In the same way that the Futurists aggressively reworked the purpose of literary language, severing it from its representational responsibilities and freeing it from symbolic signification, avant‐garde artists overturned assumptions about clothing and cosmetics. This article examines the unconventional, at times outlandish and subversive, strategies of representing, clothing and adorning the human body, such as those on display among members of the avant‐garde in daily life, on the theater stage, and at costume balls of the period. It focuses on the trope of paper/cardboard costumes and proxies in Blok's The Fairground Booth, the Paper Ball organized to celebrate the play's premier, Mayakovsky's Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, and the real‐life costume balls taking place in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It argues that the avant‐garde reconceptualization of physical appearance and treatment of the body as an artistic canvas relied on the principle of applying or using materials unexpectedly, thereby disrupting traditional, culturally determined assumptions about aesthetics and form‐function relationships.