One cannot even think of Hollywood 1930's glamour movies without thinking of the legendary influential Edith Head. Not only did she design for the films but the actresses themselves. There is no one more iconic than she. She was costume designer extordiaire!
An yet somehow whilst dressing the top Hollywood stars and seeing them stripped down before her large mirror in just their bare necessities she still managed to stay humble to the core, graceful in her taste and style and remain in the background, which is exactly where she felt the most comfortable. This was a woman who believed and I quote,
"You can achieve anything in life if you dress for it".Her career spanned six decades of Hollywood style and she dressed over 1,000 films. Which when you work it out is roughly about 35 films a year. She was prolific in her designs and dedication. This means if you think about it she would have dressed just about every movie star who graced the silver screen. She was a woman who dominated a world ran by men and commanded respect, all this she did in her own quiet yet determined way.
With everyone the world over admiring her taste and good measurements Edith wrote two books in her long career,
The Dress Doctor and
How to Dress for Success. She was the first and original
Trinny and Susannah rolled into one. The Great Auntie to Auntie
Gok. Being so intimate with the movie stars gave Head inside knowledge to their
real sizes and insecurities, after all she was the one paid to hide them boasting that she was '
magician' , saying,
"I accentuated the positive and camouflaged the rest".Head had the talent to spot the best feature in a person and flaunt it, often making them a star in the process. Certainly she made them a pin up and their clothes something to be copied and desired by American and English audiences alike, producing sewing patterns and ready made store pieces.
Quote:
"You dress should be tight enough to show you're a woman but loose enough to show you're a lady".Hired by the studio at Paramont Pictures as a sketch artist she eventually became head designer with her sketches. Edith won eight oscars in her life for her creations on screen, later quoting ,
"There were eight men in my life, they were all named Oscar". That's more than any other woman has in Hollywood has ever won.
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| Edith Head dressing Sophia Loren. |
Born Edith Claire Posener in 1897 California, USA she was talented enough to gain entry to art college where she met and married Charles Head, a brother of one of her classmates, although the marriage ended in 1936 due to divorce Edith still kept her professional names as Head right up until her death in 1981 when she passed aged 83.
She worked at Paramount Pictures for forty three years before moving to Universal Pictures and evntually Universal.
Edith married studio set designer Wiard Ihnen in 1940, their marriage lasted until his death from prostate cancer in 1979.
Quote: "Good clothes are not a matter of good luck" |
Audrey Hepburn dressed by E.Head
for Sabrina. |
Edith was well known for her low-key working style and, unlike many of her male contemporaries, she usually worked exculsively with the female stars of the studio. As a result she was a favorite among many of the leading female stars of the 1940s and '50s such as Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Shirley McLaine, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor , Mae West, Karman Miranda, Veronica Lake, Ingrid Bergman, Dorothy Lamour, Rita Heyworth, Sophia Loren and Natalie Wood are but a few. Edith even on occasion
'lent out' by the studio to other studios on the insistent request of their female stars.
From concept to design Edith Head's understanding and sympathy for the female form is clear. She dresses not for the clothes, but for the woman inside the clothes. Seeing the potential that is there and unleashing it with a fanfare., making the most shrinking of violets into a Princess.
When she designed for a woman she designed for the
whole woman. Hiding her inner fears and insecurities while pushing her best assests forward. I have yet to see a badly dressed woman by Edith Head. She knew that each woman was an individual and designed accordingly, tailoring everything to her personal needs in the minutest of detail. When she dressed Sophia Loren, long a heroine of mine for her hourglass figure, Edith knew how hard it was to compliment her shape without making it too trashy with the fitting. Edith hid Audrey Hepburn swan's neck and broad shoulders making her appear petite and waif like, all doe eyes and boyish charm.
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| Grace Kelly 1954's Rear Window. |
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and we ALL know this iconic actress, film
and dress! |
I have seen this film hundreds of times and everytime I see this LBD dress I cannot help but marvel at how
perfect a dress it is for Hepburn. With her broad shoulders this dress has small just the right size medium straps to come inwards, the necklace hides and draws your eye to the centre, but it is the back that does all the work to complete the illusion. It's those cut out's with side to show us her shoulder blades and then the thin line drawing our eyes inwards to the centre of her spinal column. Perfection in classic black, whether it is the dress that made her doesn't matter, it is the dress she will forever be remebered for. That in a nut shell is what's so phenomenal about Edith Head's work. She makes statement individual pieces that are
so iconic it is the dress that makes the image. It's the dress that wears the wearer and not the other way round. Her designs speak so loudly for themselves that Edith Head never needed to take the limelight, she let them speak for her instead.
