Did Edith Head rip off designer Jean Louis?

Yes. And her pussy stank.

Edith Head was a lesbo? I thought she was deeply in love with her husband from what I have heard?

She may have been bi, but was certainly [italic]way gay[/italic] on her own time, as well.

She said something once about having seen and handled some of the most beautiful bodies in the world through her work...and I've often felt it must have been kind of sad for her to be dealing with all these legendary, near naked beauties, but unable to REALLY touch them.

She was incredibly discreet and always professional (which is why she lasted so long in the business), but over time she let slip that the actresses she DIDN'T care to work with were Mary Martin and Hedy Lamarr. There's another she didn't get along with, but I can't recall who. Maybe Claudette Colbert?

The actress she seemed closest to over the years was another lez: Barbara Stanwyck.

Wow, they’re almost too similar for coincidence. But maybe that was a popular style at the time and both designers were just being lazy? Or Edith designed hers first and Jean saw it somehow and beat her to getting it in a film and she said who cares and put hers in anyway.

Show other evidence of copying.

I don't think Head out-and-out copied other designers (except maybe in the case of REAR WINDOW), but what she DID do was get a contract at Paramount Pictures for years and years stating her name would be credited on all its releases, even though there was NO time in her schedule to do ALL Paramount films in a given year. So her name went on a lot of films she didn't actually do, yet she'd always accept the compliments for them and never set the record straight in interviews.

Then I guess the biggest credit rip off was when Paramount made SABRINA, and star Audrey Hepburn picked up three outfits at Hubert de Givenchy's studio in Paris to use in the film. Head not only wouldn't allow the French designer to get screen credit for the ensembles (two of which became very famous), but for decades she would discuss the SABRINA clothes as if they were herown work, and would even sell sketches of them signed with her name!

What a bitch.

This is the other famous costume from SABRINA.

On the left, Hepburn in the original Givenchy ballgown purchased in Paris before shooting started. On the left, Edith Head's signed sketch, done later.

She gave good gown.

PS: The most outlandish thing about the SABRINA rip off is, Head won an Oscar for it!

Of course, she made[italic] no[/italic] mention of Givenchy when accepting. (She didn't say anything, actually...maybe hoping to just skirt the issue entirely.)

R9, “hoping to just skirt the issue.” Maybe she just didn’t want to address it. Or she may have thought it wasn’t material.

Oh, She just knew she had it sewn up. She kept her mouth shut because she didn’t want anyone needling her about it.

Still, the town was all a-bustle that Oscar night. They knew her reputation hung by a thread.

Barbra Stanwick was not a lesbo. There was a biography that came out around 2-3 years ago and the author did extensive research on the book. Its a very long biography.The author said on the contrary, she wanted to find info on Barbra Stanwick being a lesbo ,but apparently there was no indication she was one. Barba was madly in love with Robert Taylor ,and she was devastated when their marriage broke up.

She was also best friends with bull dyke Joan Crawford.

They really need to posthumously revoke her Nobel Prize.

A+ R16. It's a common silhouette for the time. I suppose she could have stolen the gown. Jean Louis did beautiful work

I wonder which film was in production first.

I prefer Jean Louis and Irene to Edith Head

I do, too. I like simple clothes, but sometimes Head's designs were just too basic.

I do like the clothes she did for THE LADY EVE, though.

I know there is a biography on Edith Head, but Why isn't there any biographies on Jean Louis, Irene, Orry Kelly, and numerous other designers? Can you imagine the secrets and dirt they knew about everyone? WOW! They all took it to the grave, what a waste.

Irene killed herself by jumping out a window in the same hotel Frances Farmer was seized in.

The Knickerbocker doesn't sound like a very cheery place.

Colleen Atwood gives good...oh, never mind.

Kyra Sedgwick wore some vintage suits by Irene on THE CLOSER

Irene jacket

Irene jacket

Irene jacket

There's a YouTube channel called the ultimate fashion history. The presenter is a professioner of fashion history.

Some of her lectures are about movie fashions. She has a great lecture on jean Louis costumes for imitation of life and Heads costumes for double indemnity.

Worth checking out if movie fashion is your thing.

You guys are a stitch. I'm bursting at the seams. I see a pattern here.

If she was such a great designer, why was her own appearance so horrifying? Those hideous glasses. That haircut that looked like an oil spill. The inappropriate combinations of clothing articles?

Edith Head knew she was no looker. She usually wore plain black, grey or beige suits to work so as not to distract from the clothes she was fitting on actresses. And I think the dark glasses were a negotiating tactic, so one couldn't see her eyes.

You're right, r31. Great designers always look their best in public.

Excuse me OP?

Wonder who got all those Oscars.

Rear Window was released Sept. '54. Phfftt! was released two months LATER! Besides, when you see Jean Louis' dress in color any moron can see it's a very different design.

So you bitches can just FUCK OFF!

NOWWW!

Judging by those sketches, she wasn't a very good draughtsman.

I went to theater school, and pretty much all the female costume designers were ugly and didn't bother trying to look better. I think their own ugliness was the inspiration for becoming designers. They couldn't do their creations justice so they made them for others to wear. And, drawing ability is absolutely not essential for the craft: as long as you're able to communicate your ideas to the seamstresses, you're fine. The final product is the only measure of a designer's talent.

