1

The Siren Mode: Female Body Image in the Ballets Russes and
Haute Couture c.1927- 1929
Katerina Pantelides
From 1920-1927 the garonne, an androgynous female icon dominated Paris
fashion and Sergei Diaghilevs Ballets Russes, as a boyish silhouette and youthful,
unsophisticated mannerisms were promoted by fashion arbiters and the Russian
migr ballet company alike. However, during the late 1920s, the garonne gave
way to more traditional visions of femininity. Couturiers, most notably Madeleine
Vionnet, pioneered complex garment constructions that alternately clung to and
flowed from the body, thus exaggerating its feminine form, while Diaghilevs
ballets began to feature chimerical sirens and goddesses whose appearance and
reality were discordant. Whereas in the early 1920s woman was envisioned as
playful and childishly straight-forward, from about 1927 gender difference was
accentuated as women from both the spheres of fashion and ballet began to be
portrayed as seductive, fascinating and remote.
My paper seeks to explore the relationship ballet and fashion in the late 1920s
through this supremely feminine and mysterious siren figure. It will firstly consider
how and why the siren evolved from the garonne and eventually replaced her, and
will then compare evocations of siren-like femininity in ballet and fashion. It will
particularly address the parallels between the couturier Vionnet and the
choreographer George Balanchines revelation and stylisation of the female body.
The influence of the Neoclassical and Modernist artistic movements will be
evaluated alongside the ballet dancers prolonged exile from Russia, as the paper
examines why woman was mythologised as a muse and seductress during this
period.
Key Words: Balanchine, ballet, bias-cut, classicism, body, dance, essential,
femininity, light, movement, shadow, siren, Vionnet

This paper examines manifestations of siren-like femininity in Sergei

Diaghilevs Ballets Russes (a prominent Russian migr ballet
company) and Parisian haute couture between 1927 and 1929.i In the
early to mid 1920s, the garonne, an androgynous female icon

dominated both disciplines; however around 1927 notions of

essential femininity based upon the bodys appeal and the legendary
feminine enigma prevailed. Couturiers, most notably Madeleine
Vionnet, pioneered complex garment constructions that alternately
revealed and transformed the body in motion, while Diaghilevs
ballets began to feature chimerical sirens and goddesses whose
appearance and reality were discordant.
In both ballet and fashion, these enigmatic manifestations referenced
Freuds discussion of the feminine riddle.ii Freud, who
acknowledged the patriarchal psychoanalytic disciplines limited
knowledge of femininity hypothesised that womens sexuality was
largely narcissistic owing to the effect of penis-envy whereby
females attempted to compensate for their original sexual
inferiority by accentuating their physical charms. Women then, were
more inclined to court admiration and become objects rather than
subjects of love. Freuds continued emphasis on feminine mystery
and narcissism promoted a generalised conception of woman that
objectified her and exaggerated her difference from man. Simone de
Beauvoir analysed this notion of woman as an Othering fantasy,
writing that: the dream incarnated is precisely woman; she is the
wished for intermediary between nature the stranger to man, and the
fellow being who is too closely identical.iii Arguably, as a dream
positioned between nature and humanity, woman is a mythologised
entity, to be discovered and defined by man, even, paradoxically,
when she is cast as unknowable. In Classical mythology, the Sirens,
woman and bird hybrids who combed their hair on the rocks and
lured sailors to their deaths by singing sweetly, became such
emblems of chimerical femininity.iv Though the sirens were defined
by their alluring physicality, it was their activity (their magnetic
song), that rendered them seductive objects and seducing subjects
simultaneously. Comparably, the dancers and style arbiters who
displayed sirenic body image occupied a liminal position between
objectification and subjectivity as they appealed to the (often male)

