Women in Costume Design

Broadway! Opera! Shakespeare! Hollywood! Drama!

Across the performing arts, costume design is integral to the shaping and perception of a character. Costumes can help transport performers and audiences to past times or imaginary worlds, or can ground a theatrical text in the present through contemporary styling.

Women costume designers have made some of the most significant contributions to the craft, producing vast bodies of work and iconic sartorial images that become synonymous with characters, productions, and even entire artforms.

This selection stars women working in costume design in both the United States and the United Kingdom with work from Cooper Hewitt’s collection.

 

THEONI V. ALDREDGE

Drawing, Costume Design: Blanch of Spain, for King John, 1967
Designed by Theoni V. Aldredge (Greek, active USA, 1922–2011)
Actor: “Miss Eis” (probably Elizabeth Eis, American, 1943–2012)
Written by William Shakespeare (British, ca. 1564–1616)
Directed by Joseph Papp (American, 1921–1991)
Client: New York Shakespeare Festival (New York, New York, USA)
Brush and opaque watercolor, crayon on gray paper
42.8 × 33 cm (16 7/8 in. × 13 in.)
Gift of Theoni V. Aldredge; 1971-2-7

Theoni V. Aldredge designed costumes for the stage and screen with a career spanning six decades. At the height of her career, thousands of her fashions graced Broadway stages. Her decades-long relationship with the Public Theater (a sampling represented here) and prolific work on some of Broadway’s biggest shows—Dreamgirls, A Chorus Line, Annie, La Cage Aux Follies—make her work some of the most recognizable costumes in American theater history.

For more on Aldredge, see “Costuming Beyond Errors” (Cooper Hewitt, 2018).

See more of Aldredge’s work in Cooper Hewitt’s collection:

 

ADELE BALKAN

Drawing, Costume Design: French Customs Guard, for The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, 1955
Designed by Adele Balkan (American, 1907–1999)
Directed by Richard Fleischer (American, 1916–2006)
Distributed by 20th Century Fox (Los Angeles, California, USA)
Brush and watercolor, graphite on paper
36.2 × 28.6 cm (14 ¼ × 11 ¼ in.)
Gift of Paul Stiga, 1986-110-2

Adele Balkan was a costume designer for Hollywood film. Much of her work in costume design was as a sketch artist, recording the ideas of the costume designer in drawings such as this one to then be executed into a garment. On The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, famed designer Charles Le Maire is credited as the wardrobe director, so Balkan’s work on the film was likely in the sketching capacity. The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing tells the story of the scandalous life of Evelyn Nesbit, who became a tabloid sensation when her husband Henry Kendall Thaw murdered her lover, architect Stanford White. The film’s eponymous swing refers to a furniture piece in White’s apartment on which Nesbit perched on during an early lunch date.

 

PEARL BINDER

Drawing, Costume Design: Eel Vendor, for Londoner, possibly 1934
Designed by Pearl Binder (British, 1904–1990)
Pastel, pen and ink with fabric sample attached
38.1 × 25.4 cm (15 × 10 in.)
Gift of Paul Stiga, 1986-110-3

Pearl Binder was a multi-hyphenate artist, working in illustration, writing, stained glass, theater design, fashion history, and children’s television, with a large focus of her work on chronicling life in London’s East End. After her marriage to Elwyn Jones in 1937, she continued to write and illustrate and travel outside of Europe. This costume design for an eel vendor—with child-like pastel strokes but deliberate form and details—was for a production titled Londoner. It is not immediately known what Binder’s full role was in this production or how it was performed, but on this drawing she includes seven notes and lyrics pertaining to the character.

 

GLADYS CALTHROP

Drawing, Costume Design: March Hare, for Alice in Wonderland, 1943
Designed by Gladys Calthrop (British, 1894–1980)
Written by Clemence Dane (British, 1888–1965)
Music composed by Richard Addinsell (British, 1904–1977)
Directed by Esme Church (British, 1893–1972)
Pen and black ink, watercolor, over graphite on white wove tracing paper
39.6 × 25.9 cm (15 9/16 × 10 3/16 in.)
Gift of Paul Stiga, 1986-110-4

Gladys Calthrop was a British costume designer, working in both London and New York, and a particularly frequent collaborator of playwright Noël Coward. Calthrop’s costume drawings are often highly illustrative with detailed line work, almost appearing as images for a picture book. This drawing features a design for the March Hare in a stage adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland that opened in London in December 1943. Many more drawings by Calthrop for costumes in this production are held at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

 

JANE GREENWOOD

Drawing, Costume Design: Olivia, for Twelfth Night, 1965
Design by Jane Greenwood (British, b. 1934)
Written by William Shakespeare (British, ca. 1564–1616)
Client: American Shakespeare Festival (Stratford, Connecticut, USA, 1955–1982)
Brush and watercolor, graphite on paper with attached fabric swatch
35.2 × 27.4 cm (13 7/8 × 10 13/16 in.)
Gift of Jane Greenwood, 1970-56-1

“You’ve done a lot of icing. Is the cake right?” In this metaphor—which Jane Greenwood taught to her costume design students at Yale—the cake is the silhouette of the garment and the icing is everything else (Cathy Shufro, “The Alchemist of Costuming,” Yale Alumni Magazine, 2019). For Greenwood, silhouette is pivotal to defining a production’s period and finding a character, in collaboration with the actor. Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy that does not have a definite time period, but this drawing features details of a fantastical take on fashion from the romantic era of the late 18th to early 19th century, with a likely corseted bodice and full skirt.

