There are fashion designers who create clothing. And there are those who create costumes—in the sense that the word is used in theater and dance: an object that serves a moving body, a story to be told, a space to be inhabited in a different way.
Arturo Obegero is one of them.
The Spanish designer has just completed the costume design for *GARBO*, a piece choreographed by Josepha Madoki for the Ballet de Lorraine in collaboration with the Philharmonie de Paris. The coming together of these two institutions speaks volumes: contemporary dance and concert music—two arts of the body in time, two arts of presence.
GARBO. The name immediately brings to mind Greta Garbo, the Swedish actress who vanished from the screen at the age of thirty-five, preferring obscurity to fame. A figure of voluntary withdrawal, of beauty that chooses not to be seen, of the power of a silhouette that defies the public gaze. In this context, the costume is not merely attire—it is dramaturgy. What a dancer wears shapes their cast shadow, their perceived speed, and the way light touches or misses them.
Arturo Obegero created this visual framework in collaboration with Josepha Madoki. The exact content of each piece remains to be discovered at the performance—this project deliberately withholds information, inviting viewers to see rather than read a press release.
What is remarkable about this approach is the way it breaks down barriers. Fashion enters the world of dance—and not through the “collaborations” that major fashion houses stage for their marketing campaigns. Obegero does not sponsor the Ballet de Lorraine. Instead, it creates for the company—in keeping with the very nature of live performance and within the constraints of the stage—costumes that withstand sweat, repetitive movement, and the harsh glare of the spotlights.
A way of reminding us that clothing, before being a product or an image, is an act. And that some designers haven’t forgotten what “dressing” means when the body being dressed is in full motion.
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