"Designing costumes for a show is very different from making fashion."

Barcelona3, 2, 1! The show begins! On stage, there is only one ticket office where tickets are sold for the Palace of Illusions, where a kindly, white-bearded old man will spend an exciting afternoon with his friends. This is the starting point ofILU, the new Cirque du Soleil show designed specifically for Andorra, a collaboration that has already lasted twelve summers and has become a tourist magnet in the Principality, where the show can be seen until early August. Beyond a spectacular circus act—with trapeze artists, acrobats, and tightrope walkers in a state of grace— ILU It's a tribute to childhood, that stage of life when the boundaries between reality and fiction blur. This fantasy world, directed by Lydia Bouchard, is filled with eccentric characters, candy monsters, neighing horses, and even a leisurely polar bear. Costumes play a fundamental role in the staging. They not only help construct the characters but also reinforce their narrative.

Two hours before the opening, all the activity is concentrated in a tent adjacent to the center court. There is the backstage, which resembles the dressing room of a field theater. Around twenty artists are transforming into characters and applying makeup, seated in front of several rows of backlit mirrors. You can observe them, but under no circumstances can you question them. The concentration of their faces shows that they are already entering their role. Right next to the hair and makeup area is the wardrobe area. This is betrayed by the sewing machines and, above all, the racks on which dozens of pieces are hung. Dina, Aubin, Rodrigo, Solène, Natsume, Tamaki... The clothes that each artist will wear are marked with their name, just as they are in the backstage of a fashion show. A middle-aged man looks at him and smiles, perhaps thinking about the effort he has put in over the past eight months. He is Nicolas Vaudelet, the Breton designer who designs the costumes forILU, his third Andorran show after Diva and Rebel.

"Everything starts with a mood board of inspiration that I share with Lydia, the director. I make a lot of sketches, and from there, the work with the workshop begins. Designing costumes for a show is very different from making fashion; the technique for making the garments and the choice of materials change. We have to take into account the artists' movements and, above all, their safety. In addition, after each performance, all the costumes go into the washing machine," explains Vaudelet, who knows what she's talking about when she compares one way of working with another. "When I was just eighteen, I joined Lacroix and then I was lucky enough to collaborate with John Galliano at Dior; with Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton; with Alexander McQueen at Givenchy; and with Sonya Rykiel." But the figure that left the greatest mark on her was Jean Paul Gaultier, with whom she spent seven years, until 2007. "I learned a lot from him, especially about finding inspiration everywhere, in everyday things or in a piece of high-end jewelry. Also to confront opposites and mix them," he recalls about those years with theenfant terrible. "In 2006 we designed the costumes for Madonna's world tour, Confessions Tour. That's when I got the taste for large-scale shows." The following year, Vaudelet moved to Seville to take over as creative director of the clothing and leather goods company El Caballo, an adventure that came to a close when he began collaborating with director Franco Dragone, for whom he drew the figurines for Noise, a dance performance by the Spanish National Ballet for which she received the Best Costume Designer award at the 2014 Max Awards.

Dragone, who directed some of Cirque du Soleil's most memorable shows in the 1990s, was Vaudelet's second entry into the world of stage costumes. In 2015, they triumphed at the Lido de Paris with the show Paris Merveilles, where Vaudelet designed more than 600 costumes. The Breton then collaborated on shows that took him to Russia, China, and Türkiye, until he joined Cirque du Soleil in 2017. With ILUVaudelet now has fourteen shows under his belt. "Current circus is very focused on the human side, on the personality of the artist, perhaps that's why we dress them more realistically. It's also true that I'm increasingly asked for more fashion, perhaps because of my background," he asserts. In fact, in the first issue ofILU A red-haired woman appears wearing a suit with a golden jeweled breast from which a drop of milk falls. "It could be a nod to Schiaparelli, because I really like the work of Daniel Roseberry. But also to the jewel-sculptures that the Lalannes made for Yves Saint Laurent, on the pampered breast of the sculpture of Juliet Capulet in Verona or on the bust of Dalida in Montmartre," she explains.

Throughout the show, references fashionistas There are many: the horses are inspired by those that the sculptor Janine Janet – who was a Balenciaga showcase – made for the film The Testament of Orpheus (1960) by Jean Cocteau; the bearded girl is reminiscent of a Martin Margiela faux-fur jacket; the articulated arm that plays with the stuffed animal man transports you to the end of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 1999 show when two automotive robots sprayed paint on model Shalom Harlow's white dress... and the list goes on. "My inspirations always include references to fashion and Gaultier. The bellboy figure is reflected in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, especially the colors. But it's true that the most Gaultier part of the character is how he wears his clothes, with his jacket tucked into his shorts." tartan and the suspenders over the jacket, that is, putting on top what normally goes underneath," he says. This bellboy also has a scene with two fascinating characters: the barber, who wears a sailor-striped T-shirt and the bearded woman, who when she lets go of her hair reveals a second-skin effect jumpsuit. designed in 1993 for the show Facade, an entertainment by the dancer and choreographer Régine Chopinot. Shortly after, she recovered them for the collection The Tattoos (PV 1994) and are currently one of the must of the brand. This is how the fashion wheel is fueled, where the moment of letting go always comes. And Vaudelet knows this very well: "A debut is like giving birth. The pressure is off; our creations no longer belong to us, but to the public.