In 2017, after 21 nominations, Greenwood finally won a Tony Award for costume design at the age of 83 for the Broadway revival of Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes starring Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon.

See more of Greenwood’s work in Cooper Hewitt’s collection.

 

ARIEL PARKINSON

Drawing, Costume Design: Blanche and Katherine, for Le Testament [de Villon], 1971
Designed by Ariel Parkinson (American, 1926–2017)
Music composed by Ezra Pound (American, 1885–1972) with George Antheil (American, 1900–1959)
Written by François Villon (French, 1431–ca. 1463)
Client: Western Opera Theater (1967–2003), San Francisco Opera (San Francisco, California, USA, founded 1923)
Brush and watercolor, gouache, graphite, charcoal, pen and ink on laid paper
39.8 × 51.8 cm (15 11/16 × 20 3/8 in.)
Gift of Mrs. Thomas Parkinson, 1973-14-10

Cooper Hewitt possesses a suite of costume and stage designs by Ariel Parkinson for the San Francisco Opera’s Western Opera Theater production of the opera Le Testament de Villon. Based on Francois Villon’s 1461 collection of poetry, it is expectedly about misery and death. Parkinson’s costume designs resonate with her larger artistic output, with expressionistic figures and vivid colors. According to art historian Peter Selz, “Ariel’s work as a painter, sculptor, and designer, as well as her long immersion in literature and poetry, all found their synthesis in her theater designs” (“Ariel’s Visual Arts,” in Ariel: A Memoir, 2012).

See more of Parkinson’s work for Le Testament in Cooper Hewitt’s collection.

 

IRENE SHARAFF

Drawing, Costume Design for Flower Drum Song, 1958
Designed by Irene Sharaff (American, 1910–1993)
Written by Oscar Hammerstein II (American, 1895–1960)
Music composed by Richard Rodgers (American, 1902–1979)
Directed by Gene Kelly (American, 1912–1996)
Brush and watercolor, graphite on paper
Gift of John Gregory, 1990-121-2

Irene Sharaff was a prolific costume designer across film and theater, with Academy Awards for An American in Paris, The King and I, Cleopatra (yes, that one), and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (yes, the costumes for this film won, but Mike Nichols and Richard Burton did not). Sharaff’s work in theater includes The King and I, West Side Story, and Flower Drum Song, the latter documented in this drawing of an unidentified character.

Sharaff’s final film credit is 1981’s Mommy Dearest. This author will leave it at that while wondering what kind of hangers were used in the wardrobe department . . .

Cooper Hewitt also holds in its collection two stage designs for Flower Drum Song by Oliver Smith.

 

CYNTHIA TINGEY

Drawing, Costume Design: Ann Wilson, for East of Mombasa, 1956
Designed by Cynthia Tingey (Maltese, active England, 1931–2005)
Actor: Donna Reed (American, 1921–1986)
Directed by George Marshall (American, 1891–1975)
Distributed by Columbia Pictures (Los Angeles, California, USA)
Gift of Paul Stiga, 1986-110-18

Cynthia Tingey designed costumes for theater, pantomime, cabaret, and film, primarily in the UK. She specialized in designs for variety performances, often mixing styles in bright color palettes with elaborate embellishments. Her drawing here is for the film ultimately titled Beyond Mombasa, based on the novel The Mark of the Leopard by James Eastwood (the film’s title is noted as East of Mombasa on the drawing). Tingey’s design features a classic dress silhouette of the period, with a tiny waist extending into a full skirt. Tingey’s drawing notes a revised option for details of this dress, which was faithfully executed in the film’s final scene.

 

PATRICIA ZIPPRODT

Drawing, Costume Design: Renata, for The Fiery Angel, 1965
Designed by Patricia Zipprodt (American, 1925–1999)
Music composed by Sergei Prokofiev (Russian, 1891–1953)
Client: New York City Opera (New York, New York, USA)
Gift of Mrs. Lila Tyng, 1976-80-1

Like many designers on this list, Patricia Zipprodt’s name is associated with some of the biggest theater makers in American culture—Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Bernadette Peters. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and apprenticed under Irene Sharaff.

While much of Zipprodt’s work played within the range of 20th century costume, this sketch for Renata in the opera The Fiery Angel revisited 16th-century Germany, through the lens of Russian authorship.

 

Matthew J. Kennedy is the Publishing Associate at Cooper Hewitt, and additionally researches the histories of design and theater.