spectators gaze, but simultaneously expressed their difference from

conventional notions of feminine passivity.
The paper addresses sirenic body image in the Russian migr
choreographer George Balanchines ballets La Chatte (1927), Apollo
(1928) and Prodigal Son (1929) alongside parallel developments in
haute couture. It will adopt the psychoanalyst Paul Schilders
definition of body image as the tri-dimensional image which
everybody has about himself.v This notion incorporated both the
bodys appearance and an individuals multi-sensory corporeal
experience. For Schilder, who was writing in the context of the 1930s
utopian belief in bodily improvement through physical exercise, the
bodys postural model was in perpetual inner self-construction and
self-destruction and therefore aligned to fluctuating notions of
personal and interpersonal identity. vi Schilders conception of
constant adaptation in body image and identity is especially pertinent
for discussing womens external appearances and personal
experiences within the transitioning disciplines of dance and fashion.
There were elements of the sirens Otherness within representations
of post-armistice new women prior to 1927, both in fashion and in
the Ballets Russes, as an equivocal approach to gender and sexuality
reflected the ambiguity of post-armistice feminine identity. Rebecca
Arnold notes how as gender roles altered under the impact of the
First World War, women needed to renegotiate their relationship to
public spaces; no longer closeted, literally within the domestic
sphere, or metaphorically by restrictive clothing or rigid moral codes,
younger women sought the means to signal this change.vii Young,
metropolitan women achieved this alteration sartorially through an
uncorseted silhouette that revealed the natural bodys outlines. Yet as
Coco Chanel, one instigator of these changes declared, this new
woman became a caterpillar by day and a butterfly by night.
Nothing could be more comfortable than a caterpillar and nothing
more made for love than a butterfly.viii Such dualism was reflected
in haute couture from the early to middle 1920s. Daywear utilised
masculine fabrics and the simplified cuts of sportswear, thus

accommodating womens active pursuits, while eveningwear was

often made from lightweight, lustrous fabrics and embellished with
fringing, beading and feathers. Eveningwear then, revealed the new
erogenous zones of back and limbs, and created wing-like
dimensions around the wearers body that exaggerated gender
difference and rendered women spectacular entities. As Liz Conor
has identified, during the 1920s womens bodies were exposed on
stage, in the media and on screen to an unprecedented degree.
According to Conor the flapper, who epitomised the mid-1920s
butterfly, courted a specifically male gaze in asserting her
modernity as a sexual subject by paradoxically constituting herself as
an object within the new conditions of feminine visibility. ix Like the
Classical siren, the flapper actively portrayed herself as a seducing
object in combining the new womans masculine agency with the
coquettes attention-seeking exterior.
Plural manifestations of femininity also infiltrated the Ballets Russes
in the 1920s. On the one hand, Diaghilev aligned his companys
aesthetic to modernity, and from 1920 onwards had sought Chanels
advice in costuming his female dancers, who in turn adopted a lean,
streamlined silhouette both on and off stage.x However, as Russian
migrs and ballet dancers, Diaghilevs women equally embodied
multiple Othering qualities. As the artist Edgar Degas summarised,
ballerinas were perceived as Queens... made of distance and
greasepaint, in other words, supremely feminine creatures who
moved in an ethereal, non-pedestrian manner and inhabited a
shadowy theatrical realm.xi By the mid-1920s the Ballets Russes
dancers professionalism had to some extent redressed stereotypes
that equated female dancers with courtesans. However, an aura of
sexual provocation still surrounded female stage performers, given
their dualistic identities which comprised public-facing and private
elements. Moreover, Russian ballet dancers possessed additional
layers of difference because they were expatriates who had been
severed from their native Russia and its Imperial ballet tradition after
the1917 Bolshevik Revolution and on a further level embodied

