Costume Shop

Costume from A Midsummer's Night Dream

The New York City Ballet is very fortunate to be the only ballet company in America to have its own, permanent Costume Shop. The Costume Shop overlooks the Hudson River and is filled with light from huge westward-looking windows. It has the feel of a fine couture house, textile museum, the dressing rooms at your favorite department store, a fantasy workshop, and your grandmother’s attic all rolled into one incredible space. It is always humming with activity as designers, dancers, seamstresses, dressers and choreographers are constantly on the go through its doors.

It is impossible to think about a ballet in your mind’s eye without seeing the costumes. Even when a ballet is clad in the simplest of clothes — black tights and white tops or simple white and black tunics — they are known most familiarly not by their title or composer or choreographer; but simply as “black & white ballets” — a tribute to the importance of costumes.

The NYCB Costume Shop is responsible for creating and maintaining a wealth of imagination that has been translated into fabric, thread, buttons, ribbons and, of course, feathers. Visit these pages to see how it is done and meet the talented people dedicated to this task.