The costume design for L’Incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea) by Giuseppe Monteverdi became a way to explore power, desire, and status through visual storytelling. I pulled from historical silhouettes, but allowed myself to push them in a more stylized, expressive direction to reflect the heightened world of the opera. Each character’s costume helped communicate where they stood in the shifting power structure, using color, texture, and shape to show control, ambition, or vulnerability. I was especially interested in how beauty and manipulation overlap in this story, and how costume can quietly reinforce those ideas for the audience.