Diaghilevs iconoclastic productions where they appeared in

numerous costumed guises. Subsequently, these ethnically displaced,
performing womens liminality meant that they became easily
associated with notions of enigmatic femininity.
The year 1927, marked a peaked interest in the sirenic femininity that
was beginning to displace the garconne mode in the Ballets Russes
and Paris fashion. That year George Balanchine, who had emigrated
from Bolshevik Russia in 1924 and had subsequently proven his
choreographic talent to Diaghilev, became the companys dominant
choreographer and was permitted greater artistic control over his
work. From the outset of his choreographic career Balanchine had
found his greatest inspiration in his female dancers. According to
Yuri Slonimsky, Balanchines peer at the State Academic Theatre in
Petrograd, the young choreographer searched tirelessly for a girl
with talent who would inspire him in turn to affirm the beauty of a
dance created in honour of his love and in admiration of her gifts.xii
This emphasis on admiration or love from a distance indicates
Balanchines desire to reveal the dancers embodied talent through
his choreography, whilst simultaneously incorporating her into his
scheme of distant, idealised beauty. This was apparent in La Chatte,
a ballet based on Aesops fable about a cat who is transformed into a
woman when a young man wishes for it, and then resumes her feline
form when tempted by a passing mouse, causing the youth to expire
from grief. xiii La Chattes eponymous protagonist embodied this
distant, mercurial model of femininity in becoming an elemental
construct of light and movement in the Russian Constructivist
designer Naum Gabos experiment with the dynamic potential of
form in space. xiv Gabos elaborate set featured mobile constructions
made from transparent plastics against a black background. The
costumes which were contrived as moving entities so that when the
dancers performed their steps, the light would catch the edge of the
plastic or cause reflections to shimmer on its surface similarly
formed part of the luminous, kinetic set.xv Thus illuminated with
mobile reflections, the cat would have imbued a multi-dimensional,

inhuman yet attractively lustrous body image. Balanchines

choreography which the Ballets Russes ballet-master Sergei
Grigoriev noted was ... full of invention, particularly as regards its
poses, which were highly sculptural aided this impression of
perpetually mobile, transparent volumes.xvi Alice Nikitina, who
danced the cat in the ballets Paris premiere found that Balanchines
choreography and Henri Saugets music inspired me remarkably and
I was in such harmony with the fairylike background of transparent,
colourless creations.xvii In the ballets publicity photographs,
Nikitina externalised her continuously fluid experience as she
assumed the choreographys plastic folds which harmonised with the
set and her resistant illuminated costume. (image 1 ) Nikitinas
costumed integration into the dance destabilised her bodys
boundaries and thereby emphasised the cats chimerical character.
While her body image disrupted notions of fixed femininity, its
combined intangibility and feline coyness was gendered feminine in
evoking Freuds conception of feminine mystery and self-absorption.
In 1927, Parisian couturiers also began to develop a new female body
image based upon cinematic movement and feminine seductiveness
after a period of perceived creative stagnation.xviii A 1927 article by
the couturier Lucien Lelong for the periodical LOfficiel de la
couture et la mode described how la ligne kinetique was designed
with La Chattes preoccupations of transparency and sculptural
movement in mind: la ligne est kinetique et leffet optique sobtient
par le traitement des diffrents parties de la silhouette.xix Though
dress designs increasingly featured gatherings, cascades and panels
that permitted a temporary fullness in motion, the overall effect was
simple in appearance, but concealing a complex and logical cut. xx
In 1928 LOfficiel described one printed Chanel chiffon dress with a
triple flounced skirt and free-floating panels of irregular length as an
immaterial thing, fairylike and extremely simple, but studied in such
a way that the line of the woman who wears it, is made the best
of.xxi (image 2) The dress was paradoxically revealing and
illusionist: in the manner of La Chattes transparent yet intricately

constructed costumes, the immaterial garment purported to expose

the figure but simultaneously deceived the eye about its true shape
through a complex network of panels. Arguably, the dresss
construction diverted attention away from the wearers natural body
and onto her stylised dressed body, which demonstrated the
couturiers craft and implied the womans consciously discerning
self-presentation. Moreover, the wearers body image would appear
different from varying angles and transform in motion, thus
rendering her like Nikitina in La Chatte, a mobile sculpture, who
usurped her static corporeal boundaries. This aesthetic conceived of
a woman who was paradoxically as simple and direct as light, and
yet a composite of illusionistic devices. The female body, and
perhaps by extension the woman inside it, like La Chattes hybrid
cat, was portrayed as equivocal.
This paradoxical femininity was further developed in Balanchines
1928 ballet Apollo and Vionnets bias-cut dresses as both pursued a
body image that married classical sculptures universalising ideals
and the individual bodys movement. Balanchine and Vionnets
innovations were conceived during the period of fine and decorative
arts renewed interest in classicism. Around 1927 artists including
Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico responded to the Cubist and Futurist
movements experiments with fragmentation and abstraction by
exploring how Classicisms unifying principles could redefine
modern experience. Arnold argues that Classicism in relation to dress
presents a facade of effortlessness... It is revered within Western
culture as an emblem of simple, natural truths, the beauty of
geometric forms draped upon supple flesh, yet it takes considerable
skill to create and wear.xxii Here, Arnolds emphasis on the
conscious artistry behind the classical aesthetics apparent
essentialism is important, as it indicates that though women who
adopted a neoclassical body image could appear impenetrable, their
realisation of this ideal relied upon careful and regular adaptations to
their dress, body posture and mannerisms.

