Edith Head

Edith Head was the most decorated costume designer in Hollywood history, winning eight Academy Awards across a career that ran from silent pictures into the 1980s. She joined Paramount's costume department in 1923 without formal design training — she had taught French and art at a girls' school, and reportedly borrowed sketches from students to pass her studio interview — and rose to head of the department by 1938. She later moved to Universal in 1967, where she continued working until shortly before her death in 1981. Head's Paramount tenure coincided with the studio's peak years of sophisticated comedy and thriller production, and she dressed most of the era's leading women, from Barbara Stanwyck to Grace Kelly. Her working method was famously exacting: detailed sketches, extensive fittings, and close collaboration with directors on how clothing should read on camera, not just in a still photograph. She published two books on personal style, "The Dress Doctor" (1959) and "How to Dress for Success" (1967), and became a recognisable public figure in her own right, appearing on television and hosting a design segment that few costumers of her era achieved. Her distinctive round glasses and tightly pulled-back hair became a kind of professional uniform. She continued designing into her seventies, working on Alfred Hitchcock's "Family Plot" (1976) shortly before her death, closing a working relationship with Hitchcock that had spanned decades.