As the world of Lalovavi continues to unfold, we turn our attention to one of the most expressive dimensions of storytelling: costume design. In a work set 400 years in the future, where the city of Atlas rises from ancestral memory and Afrofuturist imagination, clothing becomes more than attire—it becomes identity, history, and a map of who these characters have been and who they might become.
Kara Harmon
Lalovavi Costume Designer
To shape this visual language, Cincinnati Opera has partnered with Kara Harmon, a celebrated costume designer whose work spans Broadway, regional theatre, opera, and film. With training from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a design philosophy grounded in character, dramaturgy, and lived experience, Harmon brings a worldbuilder’s lens to every piece she creates.
Crafting Characters Through Form and Fabric
Harmon’s work is known for its attention to how clothing moves with a character—how silhouette, structure, and texture reveal inner life. Her portfolio is filled with designs that balance cultural lineage, narrative clarity, and imaginative expansion. That same ethos guides her process for Lalovavi.
In Atlas—an Afrofuturist city where ancestral echoes meet visionary possibility—costumes become a bridge between past and future. Harmon approaches the world not as a blank slate but as a living continuum: garments shaped by heritage, adaptive technologies, ritual symbolism, and the realities of a society built on survival, creation, and spiritual resonance.
Rather than replicating any singular historical reference, her designs draw from a collage of influences—diasporic aesthetics, organic forms, bold geometric structures, and textiles that feel both ancient and celestial. The result is a visual language that honors lineage while imagining new futures for it.
What the Costumes Reveal About Atlas
Early design concepts explore how each group, guild, or community within Atlas expresses its identity:
Warrior-healers whose attire blends protection with ceremony
Knowledge keepers draped in fabrics echoing the textures of stone, light, and memory
Civic leaders whose silhouettes evoke both authority and spiritual grounding
The youth of Atlas, whose styles lean toward innovation and movement
These aren’t mere aesthetic categories—they reflect the social, cultural, and mythical frameworks of Lalovavi’s world. Harmon’s designs help articulate how people live, work, and gather in a city built from ancestral wisdom and collective hope.
Behind the Seams: The Process
Harmon’s process begins with character breakdowns, dramaturgical research, and close collaboration with the full creative team. For Lalovavi, this includes:
worldbuilding conversations that establish cultural rules and histories
movement studies that ensure costumes support physical storytelling
texture and palette exploration tied to emotional tone
integration of Afrofuturist design principles that avoid cliché and center authenticity
Her work becomes a visual extension of the opera’s mythology—a wearable architecture of identity.
Building the Future Together
Costume design is only one part of a much larger artistic undertaking—one that centers Black storytelling, expansive imagination, and cultural legacy. Your partnership helps this work rise from vision to reality.
We invite you to journey with us and support the creation of this world.
Help bring Lalovavi to the stage.