Dressing Up the Stars: The Story of Movie Costume Designer Edith Head
by Jeanne Walker Harvey (Author) Diana Toledano (Illustrator)
Discover the true story of how a shy miner's daughter became one of the most legendary costume designers in Hollywood in this inspiring nonfiction picture book biography.
As a child in the small mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, Edith Head had few friends and spent most of her time dressing up her toys and pets and even wild animals using fabric scraps. She always knew she wanted to move somewhere full of people and excitement. She set her sights on Hollywood and talked her way into a job sketching costumes for a movie studio.
Did she know how to draw or sew costumes? No. But that didn't stop her!
Edith taught herself and tirelessly worked her way up until she was dressing some of the biggest stars of the day, from Audrey Hepburn to Grace Kelly to Ginger Rogers. She became the first woman to head a major Hollywood movie studio costume department and went on to win eight Academy Awards for best costume design--and she defined the style of an era.
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Publishers Weekly
Film costume designer Edith Head (1897-1981) takes center stage in this celebratory narrative of her path to becoming an Academy Award winner. The account begins with Head's lonely early years in a desert mining town, where her "greatest treasure was her bag of fabric scraps," and she yearned for "people and sounds and dazzling sights." After a high school move to Los Angeles ignites her passion for cinema, Head lands in a film studio costume department. Taking a broad-brush approach, Walker Harvey describes the figure's determination and persistence as she develops her design skills, transitioning from creating costumes for animals to those for famous actors. Toledano's mixed-media artwork, which portrays Head with paper-white skin and large glasses, fittingly features a range of patterns that draw attention to her professional creativity. Combined with starry-eyed prose, the result is a glamorous life story with a Hollywood ending. An author's note and sources conclude. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)
Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission.United States
Motion pictures
Production and direction
Costume
Costume design
Fashion designers
Head, Edith
Women costume designers
Clothing and dress in motion pictures
