With a profound history in dance and theatre, CLAIRE FLEURY creates her designs with a stage in mind.
Her vibrant costumes are designed to evoke joy and fun, while also highlighting Claire’s deep respect for the power of the body in motion.
Her inspiration lurks everywhere; for instance in architectural shapes, which in their turn are often inspired by structures found in nature.
Her fashion designs are often created from surprising materials; often found, often existing shapes like socks, tote bags or ice cube trays.
Again looking for playful, and where possible sustainable ways to approach clothing, ultimately creating a lifelong hommage to the sheer act of dressing up.
CF spent twenty years directing, writing and performing for theater, mainly in Europe, before moving to New York City from Amsterdam in 2011.
Operating out of the gallery called STRANGE LOOP that she opened on the LES with her partner, photographer Exum, she started designing costumes and fashion for nightlife performers and dance companies. Her first three collections were sold at Patricia Field, the eponymous shop of the famed Sex and the City stylist. Fleury has created shows for Fashion Week Brooklyn, The Phluid Project, DapperQ at the Brooklyn Museum, for VERS BK, for Alex Stadler’s ‘Gone and Forever’: a ceremonial procession honoring AIDS victims in Philadelphia, at Tic Tac Art Centre in Bruxelles, and for the 40th anniversary of Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks.
Claire Fleury’s studio is committed to a sustainable practice of using at least 80% of industry surplus fabrics and trims, as well as maintaining a no overstock policy as to reduce waste.
Costumes
CF has made costumes for dance companies Judith Sanchez- Ruiz and the Trisha Brown Dance Company, Kathy Westwater, Antonio Ramos, David Zambrano and Mat Voorter (Brussels), Coco Karol, Huffington, Tatyana Tenenbaum, Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith, Afrofuturist musical artists The Illustrious Blacks, former Warhol superstar and political poet, Penny Arcade, Nightlife Icon Susanne Bartsch, Laurie Anderson, and drag queens Rify Royalty, Merrie Cherry and Elemenopé, among others.
Her work has been published in Vogue Italia, Paper Magazine, Schön Magazine, Lucy’s Magazine, New York Times, Art Papers and many other publications.
Productions:
-June and October 2023 CF Designed and created dance costumes for CEREMONIA by Antonio Ramos at LMCC and Abrons Art Centre NYC.
-May 15th - September 15th A design called ‘Trash Puffer’ by CF will be exhibited at Cornell University focussing on sustainability. The design is a Puffer jacket made from recycled plastic packaging material.
-May 2023 CF Designed and created dance costumes for The Trisha Brown Dance Company, in a choreography by Judith Sánchez Ruíz, at The Joyce Theatre NYC.
-April 2023 CF Designed and created dance costumes for Revolver / Choreomaniacs; a double bill choreography by Kathy Westwater at the Chocolate Factory NYC
-January 2023 CF Designed and created dance costumes for Rube G. -The consequence of action; a choreography by Jody Oberfelder at Gibney Dance NYC.
-December 2022 CF Designed and created dance costumes for Moundscapes, a choreography by Kathy Westwater at Gibney Dance NYC
-November 2022 Claire Fleury created costumes and dance/spoken word performance for Yoshiko Chuma and The School of Hard Knocks 40 year anniversary.
-September 2022 Claire Fleury was invited by David Zambrano and Mat Voorter into their TIC TAC Art Centre in Brussels, Belgium. She was a resident artist for two weeks and created costumes for a performance called “ The Circus of Unexplained Phenomena “ with David, Mat, and dancers from the workshop of David.
-June 2022 Claire Fleury created seven looks for ‘Gone and Forever, ceremony at @anniversary on June 25th.
“a collaborative artist-made funeral procession and memorial curated by Alex Stadler; for all individuals who were abandoned during the early period of AIDS, before, during or after their deaths.”
-February 2022 Claire Fleury co curated an 11 designer fashion show with VERS BK and designed, directed and performed her own collection ‘Ready 2 Dance’ with performers Penny Arcade, Coco Karol and the Illustrious Blacks, among others at the Moonrise Theater in Bushwick
-June 2021, Claire Fleury was one of the designers invited by the Brooklyn Style Foundation to create a window display at King’s Plaza Shopping Mall in Brooklyn.
-April 29th 2021, Claire Fleury showed her collection ‘Hors D’Oeuvres’ at the Slay Way Fashion Week Brooklyn.
