William Ivey Long
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Ivey Long (b. 1946) is an American Tony Award-winning costume designer for stage and film. His most notable work includes The Producers, Hairspray, Nine, Crazy for You and Grey Gardens. He also designed the costumes for the Mel Brooks musical, Young Frankenstein.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and education
He was born in 1947 to William Ivey Long, Sr., a Winthrop University professor, and stage director, and his wife Mary, who was a high school theatre teacher, actress and playwright. His father was the founder of the Winthrop University theatre department. William grew up in Rock Hill, South Carolina and has two younger siblings, a brother Robert who is a theatre architect and a sister Laura who is also involved in numerous theatre activities. Upon graduation from high school Long attended the College of William and Mary where he studied history and graduated in 1969, after spending many of his high school and undergraduate summers with his family at Manteo, NC, where Mary, Billy, Bobby, and Laura worked for Pauls Green's outdoor drama, The Lost Colony. He then attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue a Ph.D. in art history. While at this university he met visiting professor Betty Smith who suggested he apply to the design program at Yale University. Upon his acceptance to Yale he left the Ph.D. program at UNC and began to study set design at the Yale School of Drama. It was here that he met Sigourney Weaver (his roommate at the time), Wendy Wasserstein, Meryl Streep, Christopher Durang, and Paul Rudnick, who were all also students at the university. While at Yale he studied under designer Ming Cho Lee, whom he has credited with being a major influence on his work.
[edit] Career
Upon his graduation from Yale in 1975, he made the move to New York City where he worked for couturier Charles James as an unpaid apprentice until James's death in 1978. After a few months of selling dolls a friend of his from Yale, Karen Schulz, who was the set designer for a revival of Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General, suggested that Long be hired to do costume designs for the show, this was Long's first Broadway production. Since then he has celebrated being the costume designer for over 50 different Broadway shows. A Streetcar named Desire marked his landmark 50th. He currently has five shows running on Broadway: Young Frankenstien;The Ritz; Curtains; Hairspray; and Chicago. He has been nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning five (for Nine, Crazy for You, The Producers, Hairspray, and Grey Gardens). He has also won the Drama Desk Award for outstanding costume design for Hairspray, The Producers, Guys and Dolls, Lend Me a Tenor, and Nine.
In 2000 Long was chosen by the National Theatre Conference as its "Person of the Year" and was honored with the "Legend of Fashion" Award by the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003. Most recently he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in January of 2006.
He remains active in many local activities throughout the state of North Carolina including working with Paul Green's The Lost Colony Outdoor Drama in Manteo, North Carolina which he and his family have been a part of since he was a young child.
Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, N.C. recently opened a 6 month long exhibit showcasing Long's costume designs. The exhibit, entitled "Between Taste and Travesty: Costume Designs by William Ivey Long" was one of the most successful exhibits for the museum since its opening. The local press regarded the show as the art story of the year.
"Long’s creations have had a tendency to become as much of a celebrity as the people who wear them," wrote Encore Magazine's art columnist, Lauren Hodges. "His pieces are so lively that they seem to have personalities on their own. The movements the costumes were made for seem to reflect in the fabric. Each detail is lovingly stitched for the characters of the stage and speaks of the story itself, giving the viewer a little taste of the spectacle that is Broadway."
Long has also costumed for Siegfried & Roy at the Mirage Hotel, Leonard Bernstein's operas A Quiet Place and Trouble in Tahiti, and ballets at the New York City Ballet for Peter Martins, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp.
[edit] Productions
[edit] Broadway
[edit] Off-Broadway
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[edit] Film
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[edit] Television
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[edit] External links
- William Ivey Long official website
- William Ivey Long at the Internet Broadway Database
- William Ivey Long at the Internet Movie Database
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