Hanae Mori, a revered Japanese fashion designer with a career on world catwalks since the 1960s, showed her unflagging creativity when she designed costumes for a recent revival of the Japanese opera "Yuzuru."
The opera, whose title translates as "Twilight Crane," was written by Junji Kinoshita (1914-2006) and composed by Ikuma Dan (1924-2001), based on a Japanese folk tale of the tragic love of a young villager Yohyo, who helps a wounded crane, and his wife Tsu, an incarnation of the crane.
"I hope to convey the zeal of the story, human lust and the purity of the crane to audiences through the costumes," said the 88-year-old designer in a recent interview.