When fashion students take on opera

For Sara Huguet and Miriam Abadias, the task was to translate set design into garments that could withstand movement, transformation, and the rigours of daily performance. Their costumes moved between worlds: a scorched, post-apocalyptic landscape and a dreamlike pastoral realm evoking Greek sculpture, wool, and light. René Zamudio, their professor and creative director at IED, describes the project as a lesson in collaboration – fashion designers setting aside ego to work in dialogue with musicians, directors, and actors. We talked with them to learn more about the project.

How did you approach translating elements of the set design into a garment, and what guided your material choices like organza and fake fur?

Sara Huguet and Miriam Abadias: The narrative of our chamber opera Ikaria was built around two parallel worlds, represented both in the set design and the costumes: one idyllic and fantastical, romanticising rural life (inspired partly by the “rural core” or “tradwife” aesthetics from internet culture), and another apocalyptic, burnt and in ruins. These two contrasting universes shaped a storyline that explored themes like digital obsessions, the wish or refusal to become a mother, and the end of the world.

The shepherd’s look and the soprano’s main gown belonged to the fantasy world, celebrating the rural, serenity, ancient Greece, classical sculpture, and strength. For the soprano’s second look, we chose white shearling as one of the main materials. This choice was important because it helped the audience immediately understand that the character was moving from the apocalyptic world, represented by her first “burnt and melted” look, into the dreamlike and pastoral realm. Just with this change of colour and material, the audience could easily recognise the shift between worlds.

For the lower part of the dress, we built a cancan-style structure and carefully hand-sewed pieces of white shearling, referencing the shepherd’s sheep. We also added felted wool elements that we made ourselves using needle-felting techniques with raw wool and silk fibres. On top of that, we stitched small details by hand – feathers, shiny tulles, and fabric scraps – to add touches of colour and light.

The bodice was made from layers of thin fabrics and organza, draped directly on a custom mannequin made to the singer’s measurements. Once the draping was finished, we applied a textile hardener to give it a more sculptural effect and a slight wet-look finish. To bring back some shine lost during the process, we added strips of liquid organza, stitched by hand with invisible seams, and painted shadows, small imperfections, and cracks using acrylics and an airbrush. This gave the dress the look of a kind of fantasy sculpture, halfway between reality and imagination.

In contrast, the first looks of both soloists belonged to the apocalyptic, fire-destroyed world. To create the effect of burnt or melted garments, we shaped small wrinkles and deformations by hand to make the pieces look irregular and damaged. After hand-sewing the base, we used different textile manipulations with soy wax, India ink, heat guns, blowtorches, natural pigments, latex, and bitumen. All of these were applied carefully and manually in specific areas to create a real sense of destruction and decay.

Collaboration was central to this project. What did you learn from working alongside students in product, interior, and graphic design, as well as young professionals from opera?

Sara and Miriam: It was amazing to work with other young creatives who shared a similar generational language and references – it made collaboration feel natural and exciting. We also had the chance to work closely with professional directors we already admired before starting the project, which was really inspiring. Another highlight was having other micro operas and universities involved. Seeing how each team approached their concepts, materials, and staging was very enriching.

What was the most unexpected challenge you faced during the process, and how did you resolve it?

Sara and Miriam: The number of unexpected challenges was endless! One of the funniest (and most stressful) moments happened during our very first rehearsal. After just a single run-through, we realised that all the hand-felted wool we had sewn onto the skirt had collapsed due to the soprano’s intense movement on stage. We had to completely re-engineer the structure of the dress, adding interlinings, hidden supports, and stabilising fabrics to ensure the felt maintained its shape throughout every performance.

Another major challenge was maintenance between shows. The gown required constant care: we brushed and restitched details before almost every performance. On top of that, the actors were fully body-painted from head to toe, and their make-up stained the costumes after each function. Since there were two shows a day, we spent hours carefully cleaning and restoring the garments. (Shoutout to the amazing laundry team at the Gran Teatre del Liceu – they saved us every day by helping us clean everything!) In the end, we learned to accept that opera costumes are meant to be lived in: they change with every performance and naturally carry the marks of the story on stage.

Seeing the dress become part of a live performance is very different from presenting on a runway. How did the context of opera influence your design decisions?

Sara and Miriam: Designing for opera required a completely different approach. The gown had to integrate seamlessly into the scenography: it was on stage for the entire performance, yet almost invisible until the transformation moment. At the beginning, the soprano wore a different outfit and changed into the gown in full view of the audience, which made the design process especially challenging.

The underlayer had to be perfectly tailored so that nothing showed once the gown was on. At the same time, the transformation needed to be quick, effortless, and precise, requiring us to engineer the costume so it could fit flawlessly while maintaining the visual illusion. It taught us to think about fashion not only as aesthetics, but also as functionality and storytelling.

Has this experience shifted the way you think about fashion’s possibilities – or the kinds of collaborations you’d like to pursue in the future?

Sara and Miriam: For sure! We felt very comfortable bringing the characters to life and understanding their essence through the director’s vision. Having the freedom and creative tools to develop the costumes in our own way was incredible. It made the whole process exciting and inspiring, and it definitely opened us up to exploring more collaborative, interdisciplinary projects in the future.

René, what skills or qualities do you think students develop most in a project like this that they might not get from a traditional fashion curriculum?

René Zamudio: Learning to work as a team – realising there is less space for the personal ego, and your work is just one part of a whole visual language. In this project, it was interesting to see how the two designers dealt with the reality that it was not just about “my design” anymore or whether it was “creative” enough. Other aspects came into play. That, and learning to deal with the director and her demands – understanding when you can say no, and learning how to communicate what will and won’t work with the chosen design.

From your perspective, why is it valuable for fashion design education to engage with disciplines like theatre, music, and performance?

René: puts clothing in another context and gives a different perspective on what garments are for or meant to do – not just a statement on trends or personal style. In addition, you have to take into account movement, how fabrics react under certain lighting, how the design ties into the performance and helps the actor emote visually, and how crucial costume design is in creating and developing a character. And of course, it must hold up through all the performances.