The same woman, two wardrobes. The change is the event. – Helene Marwitz, note on the dressing room
The official register: a slate-grey jacket with a standing collar and the pin, beneath it a white blouse, a black pencil skirt to the knee, stockings, black low-heeled pumps, the hair pinned up, the face bare but for a single line. The uniform is as comfortable as a sentence one knows by heart; it says what there is to say, and nothing else. The private register, the chamber dress: a close-fitting top in the woman's own colour, with the sheen of satin or latex, high-necked and long-sleeved on some, sleeveless on others; with it the same black pencil skirt as by day, dark tights, high heels, the hair loose, the lips red. The pin stays in the dressing room; whoever wishes wears the collar in her colour instead, narrow leather with the clasp that bears the sign above the gate. Konstanze Aurich alone wears boots, a privilege she did not take but was granted. Otherwise the form is the same for all; only the colour distinguishes them, and the colour is the person. The change happens in the...
From the lore of Das Haus am Kanal.