In Balanchines Apollo, where the Muses of poetry (Calliope), mime,

(Polyhymnia) and dance (Terpischore) competed for the Music gods
favour it was Terpsichores ability to present a persuasive
classicising body image that marked her chosen status.xxiii The
ballets composer Stravinsky, viewed that Terpsichores persuasion
consisted of combining in herself both the rhythm of poetry and the
eloquence of gesture, and thereby reveal(ing) dancing to the
world.xxiv This revelation of dancing, an art which welds the bodys
living solidity to choreographys intangibility denotes a marriage
between the dancers imminent appeal and the universalising
aesthetic of classical art. This was enhanced by the ballets
choreography, which featured frieze-like compositions in perpetual
motion and thereby oscillated between arts stillness and dances
movement.xxv
Balanchine, whose choreographic method involved collaborating
with his dancers in creat(ing) particular works for particular persons
by drawing out what is in them, exploited the specific talents of his
first Terpsichores, Nikitina and Alexandra Danilova.xxvi
Subsequently, the dancers who both felt that Terpsichores
choreography fitted them like a glove revealed highly different
body images in publicity photographs.xxvii Whereas Nikitina is
emotionally restrained and embodies the challenging choreography
in a fluid arabesque, Danilova turns her head towards the camera and
engages the spectators gaze as though to make them aware of her
status as the favoured Muse. (images 3-4) On a further level, these
photographs marked differences in body image attest to
Balanchines interest in the immediacy of individual dancers bodies
in movement, and the dancers own desires to emerge as distinctive
artists within classical ballets prescribed, idealised forms.
The tension between the living body and classical art in Vionnets
work manifested in her dual inspirations of Greek vases in the
beautifully clothed women depicted on them, or even the noble lines
of the vase itself and the agile, uncorseted female body. xxviii Vionnet,
who disdained fashions ephemerality wanted haute couture to

emulate classical arts allegedly timeless celebration of the wellproportioned natural bodys lines. As Pamela Golbin has observed,
Vionnets chief innovation to this end was to use the bias cut, which
traditionally lined bodices, for the entire garment. This caused the
fabric to alternately delineate and flow from the bodys contours,
thus enabling it to gain elasticity and become a sort of second skin
around a body in motion.xxix
Like Balanchines glove-like
choreography Vionnets innovations with the bias cut enabled her to
refine and flatter her clients bodies in motion. This is apparent in
Cecil Beatons 1929 photograph of a mannequin wearing a bias-cut
pale blue crepe romain dress with a handkerchief hem and a gold
bead embellishment that traverses the torso diagonally and mirrors
the bodices pointed hem. (image 5) The sleeveless dress imbues the
mannequin with agility: her athletically toned arms are exposed; the
diagonal gold decoration causes light to stream across her form and
the asymmetric triangular handkerchief skirt skims the curve of her
hips and anticipates a dynamic play of legs. Arnold has observed that
by freeing the fabric through such applications of the bias cut,
(Vionnet) was also freeing the woman, enabling her body to be
revealed and celebrated, unhampered by bourgeois notions of
modesty and decorum.xxx Vionnets dresses then, much like Apollos
choreography, reinvigorated classical feminine body image by
pursuing the synaesthetic trope of bodily movement and warmth
within visual clarity. This paradox evokes Michel Serress discussion
of Cinderellas slipper, which in Charles Perraults original fairytale
was vair (Old French for fur), but transubstantiated to verre
(French for glass) in eighteenth-century variants of the tale. While
Balanchine and Vionnet strove for the transparent homogeneity of
verre in their classical bodily schemas, in reality the transformative,
contrasting forms that they grafted onto the body resembled vair,
whose etymology lies in variety. Serres wrote that the vair slipper
unlike its rigid verre antecedent was flexible but specific, with the
potential for all shapes but fitting one only... holding the foot firmly
but allowing it to dance.xxxi The vair slippers contrapuntal
precision and flexibility, along with its contained support of the

