Costumes

I love doing special requests clothing just as much as having to harmonize a group of people while making sure each and every one is attractive. Costume design is all about collaboration with an author, an artistic director and the many people involved in a show. It is also about closeness when dressing people and transforming their appearance since many secrets are revealed in the intimacy of the fitting cabin. The aesthetics of garments is about making people look good, optimizing the feel of the fabric and displaying personality and social status. Are we mere animals carrying socio-economical symbols? Garments not only protect us but have also a semiological function. The gendered garments give more importance to certain body parts and correspond to the history of stylistic devices. Today, even undies are revealed. Is looking for ‘life’ through the intensity of seduction in any way masochistic ?

Period costumes mark the rhythm of time. The flux and reflux of fashion trends seem to have no basis yet they raise so many passions: what we love one day we find ridiculous the next. I think the Sun King would have loved to wear a perfecto and Josephine a lycra skirt. As a painter, I also tend to change peoples’s looks drastically by body painting them, putting aside their constructed identities and leaving them only with their body to identify with.
Special collaborations in art

Special collaborations in art

2018-2019

Sylvie Hennequart : costumes for performers, Paris
photo credit : Sylvie Hennequart

– Pavé royal, Centre George Pompidou
– Performance of a nun, Galerie 102
– Déjeuner sur l’herbe, artist’s work
– Axel Monsaingeon : collection of carryall bags made of recycled sailboat material, Montreal
– Denis Rousseau, mobile textile sculptures, Montreal
– Paméla Landry : interactive sculptures, Montreal
– Daniel Corbeil : inflatable sculptures, Montreal
– Ana Cappelluto : textile multimedia screen, St. Marks Church, New-York.

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Encore C

Encore C

2013-2014

Line of waist-cinches and corsets designed in collaboration with Nadine Arnaud with yearly fashion show in Montreal.

Photo credit : Nadine Arnaud

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Métiers et traditions

Métiers et traditions

2000-2012

Collaborating with an association that’s mission is the preservation of the intangible heritage attached to Quebec gave me a day to day opportunity to be creative and innovative. Among other jobs, I was a public demonstrations coordinator, a costume designer for over 200 craftswomen and craftsmen in preparation of their performances in thematic festivals and events and an animator of pit-sawing, hat making, the construction of stays for corsets, bread making…

photo credit: Colette Bordeleau and Métiers et traditions.

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La Maison Nivard-De Saint-Dizier

La Maison Nivard-De Saint-Dizier

2012

Costume and set design for a documentary video presented at the Maison Nivard museum and archeological site, one of the earliest rural homes of Montreal.
Concept : design of clothing and stage set for an apprentice-carpenter and a sharecropper’s wife in Nouvelle-France. Everything was created with raw linen (clothing, the straw mattress, the food sacks) with all apparent seams sewn by hand.

photo credit : Les productions Train d’enfer.

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La route des cieux

La route des cieux

2010

Costume design for Jean-Pierre Lefebvre’s feature-length film that pays tribute to the nuns in Quebec by telling their story.
Concept : the idea was to reference, yet not too rigorously, the religious congregations throughout Quebec history in 15 scenes, right from the departure from France of three Ursulines and three Hospitalières de la Miséricorde de Jésus nuns right up until today.

photo credit : stills from the film produced by Cinak.

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Ernestine Shuswap gets her trout

Ernestine Shuswap gets her trout

2007

Costume design for Q Art Theatre, artistic director Gabor Zsigovitcs.
Concept : written by Thomson Highway, the play deals with ancestral lands and communities. It inspired combinations of victorian blouses, designer jeans and First Nations accessories.

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Jam

Jam

2000

Dicotomi, was my third boutique where I sold retro clothing and personal creations .
Jam was the name of the line of painted clothing designed in collaboration with Jamie Mitchell, a specialist in fabric dies.

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L’homme assis followed by Comme des chaises

L’homme assis followed by Comme des chaises

2000

Costume design for the Théâtre Complice, author and artistic director Mariline Laplante.
Concept : a tragedy and a comedy part of a singular presentation that tackled the subject of power and the child-parent relations. I was asked to render the costumes as il they were body parts that attested of one’s social status.

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Bustiers and bras

Bustiers and bras

1998-2019

Concept : personalized bustiers and artistic bras prepared with different materials: fabric, woven fibre, fur and felt.

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