A multifaceted personality reflected in his multifaceted work—performance, design, and choreography—Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust discusses his approach to creativity and costume design as a means of expression. His collaboration with Peruffo for the September 2025 edition of Vicenza Oro will enhance the booth with unusual anthropomorphic forms and vibrant colours.
How do you think you can fully express yourself?
I express myself through my artistic work, whether in the visual or performing arts. My practice is a space of research and reflection that deeply inspires me. For nearly seven years, I’ve been creating textile works, patchworks, quilts, paintings, as well as choreographic and performative pieces, in which I explore topics that matter to me.
My work also allows me to collaborate with other artists and institutions, and I find these encounters incredibly enriching and inspiring.
What would it be if you had to choose a symbol to represent yourself?
A book—especially old books on Persian and Greek antiquities or my sketchbook—is my symbol. Both inspire me and mark the beginning of my creative process.
If you could subvert the rules, which law would you overturn?
I believe that economics lies at the heart of our capitalist societies. If I had the power, I would make a wealth tax on large fortunes mandatory to restore a sense of social justice.
The life of an artist is often precarious, but it is a choice. Today in France, inequality has become immense.
What is the material to you?
Material is at the core of my work. Once I’ve completed my sketches, I refine the material to bring them to life. It’s often through contact with fabrics that I can truly envision the piece; it’s essential to my process.
You usually work with costumes and moving bodies, why?
Whether in my visual or choreographic work, the body is the pivot of my research. I usually design my costumes before the choreography exists; it is through movement and its relationship to the body that the piece is built.
I often ask myself: Does the costume make us move, or do we make the costume move?
To me, costumes tell stories, our stories, our daily lives. They help us define ourselves in society, and since the beginning of humanity, they have been our first shelter.
We live, move, and feel through our clothes. They are everywhere, and that’s why I love staging them, questioning them, transforming them.
Could you talk to me about the project you did for Peruffo Jewelry booth at Vicenza Oro?
For this collaboration, I imagined a pair of costumes inspired by a previous piece titled Flags Parade.
In that piece, the costumes are flamboyant and mimic the plumage of birds. I’m very inspired by the species we share this Earth with; they have much to teach us. Certain birds, for example, invent stunning choreographies to seduce their mates.
What I love about costume-making is its transformative power, how the body beneath can disappear and re-emerge as something else. How fabric can accompany movement, even transform it completely.
I’m also fascinated by how audiences imagine these anthropomorphic forms might move, or what sound the costumes will make once activated.
Please, tell us about your most successful project and your design style.
Daddy’s Temps is a recent project, an immersive installation made of wooden panels, echoing Tuscan vaults, paintings, felt work, and sound recordings.
This piece recounts my father’s exile journey from Iran to France in 1979. In the way that Giotto tells the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, I tell the story of a profane figure: my father.
What do you think about collaborations? Is there someone you would like to collaborate with?
I enjoy collaborations for the chance to merge different skills or approaches and learn through dialogue.
Every collaboration has been deeply enriching; they bring me joy and growth.
I would love to continue working in theatre and cinema, and to push further my work as a scenographer. Space fascinates me because, like costume, it shapes the body within it.
Could you tell us about a contemporary artist and a designer you find important and why?
I’m drawn to artists who have a visceral relationship with the material they work with.
I love being able to sense their personality through their creations and a certain vulnerability.
I was especially moved by the work of Franz Erhard Walther, not only by the plasticity of his pieces, but also by how he speaks, and by the multitude of forms, colours, and practices he engages in.
As for design, I think of Zoé Mohm, who creates sculpture-jewels filled with incredible poetry. We studied together at Duperré in Paris; I was in fashion, she was in textiles.
Her work resonates with me through what it invokes, the figures she calls upon, and the craft she invents. I find it fascinating.
A short-term project and a long-term one you would like to realise.
In the short term, I’d like to write a new choreographic piece that I would direct but do not perform.
It would be a duo, where I’d highlight the unused costume archives of institutions, reviving incredible pieces that were designed and crafted by often brilliant teams, yet now lie dormant.
Through this piece, I explore the power dynamics of clothing through gender and hierarchy.
In the long term, I’d like to write and direct a film, designing both the sets and costumes.
I want to create a space where the body can experience something, both physically and emotionally.
Darius Dolatyari-Dolatdoust (France / Iran / Germany / Poland) is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, choreographer, and designer. His practice centres on costume as a space of transformation, where textiles reshape our perception of the body, identity, and movement. Drawing inspiration from his Iranian heritage and Persian works in the Louvre, he imagines hybrid creatures that challenge boundaries between humans and animals, questioning dominant narratives and our relationship to other species. Rooted in drawing, his work expands into patchwork, felt, and quilt-materials that bring unpredictability and vitality, turning static forms into dynamic, organic creations that blur the lines between visual art, performance, and design.