-The NY Public Library bought one of Claire’s original face mask designs, made at the beginning of a certain pandemic.
-September 2020 ‘Playground’ collection was featured in FWBK (Fashion Week Brooklyn).
-September 5 2019, her collection called HELLO I LIVE HERE was featured at the DapperQ annual queer fashion show at the Brooklyn Museum.
-January 2019 Her collection ‘XYANDZ’ was shown at The Phluid Project in NYC
-February/March 2018 FUTURE MEMORY, a fashion/photography installation in collaboration with photographer Alesia Exum, showed as part of at Boston University Gallery 808, as part of the Exhibition ‘Forms and Alterations’ curated by Lynn Cooney
-November 2017 A selection of Claire Fleury’s dance costumes was exhibited at Gibney Dance Center
Education
1988 Graduated at The School for New Dance Development (BFA)
2000-Graduated at DasArts (The Amsterdam School of Advanced Research in Theatre and Performing Arts) (MFA).
Award
Claire Fleury was among four costume designers receiving honorable mention at the Bessie awards for performance and dance in 2018
Press
Miranda Levingston for BK Reader:
“The finale, a show by Claire Fleury, oozed a controlled madness, with bright yellows, preppy plaids and chunky knit caps devolving into a delirium of dancing — all while the legendary political poet Penny Arcade on a mic repeated unique phrases like “what color is your gratitude?”
February 14, 2022
Phil B Gomez for LadyGunn:
”A magician of manipulating unconventional materials with a flair for theatrics!”
April 2020
Sarah Shears for Daily Beast:
“Designer Claire Fleury channeled Andy Warhol and Pierre Cardin with fabulously outrageous ensembles: a spectacle of both color and reimagined silhouettes”
September 2019 NYFW.
Claire Landsbaum for Vanity Fair:
”Claire Fleury showed sculptural costume fantasies in bright yellow, purple, red, and blue—a Rugrats palette with a playful Rugrats vibe. One outfit featured soft red tentacles sprouting from the model’s shoes. (On the final circuit, that model walked so hard they lost a shoe altogether, picked it up, and continued to strut.) A soft turquoise muumuu patterned with Marsha P. Johnson’s face was topped with a spiky headdress”
September 2019 NYFW.
Ruth LaFerla for New York Times:
’Claire Fleury whips up her collections from limited-run fabrics and rolls of trim to produce a mash-up of sports-influenced pieces and peignoir-ish cover-ups that are revisionist interpretations of conventional femininity. Ms. Fleury, who showed a pop-up collection at Phluid Project last month, is especially partial to extravagant womanly flourishes.Her tartly sexy looks, like a varsity jacket slashed to ribbons and an airy frock with outsize holes and wafty boudoir sheers, are “just another way of being dressed and undressed at the same time,” she said.’
February 2019.
Elizabeth Zimmer for Village Voice:
‘The endlessly inventive costumes are by Claire Fleury’
(for Tatiana Tenebaum’s ‘Untitled work for voice’) 2018
‘The gloriously talented costumer Claire Fleury provide fuchsia colored garments that cover bits of the artists bodies, but not the naughty ones’
(for Antonio Ramos’ ‘Almodovar Dystopia’) 2017
‘The sublime Claire Fleury provides costumes’
(For Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith’s ‘Basketball’- voted as Best Dance of 2017 in the NY Times)
Cate McQuaid for the Boston Globe:
"Claire Fleury and Alesia Exum base the outrageous designs in their “Future Memory” video and clothing installation on glam, punk, drag, and rock performers. Gender is irrelevant: It’s all about pattern, cut, and catching the eye. Will a day come when we all feel free to wear our insides on the outside, as Fleury and Exum’s models declaratively do? Probably not. But they break ground for the rest of us." "Future Memory" part of "Forms and Alterations" curated by Lynne Cooney at Gallery 808,
February 2018
to James Michael Nichols for Huffinton Post: “My fashion is a kaleidoscopic mix of looking at art, at life, at fashion, at people in the streets. It feels free and exciting, a whole world full of inspiration.”
March 12, 2015
David Noh for Gay City News:
‘She designs clothes that are joyously remindful of that fervent creative East Village period of the 1980s with their brilliant color palettes, edgy silhouettes, and effortlessly easy air of sartorial insouciance. Her creations are at once punk rock and haute elegance.’
October 16, 2014