Philippe Guilottel
Costume Designer (LOVE)
Philippe Guillotel began designing and making costumes when he was just eight. As soon as he was old enough, he studied cutting and couture at various schools in Paris. After a decade in the world of fashion, he discovered dance, and through it, his true calling—costume allied to movement.
Since 1985, Guillotel has worked for a succession of dance and theatre companies. He has had a long working relationship with the renowned French choreographer Philippe Découfléfor whom he designed the astonishing costumes seen in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. He has also worked with Découflé on productions for the Paris Opera, the influential Opéra de Lyon and the opening ceremonies of the 50 th Cannes film festival.
Philippe Guillotel has also worked in cinema. He designed the highly-acclaimed costumes for the 2002 feature Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, and prior to that, Doggy Bag and À la Mode.
For LOVE Guillotel set himself the tough challenge of evoking a sense of time and place to fit the various eras of the Beatles’ career as a group—but without simply reproducing the fashions of the era. He says that would have been the easy way to go, but it would have been far less suited to the intentions of the show.
“Cirque du Soleil has the biggest costume workshop in the world,” he points out. “The scope of the facilities here lets the creators go quite a bit further than they usually can. I wanted to pay tribute to the creativity of the Beatles with my designs and to accomplish that, I’ve tried to be as creative as they were.”
Philippe Guillotel was born in Paris in 1955.