Sarah Engels Shapes 300-Hour ESC Gown in Vienna
Sarah Engels arrived on the turquoise carpet in Vienna on Sunday evening in a burgundy-red ESC gown built for movement she could barely manage. The 33-year-old performer said the look was her idea, and the styling behind it took three hours before she stepped out in front of Eurovision’s biggest cameras.
Vienna and Jasmin Erbas
Jasmin Erbas of Berlin designed the dress, which she described as a deep-red organza corset dress inspired by the aesthetics of fire. Erbas said the organza was structured with many delicate built-in rods, creating what she called “Eine moderne Couture-Kreation voller Bewegung, Intensität und Stärke.”
Engels said the concept came from her own head. “Die Idee zu diesem Kleid hatte tatsächlich ich. Umgesetzt hat es dann die ganz tolle, wunderbare Designerin Jasmin Erbas aus Berlin. Ich wollte ein Kleid haben, das angelehnt ist an das Flammenkleid von Katniss Everdeen in ‘The Hunger Games‘,” she said on Sunday evening in Vienna.
300 Working Hours
The dress took 300 working hours to make, and the styling for the appearance took three hours, according to reporting from the evening. That is a heavy build for a carpet moment, but Eurovision is exactly the kind of stage where the clothes are part of the performance economy, not just decoration.
Engels said the fit came with a cost in mobility. “Am besten gar nicht. Auch nicht sitzen. Toilette geht auch nicht,” she said when asked how to move in it. She added, “Darin kann ich mich ja kaum bewegen! Und wer meinen Song kennt, der weiß ja, dass es dabei auch ein bisschen ums Tanzen geht.”
Fire, Movement, Vienna
That friction is the point of the outfit: it reads as couture first, practical clothing second. Engels also said, “Man weiß hier gar nicht, was einen so erwartet. Und dann kommt man an und es ist der reinste Wahnsinn. Ich genieße alles hier wirklich in vollen Zügen.”
For her Vienna appearance, the dress did more than signal a theme. It turned her first major ESC public moment into a controlled display of craft, with Berlin-based Erbas, 300 working hours, and a runway-style turquoise carpet appearance all pointing to the same strategy: make the song look expensive before the audience hears a note.
