In partnership with the Paris Opera’s Ateliers, and as a Major Patron of the Paris Opera, CHANEL has created the costumes for Hofesh Shechter’s ballet Red Carpet, which will have its world premiere at the Palais Garnier on 10th June, following a preview for young people on 7th June 2025.
Hofesh Shechter has choreographed a full evening’s performance, not with his own company but with the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet, with whom he worked on the repertoire additions of The Art of Not Looking Back in 2018, Uprising and In Your Rooms in 2022.
Through this ballet, created specifically for the Paris Opera stage, the choreographer creates a quirky café-theatre universe. Within a darkened cabaret atmosphere, thirteen dancers are accompanied by a live band of four musicians. Red curtains evoking the velvet of the Palais Garnier auditorium open and close in an evolving mise-en-scène. Hofesh Shechter’s earthly and dynamic body language unfolds with force as the dance becomes viscerally intense and electric.
In the continuity of its ties forged with the Opéra national de Paris since 2018, CHANEL has supported the choreographer by designing thirteen stage costumes for the dancers of Red Carpet. These costumes – which showcase the combined savoir-faire of the two institutions – are inspired by the world of eveningwear. Tuxedos and cocktail jackets, bow ties and long dresses in lamé, embroidered or sequinned fabrics evoke the glamour and intensity of a festive night out, all while blending the masculine and feminine, notably with a tuxedo cut from pink bouclé fabric. These silhouettes, inspired by a party spirit (earrings, long gloves, cuff bracelets, camellias), contribute to the creation of recognisable characters. During the ballet, the six female and seven male dancers gradually remove their costumes to reveal draped, shorter undergarments, like second skins, allowing for greater freedom of movement.
By being part of this innovative and ambitious performing arts project, CHANEL reaffirms its commitment to supporting contemporary creation.
Presented at the Palais Garnier from 10th June to 14th July 2025, Red Carpet will head Stateside, to San Francisco and New York, from October to November 2025. The ballet was filmed by Floris Bernard, produced by the Paris Opera with the support of the Orange Foundation, and will be broadcast later on ‘POP’ – Paris Opera Play, the Paris Opera’s streaming platform.
On the story behind the ballet Red Carpet
I know that people want to know what a dance piece is about, but for me a dance piece is more like a dream. You have a strong feeling about where it is, about how you feel inside it, about maybe some ideas and images inside it that make you feel that you understand what’s going on, but you will never really understand what’s going on, like in a dream.
Red Carpet has a lot of connotations for us and this title gives a clue to people about the kind of world we’re going to be looking at. I was invited to work here in the Palais Garnier, and I thought about glamour, the glitz together with art. It will bring questions about the tension between entertainment and glamour and art and what we are trying to present and how it really feels to be alive, the vulnerability of the people, of the bodies underneath, all the layers that we put on.
(The dancers) start with costumes that are kind of like eveningwear and a bit cabaret and slowly they shed it to reveal much more simple, more fragile, vulnerable costumes that show them and show more of the body itself. The way that it is, and the way the energy is caught between something very, very playful and something quite fragile in humans.
On the costumes created by CHANEL in partnership with the Paris Opera Ateliers
For the costumes, the starting point was that we wanted to create a world of glamour with hints of cabaret, but also that feels a little bit like fantasy, like a dream.
The costumes are a mélange of evening dress, with elements of tuxedo, cabaret, some things that feel a little bit glamorous, a little bit celebrity-like, but all very subtle. Because of the combination of all these things together, you get a sense of a festive moment where each person wants to present themselves in the best way they can, in the way they want everybody to see them.
We have these glamorous costumes and then there is another kind of second skin underneath. My feeling was that in a piece where we want to go through the layers of the glamour, we should be able to get to the layers underneath. We should be able to see the body in a purer form, in a simpler form. But I didn’t want it to become about nudity, I wanted it to be about not having clothes, which is a different thing. And then we thought that it would be interesting to have another set of clothes, essentially, but that feel really bare, that feel like they reveal the body for what it is.
I’m amazed how elegant the costumes look, and at the same time how the dancers can dance in them. Because normally the problem that we have in dance is that you can have beautifully designed trousers, a suit, a shirt, but then, you need to be able to move in it. And in my dance, we go down to the floor and up and it is very agile physically. From the beginning I asked the dancers, can you move in it, and they’re like, yeah don’t worry, I can plie, I can lift everything, I can do whatever you want. So, I was really impressed with the way that it’s all done for the dancers to be comfortable and to be able to move.
On the importance and role of costumes in ballet
The perfect costume for me is the one that serves the piece. It’s the one that helps us feel stronger things about what we’re looking at, that gives a stronger, more powerful experience. So, in my work, for example, the movement and the music are very connected. I do both. I do the music, and I do the choreography. And I like that there is a real symbiosis, they are really connected. And it’s very powerful when the elements come together to tell the story.
When I saw the dancers wearing the costumes the first time, I was very excited. I always have a lot to say, and here I didn’t really have anything to say! I was just happy how it fitted in. It did this thing that I really love, it immediately enhanced the experience of the piece.
On the opportunity of working with dancers of the Paris Opera
(Working with the dancers of the Paris Opera) is great, we are having the time of our lives. Obviously I worked with them before, we did three works together already, but these were not new works, it was old works that were restaged for them. And after doing this for three times, I really felt, we both felt, the Palais Garnier and myself, that it was time to do something new together.
It is a really fascinating project and process for me because when you start a dance piece, it’s always like walking into the woods at night. You don’t know what’s going on there. You don’t know where to go, where it will lead you. And you slowly discover the way. And we discover it together. The dancers were so committed. And there’s something about their really amazing physicality, they come into my world, they really do, they really make the effort to step into my word. But then because of their supreme physicality, that in essence is very different from my work, the meeting point creates a really interesting language.
