the world of elena werner.

Costume design for opera and dance.

contemporary costume design with a nostalgic touch.

Elena Werner is both a designer and a time traveller. In every project, her goal is to create a Gesamtkunstwerk, bringing together traditions and innovation. Her designs come to life in an aura of timelessness, yet with frames of reference to the baroque and art nouveau.

merging traditions, details and references.

Elena Werner’s aesthetical presumption mirrors in the intertwinements and embroidered connections of her costumes. They merge the traditions of opera with the present. Together with a fabric mise-en-scène, these confluxes descend upon the opera or dance characters. In combination with the métier of some old techniques which handle needle, thread and thimble, the haute couture wanders about all of this. Textile arts debouches into a cosmos of lines, circles and ribbons versus symmetry and origami. It eventually brings together Gustave Klimt, Sarah Moon and Pina Bauch and they ask one another for a dance. With an affluence of details and references, everything merges together in a homogenous and prosperous tone of fabrics.