Costume for Romeo worn by Rudolf Nureyev in Romeo and Juliet, London Festival Ballet, London Coliseum, 1977.

Romeo's unlined light-green silk velvet tunic is decorated with silver braid, paint, appliquéd fabrics and a few sequins. The apparent undershirt is simply white silk sleeves and a gathered collar attached to the main garment to give the illusion of a slashed brocade doublet. Nureyev created the production for London Festival Ballet in 1977, and the cut of the waist-length doublet indicates that it was made for the original production: the first doublets were cut straight at the base, later re-makes for other companies adopted a slightly V-shape waistline. Nureyev always liked to keep costumes as brief as possible to allow complete freedom of movement.

While Romeo’s costume is basic, those worn by dancers in the production's less strenuous roles were more elaborate. Designers Ezio Frigerio and Franca Squarciapino took visual inspiration from paintings of the 14th and 15th centuries. Fabrics were specially printed in Italy, with designs copied from canvases and frescoes. Romeo’s tunic is fastened with Velcro and hooks and eyes (for quick changes into a shirt), but others have traditional lacings and ties. Some of the women, most notably Rosaline and her friends, wore ‘balzi’, high rounded headdresses worn on artificially high foreheads, fashionable in early quatrocento Italy. As with many ballet productions of Romeo and Juliet, the costumes for the opposing factions were colour-coded with the Montagues appearing in green and white and the Capulets in shades of red and pink with white.

The photograph shows the back of the costume.