dObra[s] – revista da Associação Brasileira de Estudos de Pesquisas em Moda

The Costume as a Mask of Identity

Glauber Soares Junior — 2025-04-01

Understanding that costumes in cinematic works are used for the subjective and objective construction of characters, this article aims to analyze the meanings attributed to costume design in the symbolic shaping of the protagonists in the film Passing (2021). To achieve this, a semiotic reading—both denotative and connotative—was conducted on four costume images from the film, highlighting that the clothing in the selected scenes played a significant role in the narrative. The film is set in 1920s New York, a context marked by racial segregation, and its English title, Passing, symbolically addresses the issues of color- ism. The narrative follows Black characters who pass as white to access spaces from which they are otherwise excluded. Regarding the main findings, the costume design—comprising long dresses, stockings, gloves, and hats—functions as a mask that conceals true identities.

The Costume Design in Recife’s Film Production

Álamo Bandeira Miguel — 2025-04-01

This article investigates the role of costume design in Recife’s film production, with a focus on the practices adopted by costume designers Carol Azevedo, Christiana Garrido e Bárbara Cunha between 2015 and 2017. It presents the combined results of a theoretical approach, ethnographic immersion on film sets, and interview-classes conducted with industry professionals. The study examines the strategies employed by costume designers in Pernambuco’s cinema, addressing their aesthetic and logistical challenges, while also touching on their political and economic dilemmas. By highlighting the cultural and symbolic importance of costumes in cinematic narrative construction, the article explores how costume design practices in the city engage with broader trends in Brazilian and global cinema. The analysis reflects on the relevance of costume design as a strategic tool for shaping film narratives and its significant impact on the regional audiovisual industry.

Costume and Fashion Design by Marília Carneiro, in the soap opera Dancin’Days

Madson Luis Gomes de Oliveira — 2025-04-01

The article presented here is an excerpt from the master’s research in design on the work of costume designer Marília Carneiro, relating the costumes developed and fashion. The justification for the research is based on the exchange of influence between costume designers and fashion designers that feed off each other, in a kind of ebb and flow, promoting a flow of information based on the dissemination of clothes, makeup and hairstyles used by characters in TV soap operas. These questions guide this case study, here represented by the work of costume designer Marília Carneiro, who helped bring soap opera characters to life for Brazilian TV, in costumes that marked eras and made some protagonists fashion icons. This article is about the analysis of the costumes used by the protagonist: Júlia Matos (Sônia Braga), in the soap opera Dancin’Days (1978-1979). Our hypothesis is that the costumes in question had an impact on viewers and, conse- quently, went beyond TV screens and invaded stores and streets, influencing the work of fashion designers, who adapted the costumes for their products.

“Quem Ama Não Mata”

Laise Lutz Condé de Castro — 2025-04-01

This article investigates how the costumes for the miniseries Quem Ama Não Mata were constructed, based on the analysis of the protagonist Alice and her coun- terpoints in the production, Odete and Laura. The plot, written by Euclydes Marinho, was originally shown in 1982 on Rede Globo de Televisão, at 10 pm. Its title draws attention because it is appropriated from a slogan present in the feminist movement that emerged in the city of Belo Horizonte in 1980 – after two emblematic feminicide crimes in less than 15 days. Recognizing the symbolic load of the phrase, the narrative construction is also observed, in order to understand, not only image-wise, how Alice was led, given the rele- vance and topicality of the theme for the period in which it was shown.

Iberê Camargo’s artistic talents in creating the costumes for the ballet “As Icamiabas”

Ana Cleia Christovam Hoffman — 2025-04-01

The field of fashion is close to that of costume design, not only because of the clothes and accessories used in a characterization, but also because of their representativeness in visually showing the culture and behavior of a society at a given time. In 1959, in Rio de Janeiro, Iberê Camargo carried out a series of costume studies for the ballet “As Icamiabas,” inspired by a set of legends and documents bequeathed by the first chroniclers who were in the Amazon forest and had contact with tribes of warrior women. The objective of this article is to address the representation constructed by Iberê Camargo for the costumes of the ballet “As Icamiabas.” To this end, this article is concerned with presenting the legend, which permeates the Brazilian cultural imagination, and describing how the figures in this artistic ballet were represented. The methodology is based on a bibliographical review and a description of the costumes, based on the accounts found in the literature on the plural dress of native peoples. The results show that Iberê Camargo’s artistic interpretation includes a mixture of elements that are reminiscent of indigenous culture, such as skin paintings, but also incorporates clothes that are not part of the cultural context and imagery of the legend, but are part of the artistic proposal, a ballet show.