10

wearers expressive foot, renders it a fitting analogue to Vionnet and

Balanchines creations. Thus supported and permitted to dance, the
women who inhabited these creators variegated constructions were
refined but encouraged to beguile and on a further level, express
themselves through their individualised bodily movements.
More overt displays of sirenic femininity manifested in ballet and
couture through notions of entrapping animalistic body image. In the
Ballets Russes this was most directly imbued in the 1929 ballet
Prodigal Sons Siren who tempts the eponymous protagonist to
sin.xxxii Balanchine, the ballets choreographer instructed Felia
Dubrovska, the dancer who played the Siren, to relinquish her
humanity by becoming a snake who hypnotises her prey and almost
kills him.xxxiii Dubrovska related that everything was in my eyes and
in showing myself as her acts power lay in executing Balanchines
intricately geometric choreography of folding and unfolding legs
with a steady stare.xxxiv She described how because at that time I had
lovely legs, Balanchine used that.... he asked me to lie down on the
floor on my back, just flat, and to bend my knees and then slowly
kick, one leg straight, then the other....xxxv Balanchine further
achieved the Sirens body image by exaggerating Dubrovskas fivefoot six inch physique, which by contemporary standards was
strikingly tall for a female dancer, through placing the latter on
pointe and in a high hat to make her appear even taller. xxxvi The
characters serpentine otherness was heightened through heavy
orientalised eye make-up and the artist George Rouaults slimming,
tight wine-red velvet bodice with darkened side panels and the webpatterned tights that accentuated her leg length.xxxvii A publicity
photograph by David shows an un-balletic emphasis on weight and
multiplicity. Dubrovska is on pointe and arches her back, thereby
allowing her long cape to fall in a velvet pool on the floor and her
high hat to express her heads heaviness, while her arms, bent at the
elbow and heavily embellished with black wrist-bands end in fists.
(image 6) Her bodys multiple focal points along with the shadow
that surrounds her on all sides render her statically ominous and

11

command the spectator to stop and devote his attention to her. With
her explicitly stylised, provocative appearance, Dubrovskas Siren
embodies Freuds conception of female vanity as compensation for
original sexual inferiority, a notion tailored to the biblical parables
moral.
The emphasis on shadow in Dubrovskas body image, along with the
slow, supine, coitally suggestive aspects of her choreography which
jarred with the ballets otherwise accelerated tempo, evoked
seductresses in contemporary silent film. A similar exposition of
serpentine, sirenic femininity was revealed in The Woman he
Scorned (1929).xxxviii In a comparable manner to Prodigal Son, a film
still foregrounds the protagonist Pola Negris legs, which are
suggestively folded and elongated through laddered black stockings.
(image 7) The stockings webbed texture recalls the painted
patternation of Doubrovskas legs, and arguably hints at the dubious
morality of flesh revealed through thread-like textures. Oscillating
between the contraries of revelation and concealment, construction
and decadence, open, lace-like fabrics imply enchantment through
titillation and deception. Negris character in the film was morally
tainted, and therefore an acceptable source of titillation. Similarly, in
being revealed and later defeated, Dubrovskas body, much like
Negris symbolised bourgeois societys simultaneous fascination and
fear of female sexuality.
Still, the magnetism of such stage and screen seductresses, whose
imagery was accessible to all who encountered it in the theatre or
press, coupled with a relaxation of sexual mores in the 1920s, meant
that adaptations of their webbed costumes filtered into the evening
wear and lingerie of middle class women. Under the umbrella of
bourgeois consumption it became socially acceptable for women to
portray elements of the femme fatale, albeit in a less overt manner
than Dubrovska and Negri. This was often achieved through latticelike fabrics that embodied the feminine riddle through their
contrapuntal translucency and highly-worked, intricate surfaces. A

