In 1920s Paris, American aerialist Barbette transformed the trapeze into an exercise in illusion. Born Vander Clyde Broadway in Texas, he would ascend as a woman and descend as a man, making femininity part of the performance while leaving the strength behind it almost unseen.
Paris brought Barbette into the heart of the avant-garde, where he became a muse to Jean Cocteau. In his 1926 essay Le Numéro Barbette, Cocteau explored the performer’s ability to move so convincingly between masculine and feminine that neither could claim to be the definitive truth.
Even the removal of Barbette’s wig at the curtain call offered no simple revelation. Masculinity itself had become another performance.
Cocteau described this ambiguity as the “supernatural sex of beauty.”
For Spring Summer 2027, Barbette’s suspended world becomes a study in transformation. Masculine and feminine silhouettes are pulled apart, reconstructed and brought into tension, creating a collection that exists somewhere between strength and delicacy, performance and identity.
Almost a century later, Barbette remains remarkably contemporary: a reminder that beauty does not always need resolution, and identity can be authored, performed and continually transformed.
“The privileges of beauty are immense. It influences even those who fail to notice it.”
— Jean Cocteau