Between Carnival and everyday life

Priscila Andrade-Silva — 2025-04-01

This article presents a mapping of the dressing aesthetic of a group of Bate-bolas and Bate-boletes, protagonists of a cultural manifestation of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. The methodology and analysis originated from the doctoral thesis, “The Persona in Everyday Life and the Persona in Carnival: Bate-bolas, Bate-boletes, and a study on the culture of dressing”, which has a theoretical foundation that is transversal, conducted from the perspective of design, in dialogue with knowledge and practices from other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. This reflection begins with an analysis of dressing up in Carnival but contrasts it with everyday dressing and highlights the center/periphery relationship, taking into account the male/female gender variant. The premise demonstrates that the dialogue between clothing and costume allows for an interesting path to investigate approaches to a plural field of study by designers in the area of dressing culture studies, considered as a means of creating personas that manifest in their appearance a reflection of the dressing aesthetic of the Rio de Janeiro periphery.

The representation of absence

Hilary Baxter — 2025-04-01

The paucity of life narratives in film, television and for stage productions focused on women between the ages of 45 and 60 years has led many of these women to experience a sense of having become invisible. To address this phenomenon, I instigated a cycle of four performances staged between 2017 and 2020. Ideas were developed across the whole cycle and also for each performance. In this article I refer throughout to one performed costume scenography in June 2019, in a South London park. As the scenographer who wrote, directed and designed the perfor- mance, I will be discussing the whole process of creation, the subversive elements and how the blurring of boundaries fostered the audience engagement. This discussion includes the context, the development and experimentation with ideas; the interviews that I made with mid-life women using a Photo-Elicitation method, and the realised performance itself. Audience responses captured on the day, formed the data analysis for the final reflection on the achievements of the work.

Visual metamorphoses

Leônidas Garcia Soares — 2025-04-01

This work seeks to bring a reflection on how much the visual elements that make up the scene of live performance, mainly scenery and lighting, can actively participate, temporarily or permanently, in what we commonly relate to the visuality of the performer’s appearance, generally composed of clothing, makeup, hair, accessories etc. To this end, three case studies were conducted: the multimedia opera The Jew of Malta (2002), the partnership between Pina Bausch and her set designers, and two examples of the dialogue established between light and clothing in the work of Robert Wilson. The data observed and analyzed, in a descriptive and qualitative-inductive manner, in scenes from videos and photographic images lead to the conclusion that the control and conscious use of appearance or even the metamorphosis-transformation of this appearance on stage is possible in live performance.

Performing the costume in scenographies of the body

Mahatma Ordaz Domínguez — 2025-04-01

The purpose of costume in the field of expanded is to overflow the medium that sustains it: the body. This text explores the possibilities of costume outside the boundaries of theatrical language, focusing on three elements: body, space and fabric. Unlike the canonical scene, the expanded scene is not defined or organized as a stable model of creation. This paradigm leads us to reflect on our role as designers, it gives us the opportunity to formulate visual languages, approaches and disciplinary connections with costume8. For this analysis, we start from the premise that: “if it is the body that mobilizes and puts into action the costume, then it is the costume that makes the body visible as space” (Velásquez9, 2010, p. 30 cited by Farías, 2022, p. 31). In “Per-formar el vestuario” I take as a case study the scenographic costumes10 that I designed for the play Somos Arena. Canto de una madre, a textile piece that, for its projection, combines two disciplines: costume and scenography.

The process of creating costumes for a video game and the importance of professionals in the field

Clara Pache — 2025-04-01

This article demonstrates the importance of the costume designer or fashion designer role in the development of characters and aesthetics in the 3D animation and video game industry. The analysis of the approach in the creation experience of the costume designer Heli Salomaa (2018) in the digital environment. Through a developed project for a video game test, the research methods, creation and graphic communication of costume design for four characters with thematic reference to celtic culture and futuristic environment are presented — just like the visual development artist, present professional work in creations in the digital 3D animation and video games. The theoretical basis is also based on interviews with professionals working in the field and articles related to the use of 3D development software. It aims to analyse the tools used and identify the importance of a skilled professional, as well as the changes that are emerging in the market.