12

late 1920s black tulle sample, probably intended for an evening

gown, by the Russian migr embroidery house Kitmir features a
pearl-embroidered diamond web-motif that recalls Dubrovska and
Negris embellishments. (image 8) Here, the double webbing of tulle
and overlaid pearl pattern draw the spectators eye in, toward the
wearer as the former is confronted with two layers of visual
illusionism. Additionally, a 1929 promotion of the Russian migr
fashion house Anneks airborne nightgowns trimmed with lace was
titled Lingerie of Cobweb Texture. xxxix In its cobweb analogy the
promotion evoked not only the garments unparalleled lightness, but
their ability to ensnare and captivate their intended victim. (image 9)
Like Dubrovskas slowly unfolding Siren, the woman in lacy
trappings attempted to still time, by stopping the spectator in his
tracks, inciting him to look at her and become suspended in her
power. In the late1920s where as Siegfried Kracauer noted, the
working day was increasingly regulated and societys very pastimes
appeared to mark time, sirenic bodily seduction with its ability to
disrupt quotidian chronologies, became a powerful distraction.xl
As a figure who oscillated between the contraries of avant-garde and
retrospective femininity, the siren in Ballets Russes productions and
haute couture between 1927 and 1929, evoked contemporary
societys ambivalence towards notions of feminine agency and
sexuality. The technical innovations in choreography and couture
that simultaneously revealed and enigmatised the female body,
released its potential for movement on an unprecedented level and
challenged its relationship to subjectivity and objecthood. However,
while the siren mode served to destabilise conceptions of
universalising, static femininity, its appeal relied upon exaggerating
notions of feminine Otherness. This feminine model set a precedent
for the early 1930s. During the global Great Depression and the
economic uncertainty that accompanied it, consumers desire for
escapism led them to seek refuge in visions of essential yet
kinaesthetically appealing femininity that challenged quotidian,
linear notions of time and space.

13

Notes

Sergei Diaghilevs Ballets Russes was a famous company of travelling Russian

dancers, known for its innovation and promotion of collaboration between different
production elements. The company debuted in Paris in 1909, and after a brief
interval during the war period, remained a company in emigration until
Diaghilevs 1929 death.
ii
Sigmund Freud, On Femininity (1933). In On Freuds Femininity, Eds. Leticia
Glocer Fiorini and Graciela Abelin-Sas Rose, (London: Karnac Books, 2010) 128.
Freud sustained this view on female narcissism over 19 years. In his 1933 essay
On Femininity he refers readers back to his 1914 text On Narcissism.
iii
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex .Translated from the French by H.M
Parshley (New York : Modern Books, 1968), 182.
iv
In Homers Odessey the Sirens were the daughters of the river god Achleous and
various deities including the Muse of dance Terpsichore, the Muse of tragedy
Melpomene and the Pleiades. Odysseus instructed his men to plug their ears with
wax when sailing past the Sirens so that they would not be lured into the rocks by
their song.
v
Paul Schilder, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in
Constructive Energies of the Psyche (New York: International Universities Press
Inc., 1950), 3.
vi
Schilder, Image and Appearance of the Human Body, 201.
vii
Rebecca Arnold, Vionnet and Classicism in Madeleine Vionnet, 15 Dresses
from the Collection of Martin Kamer, Judith Clark Costume, 15 March 26 April
2001, ed. Judith Clark (London: Judith Clark Costume, 2001), 3.
viii
Chanel quoted in Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda, Chanel (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991), 73.
ix
Liz Conor , The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 252.
x
The Ballets Russes ballet master Sergei Grigoriev noted that Diaghilev was
accused of pursuing what was as any moment fashionable in the arts in ballets
where the leading object was surprise. Sergei Grigoriev, The Diaghilev Ballet
1909-1929, Translated from the Russian by Vera Bowen (London: Constable,
1953), 156.
xi
Edgar Degas, Sonnet V (1889) translated by Richard Kendall. In Richard Kendall
and Jill de Vonyar, Degas and the Dance (New York: Abrams, 2002).
xii
Yuri Slonimsky, Balanchine: The Early Years, translated from the Russian by
John Andrews, Ballet Review (New York: Dance Research Foundation, 1975-6)
Vol.3: 29.

