Reimagining of Tarkovsky's Solaris 
V&A performance and short film

For my final unit, I set out to redesign and make a costume for the V&A Performance Festival and a short film for Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris.

 

 

Because I was designing the costume for the performance first and I knew this was a rather unknown film, I decided to focus on a costume that evoked the imagery, themes, and characters of Solaris rather than a stand-alone costume for a specific scene.

 

 

Before I started designing, I knew I wanted an element of transformation in the costume. I was inspired by the V&A's brief: “We invite creative artists to revitalize the familiar and celebrate the beauty of transformation”.

 

 

The imagery and essence of effervescent whips of grass in water, formulated swirling of colour, mirrors and memory, are driving forces behind my reimagining. Digitally printed fabric contemporizes the costume for a modern audience. Each stage/iteration of the costume acts as another memory of the character Hari from the film and is seen as a ‘shell’ on her back as in the film, she is not the real Hari from Earth, but a duplicate made by the planet Solaris to communicate to the astronauts.