Google Doodle: remembering the costume designer Edith Head

Google Doodle gets a glamorous makeover thanks to the 116th birthday of Edith Head, one of the greatest costume designers of all time

BY Olivia Lidbury | 28 October 2013

Photo: REX

Despite having no formal art or fashion training, Edith Head was one of the most successful costume designers of all time with a career than spanned six decades.

She created costumes for over 400 films, including Audrey Hepburn's gowns in Roman Holiday (1953) and Elizabeth Taylor's in the 1951 movie a Place in the Sun.

In 1955 Grace Kelly received the Oscar for Best Actress wearing a pale blue, spaghetti-strap gown made by Head using $4,000 worth of fabric. At the time it was deemed the most expensive Oscars dress ever made.



The Google Doodle dedicated to Edith Head

Head, born Edith Claire Posener in California 116 years ago today in 1897, started out as a language teacher specialising in French following her graduation from Stanford University. When she wanted to command a higher salary, she told her school she could teach art, even though she hadn't studied the subject since high school.

She went on to marry Charles Head, the brother of a friend she made at the evening art classes she took to further her drawing skills, in 1923. The couple divorced in 1936. Head subsequently remarried set designer Wiard Ihnen in 1940; she was left a widow by his death from prostate cancer in 1979.

Hired by Paramount Pictures as a costume sketch artist in 1924, Head later admitted to borrowing another student's sketches for her job interview. But she was obviously doing something right: she stayed with the company for 43 years until she was signed by Universal Pictures in 1967.



Grace Kelly in 1955 wearing a gown by Edith Head

Head consulted with the leading ladies in the film she worked on, meaning she was a favourite of the aforementioned Kelly and Taylor, as well as Sophia Loren, Ginger Rogers and Shirley MacLaine. She was a favourite of directors Alfred Hitchcock, Jerry Lewis and Hal Wallis. Head went on to win eight Oscars of her own during her career, more than any other woman in history. She also penned a book, How to Dress for Success, which is still on sale and is cited as a classic style resource despite being half a century old.

Head died of myelofibrosis, an incurable bone marrow disease, in 1981. But her legend lives on - sort of - in the character of Edna Mode in Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles. Mode is a black-rimmed spectacle-sporting eccentric fashion designer who creates costumes for those on the superhero community, and more than reminiscent Head.