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once designed a costume for Mata Hari. Sixty-seven years later, still creating, he designed costumes and sets for the 1980 Glyndebourne Festival's Der Rosenkavalier. In between (mostly in the '20s) he was the only top Paris designer illustrating his own haute couture, most of the illustrations appearing in Harper's Bazar. An earlier volume (Fashion Drawings and Illustrations from "Harper's Bazar" 0-486-23397-9) sampled some of Erté's enormous contributions to that magazine; this is another collection of original designs from Erté's triumphant Harper's Bazar period.
"He envisioned women," wrote Stella Blum, Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Curator, "not only as ultra-chic creatures for whom money was no object, but also as . . . music hall stars, Assyrian princesses, Egyptian queens. . . . Yet under this veil of fantasy the clothes and accessories Erté created reveal a sound construction that really works." Erté loves elaborate decoration, but hates meaningless ornament