Pieter Claes

Costume Workshops

Costume Stock

The La Monnaie Costume workshops produce several hundred costumes a year. From swimsuits to crinolines, these days opera costumes can take many forms: historical, fantastical, or hyper-realistic. This diverse collection is preserved, once the productions have been dismantled, in two types of storerooms.

The Repertoire storeroom

This storeroom houses the costumes and accessories, which are stored according to production. They may be reused if the production is revived at La Monnaie, or they could be lent or sold to another opera house.

The Repertoire storeroom, with a surface area of 370 m2, built on the roofs of the Workshops building, opened in autumn 2020.

Up until then, the Repertoire storerooms had been located on the outskirts of Brussels. 

Insulated and ventilated in order to ensure that the costumes are preserved as well as possible, the new storeroom has also increased efficiency and saved time for the teams (direct access, increased storage space, optimised storage capacity thanks to mobile shelving units, the need for transport eliminated).

Costumes of Die Zauberflöte (2018)

The Non-Repertoire storeroom

Situated on the fifth floor of the Workshops building, just across from the Sewing workshop, this storeroom houses all the “relegated” costumes that will not be used again in the production for which they were made. 

It also contains stocks of socks, lingerie, corsets, padding, and neutral items (white shirts, black t-shirts, etc.). 

The Non-Repertoire storeroom is above all a work tool. Some elements of the costumes are used again in new productions; others are used as rehearsal costumes. It is important for the singers to rehearse in costumes that resemble those they will wear onstage.

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The Repertoire storeroom

The Non-Repertoire storeroom

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The Repertoire storeroom