Costume design for Cirque du Soleil ALIZÉ is all about bal ance between reality and magic as the audience follow real world characters traveling into a magical universe, guided by powerful figures embodying natural elements. The challenge is to evoke wind, dandelions, butterflies, constellations, or smoke without being too literal, while always keeping the human side of the characters.

The costumes of the real-world characters would evoke the magical world by sharing patterns, shapes or colors with their mystical counterparts. The Costume Designer drew inspiration from paintings, especially the depth of the color ultramarine blue, which became a central color in the overall palette. Designing for circus is always walking on a delicate line to create costumes technically suited for high-level acro batics, yet carrying a strong, contemporary visual identity.

There is no main fabric used across the show as each costume requires specific technical and visual properties. Many pieces use durable stretch materials tested for comfort and the demands of hundreds of performances and daily washes. Techniques like sublimation and screen printing are used to create rich visual textures that trick the eye. Velvet was chosen to offer richer and deeper colors under stage lighting. More specific fabrics such as feather silk, the world’s lightest fabric, is used to create the flowy hair effect on Celeste’s headpiece. We also explored the ultra extensibility of a fabric called crapoté, a double layered fabric with a smocking effect, for Alizé’s contortion act. The other specific and most expensive fabric we use is the one you don’t see. It is a very high light-absorbing velvet called Musou.

Theater teaches to imagine stories for every figure. Makeup, like costume, is a voice in that narrative. Sometimes it comes from the words of a director, sometimes from a secret tale invented to uncover who hides behind the mask. Transformation guides the designer’s hand: from realism, to heightened theatricality, to the shimmer of pure magic. Costume and makeup must breathe as one. The costume lays the foundation, and makeup completes the vision. Together, they tell a single story that holds the spectator’s gaze. In Cirque du Soleil ALIZÉ, some characters—imbued with a deeper sense of magic—evoked entire worlds through their presence.

Although new makeup technologies offer dazzling shimmers and reflections, the make-up designer of ALIZÉ chose to remain largely with matte textures, ensuring colors retained their depth and could reach even the second balcony. The overall palette was shaped by cooler tones, especially blues, with shimmering highlights and golden touches for select characters. Guided by the idea of transformation, seasonal shifts in color and the changing light from morning to night were explored for the designs. In this, makeup had to hold its own against the costume: tonal values needed to be just as strong, so that both elements could be illuminated in harmony on stage.