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The Paris Music Hall Collection comprises over 6,000 original renderings of costume designs and 1,000 original renderings
of curtain designs for the music halls of Paris from 1920 to 1938. The collection, acquired in 1968 by the Library, was originally
the property of Max Weldy who provided the elaborate costumes and curtains to the Folies Bergere, Moulin Rouge and other popular
cabarets and music halls. Weldy maintained a stable of young, extraordinarily imaginative designers who flocked to Paris from
all over Europe to establish a name for themselves. Among the first of Weldy's artists was Romain de Tirtoff, a fledgling
designer from Russia, who would later be internationally renowned as Erté.
After the owners and artistic directors of the music halls determined the annual theme for the shows, various tableaux were
created to fill an evening's entertainment. Most of these were simply spectacles serving as vehicles for the star artists
such as Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Josephine Baker, and the Dolly Sisters. The tableaux varied widely to include comic,
dramatic and historic subjects, but musical entertainment was always the focal point. The costumes reflected the themes such
as "the French Revolution", "Jewels", "The Garden of Metal", "The Seven Deadly Sins", "Flowers", as well as various animals,
food, and sports. Most of the sketches are in color, done on tracing paper or watercolor paper. A few have fabric swatches
attached. The collection includes designers such as Erté, Serge Kojan, Alex Shanks, Freddy Wittop, José Zamora, and Zig.
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