Michael A. IIIz-Piedra III loved to wear them, whether at an elaborate Halloween masquerade party or birthday parties for his son Michael, now 6. "The uniforms called attention to him, and he liked that," said his wife, Kelly.
In the late eighteenth century, French colonists emigrating from Haiti introduced elaborate balls and masquerade traditions to Trinidad.
In "As You Like It," which begins previews on Tuesday, the British Ms. Rylance, 30, and the American Mr. Camargo, 38, play Rosalind and Orlando, whose courtship unfolds as an elaborate, gender-bending masquerade.
My patience with "Sleep No More," the elaborate haunted house masquerading as theater in Chelsea, began to wear thin at about the time the pointy plastic mask I was wearing started pinching at the bridge of my nose.
The same region produces some of sub-Saharan Africa's most spectacular art: fabulous sculptures, acrobatic masquerades and elaborate aquatic pageants, with boats as ornately festooned as Rose Bowl floats.
Highlights of the celebration, which takes place in Trinidad, include Panorama, an annual steel pan drum competition to be held on Feb. 17 this year; Kings and Queens Costume Competition (Feb. 18), in which leaders of each masquerade band don elaborate costumes that can reach up to 30 feet in height and weigh as much as 200 pounds; and the final two days of Carnival bacchanal (Feb. 19 and 20).
This, then, is a thoroughly modern – or perhaps, postmodern – novel masquerading as an elaborate period piece.
(Later there is some period-appropriate Rameau to go with the 80's post-punk Ms. Coppola favors, and a high-top sneaker tucked amid the fabulous ancien régime couture.) But despite all the bodices and breeches, the horse-drawn coaches and elaborate perukes, "Marie Antoinette" is only masquerading as a costume drama.
