We just noticed that at the end of this month the New York City Ballet will once again be performing Bal de Couture — last fall’s much anticipated ballet choreographed by Peter Martins to music by Tschaikovsky and costumes by Valentino. Perhaps most interesting about this work is the fact that Martins indeed choreographed this piece AFTER Valentino’s costumes. 

The idea of fashion houses designing for the ballet is certainly not new, but remains as romantic and intriguing as ever. Coco Chanel designed ballet costumes as early as the 1920s and Karl Lagerfeld continued this Chanel tradition in 2009 with his Dying Swan costume for the English National Ballet. New York City Ballet commissioned Stella McCartney to create costumes for Ocean’s Kingdom, a ballet also choreographed by Martins to a beautiful score by her father Sir Paul. But our favorite intersection of fashion and ballet is without question Rodarte’s costumes for Benjamin Millepied’s 2012 ballet Two Hearts, hauntingly scored by Nico Muhly — simply sublime. 

We love this photograph of Valentino from VOGUE last year and this video about his collaboration with NYCB.