Mireille Dessingy
Theater costume designer
Genève

When she unfolds the thread of her love affair with the theatre, Mireille Dessingy also paints the portrait of a secret world, that of relentless work in the service of the ephemeral. Trained in model-making, cutting and sewing, in 1980 she opened a workshop in Geneva for the creation and production of stage costumes. The craftswoman has since worked in collaboration with other costume designers on shows at numerous local and international theatres. Also president of the “Costumières & Cie” association, she is the 2015 winner of the Craftsmanship Prize.

Mireille Dessingy’s studio looks like a matryoshka. Each room leads to another smaller one, revealing confidential spaces in which stage costumes have been drawn, cut, dyed and sewn for almost forty years. From the 18th century dress to the metal armor, passing through the fake bodies and the bear, it is a whole work of creation and realization that the public will discover in the workshop as well as in the cloakroom of the association. “Costumières & Cie”. Encounters with the text, sketches and models, research on fabrics, diversions of materials, samples, cuts, montages, fittings, finishes, patinas or dyes, the costume designers will lift the veil on the underside of creation in the service of illusion.