Léon Bakst

Léon Bakst dressed the most electrifying dance company of the early 20th century, and half of Europe changed how it looked because of it. A Jewish painter from the Russian Empire, he became the chief designer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, the touring troupe that stormed Paris from 1909 and made ballet the height of fashion.

Bakst's sets and costumes hit audiences like a drug. For Scheherazade in 1910 he flooded the stage with deep greens, oranges and blues and swathed the dancers in loose, jewelled harem silks, an exotic dream of the East that seemed to throw off the stiff corseted world outside the theatre. Fashion designers copied him almost overnight, and turbans, bright colour and flowing lines swept into women's dress.

He also designed the scandalous costumes for The Afternoon of a Faun, danced by the young star Nijinsky in 1912. Bakst worked himself to exhaustion for Diaghilev, quarrelled with him, and left the company before the end. He died in Paris in 1924 after a long illness, still designing for the theatre to the last.