14
xiii

The ballet La Chatte premiered on April 30, 1927. The choreography was by
George Balanchine, the music by Henri Sauget and the set and costume design by
Naum Gabo.
xiv
Martin Hammer, Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 159.
xv
Hammer, Art and Career of Naum Gabo, 159.
xvi
Grigoriev, Diaghilev Ballet, 235.
xvii
Alice Nikitina, Nikitina: by herself , (London: Wingate, 1959), 59.
xviii
The couturier Premet said in an interview If fashion stays the way it is, it will
become a public menace. Clothes nowadays dont vary enough from one season to
the next. Premet interview with M. Winters in Les Cahiers, January
1927.Translated from the French by Jacqueline Demornex. Quoted in Jacqueline
Demornex, Lucien Lelong, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008), 56.
xix
Translation by author : the line is kinetic and the effect is obtained by treatment
of different parts of the silhouette. Lucien Lelong, La Mode kinoptique,
LOfficiel de la Couture et la Mode de Paris, (Paris, March 1927).
xx
Lelong, La Mode Kinoptique.
xxi
LOfficiel de la Couture et la Mode de Paris, (Paris, May 1928).
xxii
Arnold, Vionnet and Classicism, 3.
xxiii
Apollo was originally titled Apollon Musagte and premiered on April 27,
1928. It was choreographed by George Balanchine, designed and costumed by
Andr Bauchant, with music by Stravinsky.
xxiv
Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography, (London: Boyars, 1990), 134.
xxv
Stephanie Jordan, Stravinsky Dances: Re-visions Across a Century, (Alton:
Dance Books, 2007), 147.
xxvi
George Balanchine, quoted in Arnold Haskell, Arnold Haskell, Balletomania:
the Story of an Obsession, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1934), 146.
xxvii
Alexandra Danilova, Choura: the Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova, ( New
York: Knopf, 1986), 99; Nikitina, Nikitina by Herself , 89.
xxviii
Madeleine Vionnet quoted in: Betty Kirke, Madeleine Vionnet, (San
Franscisco: Chronicle Books, 1998), 27.
xxix
Pamela Golbin, Madeleine Vionnet, (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), 25.
xxx
Arnold, Vionnet and Classicism, 5.
xxxi
Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, translated
from the French by Margaret Sankey (London and New York: Continuum, 2009),
62.
xxxii
The Prodigal Son was choreographed by George Balanchine, designed by
George Rouault with music by Prokofiev. It premiered on May 21, 1929.
xxxiii
Felia Dubrovska quoted in Barbara Newman, Striking a Balance: Dancers
Talk About Dancing (London: Elm Tree Books, 1982), 7.
xxxiv
Dubrovska, Striking a Balance, 7.

15
xxxv

Dubrovska, Striking a Balance, 7.

Danilova, Choura, 78.
xxxvii
Dubrovska, Striking a Balance, 7.
xxxviii
The Woman He Scorned, Film, directed by Paul Czinner (1929, United
Kingdom).
xxxix
Lingerie of Cobweb Texture, Harpers Bazaar (New York: Hearst
Publications) March, 1929.
xl
Siegfried Kracauer, Travel and Dance, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays,
Translated from the German by Thomas Y Levin (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995), 66.
xxxvi

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2001, ed. Judith Clark (London: Judith Clark Costume, 2001).
De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex , Translated from the French by H.M
Parshley (New York : Modern Books, 1968).
Bolton, Andrew and Koda, Harold. Chanel, (New York: Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 1991).
Conor, Liz. The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004).
Danilova, Alexandra. Choura: the Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova, (New York:
Knopf, 1986).
Demornex, Jacqueline. Lucien Lelong, (London: Thames & Hudson, 2008).
Golbin, Pamela. Madeleine Vionnet, (New York: Rizzoli, 2009).
Grigoriev, Sergei. The Diaghilev Ballet 1909-1929, Translated from the Russian by
Vera Bowen (London: Constable, 1953).
Hammer, Martin. Constructing Modernity: The Art and Career of Naum Gabo
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).
Harpers Bazaar (New York: Hearst Publications).

