The Fashion Came Out at New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala—A Historic Night for Female Choreographers
Last night at New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala, Gilles Mendel of House of Gilles could be spotted making adjustments to several of his designs. First, he was on the red carpet with principal dancer Tiler Peck (who, as both one of the program’s choreographers and a featured dancer in a new work, had a busy night—more on that later), wearing a flowing pleated strapless dress and capelet in powdery blue. Then, on the interior steps of the David H. Koch Theater, where the night would unfold, the very hands-on designer could be observed adjusting the gown of content creator Mary Leest, one of a gaggle of gorgeously dressed women, including Huma Abedin and Nina Dobrev, House of Gilles had looked after last night. And let’s not forget Gilles’s top focus: The exquisite costumes he created for choreographer Caili Quan’s Beneath the Tides as the main designer for NYCB’s 2024 Fall Fashion Gala.
“It’s like a baby!” said Gilles following the premiere. “You work on something for nine months and then it’s suddenly arrived.” Following that analogy, these were some Gerber-level pretty babies; on stage, Jonathan Stafford, artistic director of the company, even referred to them as “rapturous.” “And the guys looked hot!” added Giles. Indeed they did—as it turns out, male dancers can hold their own in a corset.
The night started with a cocktail hour on the Lincoln Center Plaza at 5:30 p.m. Sarah Jessica Parker (the NYCB board member who conceived of the Fashion Gala over a decade ago) held court, wearing a silver tutu-esque Oscar de la Renta gown climbing with roses. (There by her side were her And Just Like That co-stars Nicole Ari Parker and Sarita Choudhury.) By the fountain, Nicky Hilton Rothschild swanned in a black gown, also by Oscar de la Renta—the New York label’s co-creative director Fernando Garcia was dutifully tending to her long train—and then there Brooke Shields, Dianna Agron, Georgina Bloomberg, Andy Cohen, Laverne Cox, Jordan Roth, Amy Sedaris, Jeremy O. Harris, Justin Theroux, and more guests in black tie mingling in the crowd.
By 7:00 p.m., it was time to see the show: a trio of ballets, all choreographed by women. “Balanchine famously said, ‘Ballet is woman,’ and tonight we are excited to highlight women as the creative visionaries,” said Wendy Whelan, associate artistic director of New York City Ballet. “This is the first program in New York City Ballet history that includes all female choreographers…Tonight, we lift up three distinctive choreographic voices: Gianna Reisen, Caili Quan, and Tiler Peck. All three bring a contemporary edge to classical ballet. They push the art of dance forward and infuse a freshness into their work.”
First came Reisen’s ballet, set to music by Philip Glass, which features costumes by NYCB’s director of costumes Marc Happel, and was created for students at the School of American Ballet before it was brought over to NYCB to be added to the company’s repertoire. Three of the Company dancers who performed last night actually had the roles created on them while they were students at SAB. NYCB principal dancer Megan Fairchild, who recently finished her run with Coppélia (a ballet she cites as her favorite to dance), is also a teacher at SAB and was gushing like a proud parent last night, having seen some of the dancers matriculate.
Then came Quan’s moving ballet, Beneath the Tides, set to Concert No. 1 by Camille Saint-Saëns, with House of Gilles’s stunning costumes: waist-cinching corsets with nothing beneath for the men and diaphanous midi dresses with flowing skirts for the women. En masse, the costumes shifted from white to gray to charcoal and shimmered in the stage light.
“I’m floating a little bit,” said Quan after the work premiered—her first-ever for the company. “I’m still processing everything, but Gilles was sitting right behind me and it was just awesome to get to watch it with him—he was such a great collaborator. There’s something energetically that shifts once there’s, like a living, breathing audience involved. You cannot recreate that experience no matter how much we rehearse,” she said.
