This is one of the costumes that Alexandra Exter designed for a male character in Les Equivoques d'Amour (The Ambiguities of Love), written by her friend the French playwright Francis de Miomandre. With its asymmetrical arrangement of unusually bright colors and unexpected forms, the design looks more like one of Exter's abstract paintings than a traditional theatrical costume. She developed this approach to such projects through Leon Bakst, a prominent Russian designer who believed that stage sets and costumes should be more than mere decoration. Rather, Bakst thought that they should interact with the performers, playing their own dynamic roles in the overall production.

In this example, Exter contrasts one part of the costume with another. The collar is long and tapering on one side, short and notched on the other; the pneumatic chartreuse sleeve seems unrelated to its mate, which features a broad blue pointed cuff and a dramatic lightning-bolt motif; even the elaborate fabric belt, gathered and knotted on one hip, turns into a voluminous, multicolored train that would undoubtedly create an eye-catching effect as the actor moved about the stage. Indeed, motion is tremendously important in all of Exter's designs; that fact is emphasized here by the actor's pose: turning slightly toward stage left, with his hand raised in a rhetorical gesture.