Fashion Flashback: Edith Head

On the eve of award season, Fashion Flashback looks back at the iconic Hollywood costumer, Edith Head. In a career that lasted six decades, Edith Head was nominated for 35 Academy Awards and won eight times—more times than any other woman—with her last win for her work on The Sting.

After obtaining degrees in romance languages from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford, Edith Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Pictures. Head distinguished herself from other Hollywood costumers of her day by designing the famous “sarong dress” for Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane, designing Ginger Rogers’ mink-lined gown in Lady in the Dark, and designing Audrey Hepburn’s costumes in Roman Holiday.

Edith Head designed costumes for many leading ladies of Hollywood’s golden age which included Audrey Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Bette Davis, Grace Kelly, Sophia Loren, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West, Olivia De Havilland, Kim Novak, Rita Hayworth, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Lamour, and Anne Baxter.

In 1967,  Head left Paramount Pictures for Universal Pictures where she remained until her death in 1981. The last pictures she worked on was the black-and-white comedy Men Don’t Wear Plaid starring Steve Martin and Carl Reiner.

—Staff