Irene Sharaff won five Academy Awards for costume design: An American in Paris, The King and I, West Side Story, Cleopatra and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? She was also nominated for five Tony Awards. Sharaff designed West Side Story costumes (both stage and screen versions) as well as Funny Girl—again, costumes for both the stage play and film.

“I see everything in blocks of color,” Sharaff said about her style, “rather like a painting. If I have a leitmotif, a logo, I suspect it is associated with the colors I prefer: reds, pinks, oranges.”

Ray Diffen, who worked with Sharaff on the stage version of Funny Girl wrote in his book (Ray Diffen Stage Clothes) that Sharaff “took an instant dislike to Barbra.”

Sharaff wrote about Streisand in her 1976 book Broadway & Hollywood: Costumes Designed by Irene Sharaff. “Barbra had an extraordinary memory about movies and stars. With the strong streak of Walter Mitty in her, she would turn up at fittings impersonating stars, usually of the twenties ...”

“Barbra with her logorrhea expressed her opinions freely and endlessly about everyone and everything, including the technique of movie making,” Sharaff also wrote.

Ms. Sharaff's FUNNY GIRL Costumes

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