IT INFLUENCES EVEN THOSE WHO FAIL TO NOTICE IT.
Jean Cocteau
In 1920s Paris, the American aerialist Barbette ascended the trapeze
as a woman and descended as a man. Born Vander Clyde Broadway
in Texas (1899–1973), he transformed technical daring into an act of
illusion: femininity was conjured, while the strength that kept him
aloft remained almost invisible.
A defining turn came when Barbette moved to Paris, where he found
fame and became a sensation of the 1920s avant-garde. It was there
that he became a muse to Jean Cocteau, who recognised in his act
something beyond disguise.
In his 1926 essay, Le Numéro Barbette, Cocteau described a
performer moving between masculine and feminine with such
conviction that neither could claim the final truth. At the curtain
call, the removal of a wig did not reveal the ‘real’ Barbette;
masculinity, too, became a role, consciously performed. His beauty
lived in the charged space between identities - what Cocteau called
the “supernatural sex of beauty”.
For Spring Summer 2027, Barbette’s suspended world becomes a
study in transformation. The architecture of masculine and feminine
forms is pushed and pulled.
A century later, Barbette remains urgently modern: a reminder that
identity can be authored, beauty need not resolve, and gender may be
less a fixed destination than a high wire - tense, luminous and alive
with possibility.
CREDITS
Styling: Marie-Amélie Sauvé
Casting: Ben Grimes
Production: OBO
Music: Lukas Heerich
Makeup: Lynsey Alexander for Merit
Hair: Eugene Souleiman for Kevin.Murphy
Skin: SkinCeuticals
Nails: Glossify
Venue: Roundhouse, London
Photography: Jason Lloyd Evans
Videography: InDigital
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