Revêtir: Breton Dancers and the Art of Dressing
"Oh, the perfection of the hands shaping the garments, giving them form so they can serve the body, the gestures themselves become lace and embroidery, just as the hands of the gardeners become flowers. That is when we take time to linger over the tulle piping, the tight pleating of heavy fabrics, the pin cushion, the weight of the wing of a headdress, the fire of a cheek, the down on the nape of a neck, the drape of a shawl." - Jane Sautière, Coifs.
French photographer Aurélie Scouarnec has been fascinated by traditional Breton costumes ever since she can remember. Although she grew up in the Paris region, her family originates from Britanny, and school holidays were always spent back there. Childhood memories have shaped her inner landscape - "I had a little book that showed the diversity of traditional costumes in Britanny, I loved reading it," she recalls - while connecting her to something much greater than self. Aurélie’s paternal grandmother had been an active member of the Celtic circles and they were a major part of her life: "she told me a lot about them, and she took me dancing too," she explains, underlining the importance of transmission and how her own great grandmother’s costumes have been saved preciously to preserve their cultural legacy.
Cercle celtique de Landivisiau (Danserien Lann Tivizio)
As Aurélie can confirm, Celtic circles are very much alive and kicking in Britanny today. Thanks to the confidence and enthusiasm of Mathieu Lamour and the Kenleur Confederation for Breton Culture*, she was able to undertake a two-year project called Gwiskañ to capture the various stages of their Celtic Dance Championships, between 2022 and 2024. This photo-documentation culminated in a book, Revêtir (Gwiskañ, Haner, Dress,) published by Éditions Rue du Bouquet, last November.
Although she decided to take a few Breton dance lessons to broaden her knowledge and experience first hand some of the many different dances she would later see being performed, her intention was to turn her camera backstage from the outset: "I felt like I hadn't seen the images I wanted to see yet, something very sensory, linked to my memories. It is easy to find lots of photos of parades and shows, but there are far fewer capturing what happens during the preparations," she says, adding: "These are the moments that fascinate me the most (…). For this photographic project, I wanted to get as close as possible to what happens between the bodies and the textiles at the time of dressing."
Cercle celtique d’Auray (Kevrenn Alre)
Criss-crossing the land, observing and photo-documenting some 70 different circles (30 or so featured in the end), Aurélie encountered a wide variety of traditional costumes, for work, Sunday wear or festivities, each belonging to a specific locality. She discovered new headdresses and a greater diversity of garments than she had ever imagined. However, regardless of style or origin, her prime interest was the meaning of these clothes and their ability to transform: "I like to see these costumes fully embodied by the people who wear them, I like to observe how their silhouette changes, how they no longer hold their head in quite the same way with a headdress. I like to observe the weight of velvet, the grace of lace, the folds of a skirt," she explains.
Deliberately intimate, focusing on the quiet moments of meticulous dressing preparation and introspection before taking to the stage, Aurelie’s beautiful chiaroscuro photography has the depth and drama of a Rembrandt. As Revêtir’s author Jane Sautière writes: "The photograph has the tones of a painting, this is not the capture of an instant, it contains time, it ties the past to the present." The gestures are precise, ancestral, requiring concentration and patience; the mood is solemn and the act of dressing sacred.
Cercle celtique d’Elliant (Ar Vro Melenig)
Although there were also many joyful and festive aspects to these preparations in the wings, Aurélie noted a certain amount of inner tension in the moments before stepping out to perform. These dance steps had been rehearsed over and over, and these costumes represented hours’ and hours’ of skilled craftsmanship. Remade from old models, - "ancient know-how, fragile, held by few, and based on very specific techniques such as the pleated collars of the Pays de l’Aven, for example" - in the context of these championships, new costumes may also be created for choreographies marrying traditional and contemporary dance.
Interestingly, although absent from her photographs, there are a lot of men in the Celtic circles. Aurélie never intended to focus soley on women, but realised by the end of the project that they had been difficult to capture, partly because they dressed quickly and partly because fewer of their more town-like clothes spoke to her visually.
Cercle celtique de Saint-Brieuc
When the book project came to fruition, Aurélie and her publisher Samantha Miller Hoppe, realised that they had formed an almost all-female, transgenerational team together with the graphic designer Valentine Thébaut and two writers Jane Sautière and Shantty Turck. This made perfect sense, given Aurélie’s decision to focus on both women young and old, in order to show how gestures and clothes are passed down and continue to be embraced by the youth of today. She has included archive photographs of her own great-grandmothers, and clothes made by her grandmother to further illustrate this heritage.
Cercle celtique de Riec-sur-Bélon (Bleunioù Lann an Aven)
As Shantty Turck writes: "Behind the scenes of this act of dressing, the transition from self to us, from individual to community, is played out." Aurelie agrees that "dancers are aware that they embody something very strong in people's eyes" when they wear their local region’s costume. Since the launch of her book, and ensuing first solo exhibition at Les Champs Libres in Rennes (11/03/25 au 26/10/25), she was recently named ex-aequo winner of the annual Amis du Musée Albert-Kahn prize. "This project touches people from really different backgrounds, and that's what I think makes me most happy. People are sensitive to the sensoriality of images, and fully feel the almost sacred character of what is at stake," she concludes.
Revêtir, has given rise to two small sideprojects: "Dañs", a work on archival photos of dances from Britanny based on her own family photos and institutional archives, and "Ar Yezh", a short documentary film in which she collected testimonies related to the Breton language (to be screened soon). In her own words, this meaningful project has led her "to build bridges between costumes, dance, singing, language, music, all these things that connect with each other and resonate with my personal story."
"And so, as with everything that makes up a landscape, the garment becomes a story, a perimeter, a connection, an inclusion. It is the representation of all this. The act and the spirit of the land, the note of the self in the score of generations." - Jane Sautière, Coifs.
Photography: Aurélie Scouarnec
Words: Deborah Eydmann
Revêtir
(Gwiskañ, Haner, Dress)
Format: 22 x 31.5 cm
144 pages
74 photographs
Published by Éditions Rue du Bouquet
REVÊTIR - Aurélie SCOUARNEC | Rue Du Bouquet
*The Kenleur Confederation For Breton Culture, thanks to its work of collection, transmission and promotion, has become the reference for Breton clothing.
Lead Image: Cercle celtique de Saint-Évarzec (Kanfarded Sant-Evarzeg)