8 March 2019

100 years costume and entertainment history exhibited at 'Circus Fashion Knie' at Textilmuseum St. Gallen

Yesterday, the exhibition 'Circus Fashion Knie' opened at Textilmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland. The Swiss National Circus Knie is led by the family Knie who has its roots in Austria. The history published at the website of the circus starts in 1803 in Innsbruck, Tyrol. In 1919, the circus invited for the first time as Swiss National Circus Knie into a covered tent.

On occasion of the 100th anniversary, Textilmuseum St. Gallen explores the development of costumes of artists - from tightrope dancers over clowns to the dressage artists of the horse performances, through one hundred years from fashion, textile, and manufacturing perspectives. The curators of the exhibition textile designer Martin Leuthold and costume designer Moritz Junge selected around 90 costumes and arranged them in period rooms for showing changes in textile design, manufacturing of the fabrics and how the artists' costumes reflected fashion of the respective time. Already on the day of the opening, several Swiss publications released insights into the exhibition 'Circus Fashion Knie' and pointed out that the costumes appear like unique items of French Haute Couture and mentioned that exhibited items were actually created in Paris. The costs reached the same heights like haute couture evening gowns. The varieté style of the costume designs is influenced by prominent locations of the entertainment industry such as the Moulin Rouge in Paris or the show temples of Las Vegas.

The exhibition 'Circus Fashion Knie' is on view until 19 January 2020.

fig. below: Installation view of the exhibition 'Circus Fashion Knie - One hundred years of costumes in the Textilmuseum' at Textilmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland. On view are (from left) the dress of an acrobat from the first half of the 20th century, and in the foreground, the detail of a clown costume. Photo: Maurus Hofer / Alltag Agentur GmbH, Maurus Hofer.

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