremy, France, the birthplace of Joan of Arc. For the stage, she designed the costumes for George Balanchine's production of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, among others.
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[edit] Early life
Varia Karinska was born in Russia in 1886 in the Ukraine to a successful textile merchant. Russian embroidery was an art form filled with detailed shades and colors of varying texture of stitches — some tiny and fine and others broad and rough. This was Karinska's artistic medium as a child. She studied law at the University of Kharkof and married the Attorney General and Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeals of the District of Petrograd, (St. Petersburg).
After the Bolsheviks seized power Nicholas Karinsky escaped to New York, leaving his family behind and saving himself. Karinska and her daughter escaped to the Crimea before relocating in Moscow Ultimately, she made her way to Moscow where, in order to support herself she embroidered pillows, napkins, bags, table cloths, and ran an embroidery school. She used painted fabrics and appliqués of silk chiffon in her work; she achieved some notariety as an artist in this medium. Her business grew to include embroidery lessons an ultimately expanded to include a hat and dress shop with occasional antiques.
The new government suggested that Karinska become the Commissar of Museums. With the government's permission Karinska travelled to Germany — ostensibly to educate herself for this new post, however, it was not her intent to return to Russia. She took her jewels, her fourteen year old daughter, Irene Francois, and her orphaned nephew, fifteen year old Lawrence Vlady, and left not for Germany but for Brussels where her father lived. Karinska then left for Paris. Here she found work using her skills of sewing and embroidery.
[edit] Life in Paris
A newly formed ballet company, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo requested she make ballet costumes for their first ballet, Cotillon. The sets and costumes were by Christian Berard and the choreography was by a fellow Russian, George Balanchine. Berard, who was an artist, set designer and photographer, would provide a general sketch, an idea, but it would be Karinska who expounded upon the concept, modified it, chose the fabric, quality and quantity, and decided how the concept would be implemented. She was their interpreter.
Karinska, Balanchine, and Berard would study the dancer and collaborate on the concept, however, it would be left to Karinska alone to reduce the image, the concept, their agreed vision to reality. Karinska became in Paris, the premiere interpreter of the costume for the ballet. Berard prepared covers for Vogue often.
[edit] Karinska in Business
In 1932 Karinska opened her shop in Paris. Karinska costumed Balanchine's six ballets in Paris before he left for New York. In 1936 she left her Paris shop to her daughter Irene while she went to London to costume for the Ballet Russes seasons at Covent Garden. There she opened another dress shop.
In New York Balanchine opened the School of American Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein and began the American Ballet company, though it soon closed. In 1940 Karinska briefly opened a couturier shop in New York on 56th Street and lived above the shop.
Gypsy Rose Lee believed Kararinska understood the impact of her performance and enhanced her ability to deliver her unique style of burlesque to the audience. She then created the costumes for Rodeo on the cheap using cretonne as an exposed fabric. Something not previously done. She had also been the first to use horsehair as an exposed and finished fabric. The theater community understood that Karinska would charge them inflated prices so she could design for Balanchine on the cheap.
[edit] The "Powder Puff" Tutu
With a large assembly of dancers on stage — as was often preferred by Balanchine, the pancake tutu with its wired layer, would bob and dip when the dancers' skirts brushed up against one another and this bobbing and dipping would reverberate long after the steps were complete.
Shortening the skirt made the tutu layers self supporting and allowed the dancer's legs to be fully visible. This is why a hoop is not typically needed in the true Powderpuff Tutu.
The Balanchine/Karinska tutu had six or seven layers of gathered net, each layer a half inch longer than the preceding layer. They were short and the alignment was fluid and inexact. The layers were tacked together to allow the fluffy, loose, ephemeral look to float over the dancer's legs and descend from below the dancer's waist. This is the tutu that little girls dream of, that inspires them to dance. This tutu, more than any other, has come to symbolize our notion of ballet. It has become ballet's icon. This is the Balanchine/Karinska "Powder Puff" Tutu.
It was this union of Balanchine and Karinska that made a standard of ballet, a new look in 1950, a classic now, known as the Balanchine - Karinska - tutu. Because of its similarity to a powder puff it was called the powder puff tutu. The Symphony in C tutu prototype debuted upon the stage worn by forty dancers. Balanchine said, "I attribute to her fifty percent of the success of my ballets to thoses that she has dressed."
The seventy-five Balanchine ballets Karinska dressed have been her most notable accomplishment. She was an established implementer of costumes and designer of costumes before she came to the American Ballet. At the age of sixty-three in 1949 Balanchine asked Karinska to design costumes for Fouree Fantasque. In was in 1956 in Balanchine's Allegro Brillante, that Karinska created another ballet standard that dancers today simply take for granted: the knee length chiffon ballet dress.
Allegro was a ballet of speed and that speed was enhanced by the silk chiffon which molded itself to the dancer and flew behind the dancer — trailing in soaring diaphanous velocity importing the concept of allegro to the audience not only with the choreography and the dancer but with the reinvented dance costume of chiffon by Karinska.
The pancake tutu with the wire hoop had a life of its own. Balanchine wanted a tutu that followed the dancer's moves and did not detract the eye to the tutu from the dancer and reverberate after the dancer's movements. The construction of the powder puff tutu with its loosely tacked layers which supported one another and was not supported by the wire, eliminated the need for the wire. Karinska demonstrated that she understood she knew how to make a tutu ... and in more than one way!
[edit] Notes
- ^ Sunday NY Times article by John Martin, December 31, 1961
