8 Oscars and the Inventor of Glamour: You Don’t Know This Woman, But She’s an Absolute Legend

In a career spanning more than 50 years, her last name has been synonymous with absolute Hollywood elegance. She was a fashion inspiration, breaking fashion’s dress codes to better impose her own. He was a valued confidante of many Hollywood Golden Age actresses such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Bette Davis.

And there were just as many who requested in their contracts that he design the costumes for their films. During his career, he worked on more than 440 works and created about 700 costumes.

Today, he still holds the distinct honor of being, along with Walt Disney, the most successful person in Oscar history with 8 statues out of 35 citations, and even achieved that in the same year, 1951, by winning two Oscars. .

one for the costumes for the color film Samson and Delilah, the other for the black-and-white film All About Eve (two separate Oscars were awarded in this category depending on whether the film was in black-and-white or color).

“She” is obviously Edith Head, the legendary costume designer.

A self-taught pioneer

Edith Claire Posener was born in 1897 in California, but initially nothing defined her career in Hollywood. A graduate of the prestigious universities of Berkeley and Stanford in literature and language (including French), Edith Head began teaching French as a substitute teacher.

In 1924, at the age of 26, and despite having no experience in costume creation or design, he accepted a job offer as a designer in the costume department of Paramount Studios.

He designed his first costume for a silent film in 1925, The Wanderer. His work was noticed in the 1933 film Lady Lou, for which he designed the dress of the statuesque Mae West.

In 1938, she was the first woman to head the costume department at a major label. Edith Head spent 43 years working her genius at Paramount before settling at Universal in 1967 at the age of 70. He will probably join his friend Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he worked on eleven films.

V-neck dress

Among his legendary creations is the famous white dress he designed for Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun in 1951, for which he won his third Oscar. It was a revolution: it was the first strapless dress.

The success was such that it was copied by all the designers and couturiers of the time. The dress was so famous that it was a bestseller for weddings and graduations in American high schools. It remains a model even today.

Below, an excerpt from the movie A Place in the Sun, where Elizabeth Taylor in her famous dress…

His talent was not only in creating costumes for films. Actors also did not hesitate to ask him to design the dresses worn during ceremonies, especially the Oscars.

Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly…

His most famous creations were the dresses he designed for Audrey Hepburn (with modifications by Hubert de Givenchy) for the 1954 Academy Awards ceremony. Grace Kelly in 1955. This, pastel blue, has long been considered one of the most expensive dresses ever made, costing $4,000 for the raw materials alone.

Below, Edith Head herself presents Audrey Hepburn’s costume trial for a classic Roman holiday…

A posthumous tribute

“My credo is that the audience notices the actors, not the clothes.” Edith Head said slyly. He worked like this until the end of his life, when he died in October 1981 at the age of 83.

Not without irony, the last film he worked on was the comedy-homage to film noir, Corpses Don’t Wear Suits, because of the very good knowledge of the period costumes that he has created for so long. The film is also dedicated to him.

A posthumous tribute to the queen of Hollywood elegance who, interestingly enough, never liked to wear anything but these four colors: black, white, beige and brown.