"There will be red and pink, cobalt blue, water falling as rain, tracing stars charted on the roof of the big top, crocodiles playing the marimba, cardboard waves, bathers covered in mirrors, men swallowed by fish, a parade of percussion chasing away evil spirits; but most of all there will be tenderness, charm, surprise, and, above all, beauty."

When Costume Designer Giovanna Buzzi sat down with the co-authors of LUZIA to imagine the costumes, they decided to steer clear of the folkloric aspects of Mexico and Mexican culture and to avoid potential clichés, especially when it came to the color palette. The result is a menagerie of textiles and forms that are pleasing to the eye as well as being relevant.

Yet it's also natural to associate Mexico with a mosaic of bright colors. In order to avoid the pitfalls of turning the costume into a potpourri of colors, the creators chose to build a story in which each scene would have its own distinct color or combination of colors, like the subtle strokes of an artist’s paintbrush. (In the Adagio tableau, for instance, a flying woman dons a beautiful pink dress in an otherwise monochromatic environment, while the artists in the Cyr Wheel/Trapeze tableau are clad in yellow hues.) The nods to Mexican hues are deliberately subtle. Overall, the show proves to be highly colorful, but iconic colors such as cobalt blue and Mexican pink are not found in their usual contexts.

Some of LUZIA’s striking costumes are the result of innovative research and development. A case in point is the lead singer's dress that "magically" turns from white to red in the interlude just before intermission. In order to make this vision a reality, the people at C:LAB (the creative laboratory of Cirque du Soleil) came up with a clever solution: the dress was fitted with 98 white, individually programmed flowers, each one equipped with a small motor. When the flowers open their petals, they reveal their red interior, thus triggering the metamorphosis. The dress weighs a whopping 17 kilograms (37 pounds) and requires it to be quickly lowered onto Majo before she steps on costume.

In LUZIA’s imaginary Mexico, it is no big deal to come across a man with the head of an armadillo, swordfish or iguana, or a crocodile playing the Marimba, or a woman with a hummingbird’s head and wings.