Theoni V. Aldredge created the costumes for hundreds of New York shows, including the original Broadway productions of A Chorus Line (1975) and Annie (1977), and won three Tony awards. She also worked on films, dressing such big-screen divas as Barbra Streisand and Faye Dunaway and won an Oscar for the elegant wardrobe which became almost the defining element in the 1974 film of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.
The film disappointed aficionados of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic Jazz Age novel — they felt Redford was miscast as a protagonist who has survived the Great War and made a fortune but falls victim to the careless approach to life and love among the upper classes. There was no disputing that Redford and Farrow looked superb, although the credit for the look was a matter of bitter dispute. Aldredge fell out with her assistant or collaborator, the young Ralph Lauren.
The Great Gatsby and the attendant publicity helped to boost the young Lauren’s career. But Aldredge felt he was getting too much of the credit and insisted he merely executed her designs. It was Aldredge who got the Oscar and she pointedly refused to acknowledge him in her acceptance speech. Outfits based on the film’s designs came back into fashion.
She was born Theoni Athanasiou Vachliotis in Salonika, Greece, probably in 1922 (although different sources cite different ages) and she grew up in Athens. Her father was an army doctor and politician. She went to drama school in Chicago and subsequently worked locally as a costume designer and taught the subject.
While at college she met the actress Geraldine Page and Tom Aldredge, an aspiring young actor and director, who plays Steve Buscemi’s father in the current award-winning HBO drama series Boardwalk Empire. Aldredge and Vachliotis were married in 1953.
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The Aldredges moved to New York and Page helped to secure Theoni the job of designing costumes for Elia Kazan’s original 1959 Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s Southern Gothic drama Sweet Bird of Youth, starring Page alongside Paul Newman.
She went on to work on dozens of productions with Joseph Papp, including the original 1967 off-Broadway production of Hair. She designed costumes for the hit musicals 42nd Street (1980-89) and Dreamgirls (1981-87); Woman of the Year (1981-83), with Lauren Bacall; and Private Lives (1983), with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. She won Tony awards for Annie, Barnum (1980-82) and La Cage aux Folles (1983-87).
She was costume designer on about 40 films, including the Faye Dunaway films Network (1976), Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), in which Dunaway plays a fashion photographer, and The Champ (1979). In her autobiography Looking for Gatsby (1995), Dunaway wrote that Aldredge managed to create tight blouses and skirts in Network that were “audacious and feminine” and said something about her character, a television executive.
Other films include The Rose (1979), Annie (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Moonstruck (1987), Addams Family Values (1993) and Barbra Streisand’s The Mirror has Two Faces (1996). She also designed for opera and ballet and created Jane Fonda’s “workout” outfits. Aldredge is survived by her husband.
Theoni V. Aldredge, costume designer, was born on August 22, 1922. She died on January 21, 2011, aged 88