[quote]r37 Rear Window was released Sept. '54. Phfftt! was released two months LATER! Besides, when you see Jean Louis' dress in color any moron can see it's a very different design.

PFFFT is a black and white film. It doesn't matter what colors were in the fabric , because it was chosen for how those colors photographed as shades of gray.

And the release dates of the 2 films doesn't tell us which was filmed, or designed, first.

Either dress design could have been in the designers' sketch books for years before that, even, as something planned for another film and never used.

Since this thread is mainly about Edith Head, Carrie Fisher's house was once owned by Betty Davis and Edith Head. I really liked Carrie's Spanish revival 1920s-30s California house because in the golden age of Hollywood, as a general rule, people didn't live in gargantuas mansions in Beverly Hills. There were some here and there ,but nothing like what has being built today. I think the main focus of the mansions in old Hollywood was charm, style, theme, individualism, and detail. Today they are just enormous lifeless, sterile, overly minimalist, glass, steel, and concrete boxes. WITH 0 imagination. The older homes used to be unique and individual ,but today the mansions are cookie cutter. BTW, Irene was one of Doris Day's friends and when Doris Day found out Irene committed suicide, she was devastated. Doris Day is well known to be an extremely nice person, and I think friendships and animalsalways meant a great deal to her.

Edith Head's called her house Casa Ladera when she was there. She deeded the house to the Actors Fund, who sold it to an architect.

According to this 1985 article, the house was built in the early 1930s by actor Robert Armstrong, a leading man who was in the original movie "King Kong" with Fay Wray in 1933.

[quote]For years, when she lived at the house, her at-home companions, besides her husband, included iguanas, deer, two skunks, several red foxes, seven cats and four dogs.

All of the big studios had male costume designers in the 1920s and 1930s: Adrian at MGM, Travis Banton at Paramount, Orry-Kelly at Warner Brothers, Walter Plunkett at Selznick Intl., Howard Greer at Paramount, Bernard Newman at RKO. They gained enormous control through their intimate influence with their leading ladies and became uncontrollable forces, spending millions of studio dollars.

Paramount replaced Greer with Edith Head who was a "company man" with ultimate allegiance to the studio, not the actors she dressed. In gratitude, Paramount made her head of their wardrobe dept. and decreed her name would be credited on any film they produced even if she was not involved in that film. MGM followed suit, first with Irene and then Helen Rose.

It's hilarious that she still used to sketch her friend Liz Taylor with that long-gone figure, right up to the end.

Being diplomatic, I guess.

Head would've made a great villain on Batman.

Hello...

Head's thievery of credit was/is common operating procedure in large corporations where creative psychopaths thrive. Probably most of her work was designed by talented underlings, with herself doing the final 'edit' of what was brought the screen. Not an arduous task.

In 1975 Edith did some [italic]fucking foul[/italic] stewardess uniforms for Pan Am, aging all the poor girls by about 20 years.

Her last job was DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID, in which she recreated clothes from the 1940s [italic]film noir[/italic] genre.

She was nominated for 24 Acdemy Awrds winning eight. Tow of those nominees were for "Airport" and "Airport '77. Some one liked her uniforms.

She was nominated for 24 Academy Awards winning eight. Two of those nominees were for "Airport" and "Airport '77. Some one liked her uniforms. (sorry typos)

Not Jean Seberg. She thought the grey outfit Head crafted for her in AIRPORT made her look like "a puppet".

[quote]r29 There's a YouTube channel called the ultimate fashion history. The presenter is a professioner of fashion history.

Thanks! They're very interesting. I like that she doesn't cover just the obvious stuff that's been discussed before [italic]ad nauseam...[/italic]but more obscure topics, as well.

For instance, I agree with her that if you were to wake up looking like one woman, tomorrow, you'd want it to be Ursula Andress.

3 of the Sabrina gowns might've been Givenchy's. But Audrey's Sabrina image, down to the gamine hair and makeup, was clearly inspired by Edith's style, sans glasses.

I love the black on white look whoeverdoes it.

r45 To be fair Taylor did snap back into shape from time to time even late in the 1970s.

Taylor in Ash Wednesday 1973, dressed by Head.

Grace glows in that dress.

I agree. I think she looked her most beautiful in that film.

R58, I think Liz Taylor looked incredible in the 1980s when she dated George Hamilton. He was the one who got her weight down dramatically and she looked really glamorous. However, she was way over tanned because of course George Hamilton. I once read Liz and George's relationship was a heavy passionate sexual affair.

r61. Indeed Liz was beautiful during the George Hamilton period, when she shared George's passion for fitness. Liz was so often profoundly affected by the living habits of whomever she was with at any given time. I always wondered what would happen had she romanced George instead of Richard Burton in the 60s/70s. Could she have remained stably slender, instead of yo-yoing like she did with Richard and John Warner?

I also wonder who was the more successful designer, Edith Head or Helen Rose?

Rose's costumes for Taylor were, IMHO, even more stunning than Head's numbers.

Iconic number from The Girl Who Had Everything.

One more by Helen Rose. Same film. I think this white dress is more beautiful than the similar Edith Head dress in A Place in the Sun

Edith Head dress A place in the Sun.

I have no opinion of Oleg Cassini but he married Gene Tierney which means he had game

R64, I hate that heap of ruffles with the burning power of ten thousand suns!

And the embroidered whalebone corset only makes things worse.

But Edith's version had white pineapples for breastplates . . .