I began my design process by researching the the context of the musical, including both when it was written and when the story takes place.

I decided to then focus my visual research on art movements from the setting–1929-1930 in the Weimar Republic–to keep my design focused on the history.

After doing my research, I created a color palette to work from: overall and for each character.

My goal was to show the sneaking progression of fascism by having the costumes get slowly darker. This shift is most blatant for Sally and the Emcee. For the Emcee their costume shifts into looking more and more like a concentration camp uniform throughout the show rather than having a sudden change at the end.

Cabaret itself follows the same path of an underlying shift. I mirrored the show in that way to keep all aspects focused on the theme of something horrific sneaking into life without being noticed by us.