Gilbert Adrian, widely known as Adrian, was an American costume designer. His most famous costumes were for The Wizard of Oz and other Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Background
Gilbert Adrian was born Adrian Adolph Greenburg on March 3, 1903 in Naugatuck, Connecticut, United States, the son of Gilbert Greenburg and Helen Pollock, both of German-Jewish extraction. His parents, who operated a successful millinery shop, were competent artists, his father a local caricaturist, his mother a still-life painter. Adrian demonstrated an early talent for drawing. His favorite subject, wild animals, remained a lifelong inspiration. An uncle, Max Greenburg, a Broadway scenic designer, stimulated his interest in design for the theater.
Education
Adrian was Influenced by his older sister Beatrice, who was studying dance in New York, and enrolled in 1921 at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts (now the Parsons School of Design). On the advice of his instructor, he transferred to the school's Parish branch, where he was influenced by Erté and Rosa Bonheur.
Career
At the Beaux-Arts students' ball, Adrian's prizewinning costume attracted the attention of Irving Berlin, who commissioned him to design for his forthcoming Music Box revue. Starting as assistant costume designer, he designed for three successive Music Box revues as well as for the Greenwich Village Follies and George White's Scandals.
In 1925 Adrian went to Hollywood to design costumes for The Eagle, starring Rudolph Valentino and produced by Valentino's wife, Natacha Rambova; and remained to design costumes for Valentino's next movie, The Cobra.
The following year Adrian was hired by Cecil B. DeMille to design the costumes for The King of Kings. He followed DeMille to MGM and in 1928 designed his first costumes for Greta Garbo, in A Woman of Affairs. Over the next two years he did the costumes for Love (a silent film based on Anna Karenina) and The Last of Mrs. Cheyney.
In 1930 he was lent to Twentieth-Century Fox to design the costumes for his future wife, Janet Gaynor, in Daddy Long Legs. That year Adrian became the chief designer at MGM and in the course of seven years and thirty-five films, designed costumes for Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Jeanette MacDonald, and Norma Shearer.
He was lavishly underwritten by Irving Thalberg, production head of MGM, and no expense was spared on his designs. His only rival was Travis Banton, chief designer at Paramount. Adrian was one of the movers of Hollywood society, particularly known for his lavish parties.
In 1938 he spent several months in France gaining inspiration for the costumes for the film Marie Antoinette.
In August 1939 he eloped with Janet Gaynor to Yuma, Arizona. That year he also designed the clothes for The Women and costumes for The Wizard of Oz.
In 1940 he left MGM and started his own business, where he designed the clothes for The Philadelphia Story and Woman of the Year with Katharine Hepburn.
In 1941, with his friend Woody Fuert, he founded Adrian Ltd. , which produced both made-to-order and ready-made clothes.
His clothes were taken up by Hollywood celebrities and the business prospered. The New York fashion establishment never fully accepted Adrian, however, and fashion magazines and arbiters rarely paid him the attention given New York and Paris designers. Adrian was anxious to adapt his designs to the needs of American women and felt that the war in Europe offered an excellent opportunity for designers to assert themselves and to initiate a truly American school of fashion. He was bitterly disappointed by the New York fashion world's return to Paris for inspiration as soon as World War II ended. He opposed Dior's sloping shoulder "new look" of 1947. The following year he brought his clothes to New York, where Gunther-Haikel reproduced a replica of his airy Beverly Hills salon; in 1949 he had a successful exhibit entitled "Paintings of Africa" at the Knoedler Galleries. A second show, "Paintings of Darkest Africa, Congo and Sudan, " was mounted by Knoedler in 1951.
In 1950 Adrian built a ranch near Anapolis, Brazil. After suffering a heart attack in 1952, he closed his business and retired there. He and his wife spent much of their time entertaining friends, farming, and painting landscapes.
In 1958 Adrian returned to Los Angeles as costume designer for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera Company's production of At the Grand, a musical version of the film Grand Hotel. The show was not successful, but his costumes were favorably reviewed.
As designer for the musical Camelot (1959), Adrian had the opportunity to indulge his interest in medieval costumes.
While Camelot was still in production, he died of a second heart attack in Hollywood.
Achievements
During his career, Adrian designed costumes for over 250 films. Adrian's fashion innovations include exaggerated wide shoulders on tailored suits, dolman sleeves, tapered waists, and huge ruffle-topped sleeves. He was one of the first to utilize strong contrasts of black and white and striking decorative motifs. His interests in color and design are demonstrated by his intricate use of pinstripe fabrics and set-in patches of color, dramatic animal prints on sinuous black crepe evening dresses, the use of checked gingham for lavish evening dresses, asymmetric lines, and diagonal closings.
In 1945 he won the Coty American Fashion Critics Award.
Personality
Adrian was openly gay, but he married, probably, in response to the anti-gay attitudes of the movie studio heads and the sex-negative atmosphere created by the Production Code.