Fashion as source of information

Maria Cecilia Jardim Barros — 2025-04-01

This research aims to develop a systematic approach to the Documentary Organization and Representation of costumes. The analysis focused on bibliographic records of costumes in museums, identifying and comparing the descriptive elements present in these records with the normative documents. The research, exploratory in nature, adopted an objective methodology to approach the proposed problem. A terminology survey was carried out using controlled vocabularies, with the results submitted to national and international databases. The analysis focused on a representative piece of fashion: the mourning dress. The data collected was consolidated, and based on the descriptive elements identified, a methodology was proposed for representing costumes according to normative documents. The results showed that the records of the selected institutions - the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Costume Museum, the Kyoto Costume Institute and the FIT Museum - show significant variations in the descriptive elements, even when dealing with the same garment. The conclusion is that interoperability between information systems is crucial, respecting the specific characteristics of each institution and its users. Furthermore, it is essential to study regulations, theory and the social context in order to determine the essential elements in the representation of costumes in collections.

O Toró, by Shakespeare

Yuri Simon da Silveira — 2025-04-01

This article is a report on the experience of undergraduate students at the UEMG School of Design in developing costumes for the commercial show O Toró, a Brazilian version – with strong cultural influences from Minas Gerais – of the original work The Tempest by William Shakespeare, produced by the collective Trupe de Teatro e Pesquisa in partnership with the group Cia da Farsa. This is a pedagogical experiment conceived within the scope of the optional discipline Costume Design based on the fundamental principle of university education of the inseparability of teaching, research, and extension, which allowed students to experience a stage creation project and a supervised theoretical/practical experience within the field of theater.

Analysis of stage costumes

Luciana Crivellari Dulci — 2025-04-01

This article is part of a result from post-doctoral research and sought to carry out, through a research of secondary data, in the thesis databases of Brazilian universities, studies (theses and dissertations) developed based on analyses of images of costumes used in theatrical scenic works. Data such as the research techniques used to read the meanings of the costumes, which include the costumes as a relevant part of the characterization and scenic fabric and their respective analyses. The theoretical background of the article is interdisciplinary and encompasses authors from the Human Sciences, Arts and Applied Social Sciences. The objective of this study was to identify and compose an inventory of the research methodologies used in these analyses, to assist future researchers in new research and studies that deal with this topic, with the purpose of understanding the symbolic importance of the stage costume for the composition of scenic images. and his poetics. And thus, collaborate with epistemological discussions in the scientific field concerning the Arts.

Bricolage in costume design

João Dalla Rosa Júnior — 2025-04-01

This article explores the concept of bricolage in the creation of costumes based on a methodological proposal that establishes a process of artistic production in the context of actor training. Based on bricolage as a way of thinking and a creative principle, procedures are presented that elaborate a theoretical and practical approach to creation, emphasizing themes such as the materiality of artistic production, the notion of project and the definition of post-production. The text applies bricolage as a methodological approach to cross-referencing, presenting the description of a case, which is contextualized in the workspace and experience of the teacher-researcher-creator.

Costume Design

Aline Barbosa da Cruz Prudente — 2025-04-01

This article discusses the creation of costumes as a field of design, highlighting their similarities and differences in relation to fashion. It is a theoretical analysis with practical application, linking design elements and principles with the objectives of creation of costumes. The methodology is based on a bibliographic review using contributions from authors such as Dondis (1991), Jones (2011), and Lupton and Philips (2008), correlating basic design theories with the practice of costume design. The study emphasizes the application of visual elements and principles, such as line, shape, color, and harmony, in the development of stage costumes, connecting with the author’s experiences. At the end, a practical class proposal is presented to integrate the discussed concepts, aiming at the training of new professionals in the costume field. The results highlight the importance of understanding costume design as a design field, capable of communicating concepts and meeting the specific needs of a stage production.

Novo ano, novas energias

Valéria Faria dos Santos Tessari — 2025-04-01

Galeria

dObras — 2025-04-01

Moda e Figurino

Ana Cleia Christovam Hoffman — 2025-04-01

Expediente

Revista dObras — 2025-04-01

Writing with clothes

Luiza Marcier — 2025-04-01