Olga Neuwirth’s "Orlando": Comme des Garçons design the costumes

Preparations are well underway for the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s "Orlando", which will take place on 8 December 2019 at the Wiener Staatsoper. 

We are excited to announce an extraordinary collaboration: Costumes are being designed by Rei Kawakubo, the legendary fashion designer and founder of the international fashion brand Comme des Garçons. The world premiere itself will mark the third act of the project “transformation and liberation”, inspired by Orlando: The first act will be a presentation of first ideas at Paris Fashion Week in June 2019, the second act will be a presentation of the ORLANDO collection by Comme des Garçons at Paris Fashion Week in September 2019.

About Olga Neuwirth’s "Orlando":
Olga Neuwirth’s music theatre opens a door into the realm of what has been simultaneously experienced, read and heard, of what is known and felt – in other words, into the realm of fiction shaped by memories. “Ever since I was a child I have been interested in everything from the arts to politics, from the sciences to architecture and human psychology (…) I have let myself be inspired by the small and big things that the world has to offer, by the wonderful diversity of life, and I see this reflected in "Orlando". For it is a love of oddities, of the paradoxical, the grotesque, virtuosity, exaltation and exaggeration that are the essence of this fictional biography, which aims to create a new morphology of a narration which is in a constant flow to create a fluid form. At all times it is also about (…) a sophisticated and highly subtle form of sexual attraction that rejects being pigeonholed in any one gender. As well as about refusing to be patronised and treated in a condescending manner – something that continually happens to women, with no end in sight”, says Olga Neuwirth.