16

Haskell, Arnold. Balletomania: the Story of an Obsession, (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1934).
Jordan, Stephanie. Stravinsky Dances: Re-visions Across a Century, (Alton: Dance
Books, 2007).
Kirke, Betty. Madeleine Vionnet, (San Franscisco: Chronicle Books, 1998).
Kracauer, Siegfied. Travel and Dance, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays,
Translated from the German by Thomas Y. Levin (Cambridge MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995).
LOfficiel de la Couture et la Mode de Paris, (Paris).
Newman, Barbara. Striking a Balance: Dancers Talk About Dancing, (London:
Elm Tree Books, 1982).
Nikitina, Alice. Nikitina: By Herself , (London: Wingate, 1959).
Schilder, Paul. The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in
Constructive Energies of the Psyche (New York: International Universities Press
Inc., 1950).
Serres, Michel. The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, translated from
the French by Margaret Sankey (London and New York: Continuum, 2009).
Stravinsky, Igor. An Autobiography, (London: Boyars, 1990).

Filmography
The Woman He Scorned, Film, directed by Paul Czinner (1929, United Kingdom).

List of Illustrations
Image 1. Alice Nikitina and Serge Lifar in La Chatte, 1927, photographic print,
Tate collections, in Martin Hammer, Constructing Modernity : The Art and
Career of Naum Gabo, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000, pg. 152.

17
Image 2. Chanel dress, 1928, illustrated print, in LOfficiel de la Couture et la
Mode de Paris, Paris, May 1928.
Image 3. Figure 18. G.L. Manuel Freres, Alice Nikitina as Terpsichore in Apollon
Musagete. Paris, 1928. In Musee Nationale de lOpera de Paris, Bibliothque
nationale de France, Paris.
Image 4. Unknown photographer, Danilova as Terpsichore in Apollon Musagete
. c.1928. In Choura: the Memoirs of Alexandra Danilova by Alexandra Danilova.
New York: Knopf, 1986, pg. 9.
Image 5. Cecil Beaton, Mannequin in Vionnet dress, 1929. In Madeleine Vionnet
by Betty Kirke, San Franscisco: Chronicle Books, 1998, pg. 38.
Image 6. David, Felia Doubrovska in Le Fils Prodigue, 1929, photographic print,
Parmenia Ekstrom Collection (157) ,Harvard Theatre Collection, Cambridge,
Massachusetts .
Image 7. Pola Negri in The Woman he Scorned, 1929, photographic print in Pola
Negri, Memoirs of a Star (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970).
Image 8. Kitmir, Seed pearls, glass beads and silk thread on black silk tulle
sample, late 1920s in Fonds Kitmir, Maison Hurel, Paris.
Image 9. Lingerie of Cobweb Texture, illustrated print in Harpers Bazaar (New
York: Hearst Publications) March, 1929.

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Illustrations

Image 1 - Alice Nikitina and Serge Lifar in La Chatte, 1927

Image 2 - Chanel dress promotion, 1928

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Image 3 - Nikitina as Terpsichore in Apollo, 1928

Image 4 - Danilova as Terpsichore in Apollo, 1928

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Image 5 - Cecil Beaton, Vionnet dress, 1929

Image 6 - David, Felia Doubrovska in Prodigal Son, 1929

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Image 7- Pola Negri in The Woman he Scorned, 1929

Image 8- Kitmir, Seed pearls, glass beads and silk thread on black silk tulle
sample, late 1920s

22

Image 9 - Lingerie of Cobweb Texture, Harpers Bazaar, 1929