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PARIS — Couture, the handcrafted, made-to-measure clothing that regularly sells in the six figures, is fashion’s top stratum for the uber rich. Aside from brief glimpses on the runways, to most of us it is a hidden world.

But couture also exists in another, more accessible universe: theatrical costume departments. Perhaps the most remarkable — and one of the oldest — is the Paris Opera Ballet’s, housed in the Palais Garnier opera house. There, in the back of the 19th-century theater, is a warren of workshops, just as there is any storied couture house, each dedicated to a specialty: tailoring, soft construction (known as “flou”), knitwear, accessories, millinery and embroidery, as well as dyeing and painting.

And as in the couture house ateliers, seamstresses cut and sew stiff linen mock-ups, called toiles, to perfect the design before cutting it in the final fabric, and produce embellishments, like handmade silk blossoms and gold braiding. Since, as Xavier Ronze, the ballet’s chef du service couture, explained, they work “with a classical repertory and have to repair or remake old costumes in nuances we can’t find commercially any more,” they mix pigments and they dye fabrics themselves.

And they still know all the old-school costume tricks, like expertly layering tulle to create rigid plateau tutus and manipulating supple piano or guitar wire into lightweight tiaras.

However, not everything in this particular atelier is quite so traditional.

In a move that may have unexpected implications for the wider world of couture, in 2014, Mr. Ronze visited a fashion trade show outside Paris and came across a display of mannequins based on 3-D scans of the human body, produced by Alvanon, the global apparel business consultancy that normally makes fit models for brands like Diesel, Levi’s and Nike. He thought: Why not use them for dance costumes?

After all, the costume department of the Paris Opera Ballet often has to turn out 100 made-to-measure new looks in a matter of weeks. The process includes several fitting sessions with each of the troupe’s 154 dancers to make sure each ensemble not only looks good but also gives with the body’s movements. In addition, department heads watch dress rehearsals from the theater seats to see if costumes’ colors and flourishes appear in the stage lighting as the designer intended. If not, more adjustments are made, such as painting a shadow next to a lapel or applying a few more sparkling rhinestones, “so the audience can read the costume better,” Mr. Ronze said.

He brought the idea to Benjamin Millepied, the company director at the time, and when Janice Wang, Alvanon’s chief executive, was in Paris for the Hong Kong-family-run business’s annual meeting, they invited her to visit to see if the mannequins could be adapted to their needs.

Ms. Wang recalled: “I was looking at what they were using” — traditional Stockman-brand fashion forms that were padded to try to mimic a dancer’s shape — “and I thought, ‘They can’t work this way.’ ” She noted that dancers customarily have large rib cages and defined rears, a “completely different shape” than the standard silhouette in fashion.

Ms. Wang proposed making a 3-D scan of the company’s dancers and creating new standard-size mannequins based on an amalgamation of those scans. And, as the cost of 250,000 euros, or about $280,000, was more than the state-run company could afford, Alvanon offered to do the project free.

Last year, the team traveled to Paris and scanned more than 100 adult and child dancers at the theater, producing prototype heads and bodies of men, women and children in generic small, medium and large sizes — about three dozen in all.

The Alvanon mannequins are now used to fit costumes for the ballet’s new productions, including the 18th-century, Viennese-inspired designs that Karl Lagerfeld created for George Balanchine’s “Brahms-Schönberg Quartet,” being presented until July 15 at the Opera Bastille.

Mr. Ronze described the Alvanon mannequins as “immense time savers.”

“The first cut is more just, so we need fewer fittings,” he added.

Several other dance companies have been in touch with Alvanon; so, too, have some Paris couture houses (but the company will not reveal names).

“It’s a very niche product,” Ms. Wang said. “But we felt: If we don’t help somehow, one day all this craftsmanship may all go away. This is our way of supporting artisans. What they do is magical.”