Edith Claire Head (née Posener; October 28, 1897 – October 24, 1981) was an American film costume designer. She received a record 35 nominations for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design and won a record eight times, making her both the most honored and most nominated woman in the Academy's history. She also holds the Guinness World Record for most-credited costume designer in film history, with a total of 432 credits.
Raised between California and Nevada, Head earned degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University before beginning a career as a French and Spanish languages teacher. After taking courses at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, she was hired in 1923 as a costume sketch artist at Famous Players–Lasky, which later became Paramount Pictures. She won acclaim for her design of Dorothy Lamour’s trademark sarong in the 1936 film The Jungle Princess, and became a household name after the Academy Award for Best Costume Design was created in 1948. Head was considered exceptional for her close working relationships with her subjects, with whom she consulted extensively; these included virtually every top female star in Hollywood.
Head worked at Paramount for 44 years, and was frequently loaned out by the studio for work on projects for other studios. While under contract at Paramount, she designed the costumes for several films by Alfred Hitchcock, including Notorious (1946), Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). In 1968, after Paramount declined to renew her contract, Hitchcock invited her to join Universal Pictures. There she earned her eighth and final Academy Award for her work on The Sting in 1973.
Outside of film, Head was commissioned to design the official women's uniform for the United States Coast Guard in the 1970s, due to the increasing number of women in the Coast Guard, for which she received the Meritorious Public Service Award.
Head was born Edith Claire Posener on October 28, 1897 in San Bernardino, California, the daughter of Ashkenazi Jewish parents, Anna E. (nee Levy) and Max Posener, both of German-Jewish and Austrian-Jewish ancestry. Her father was a naturalized American citizen from Germany who came to the United States in 1876 at age eighteen, while her American mother was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1875, the daughter of an Austrian-Jewish father and a Bavarian mother. Shortly before Head's birth, her father opened a small haberdashery in San Bernardino. The business failed within a year, after which he abandoned the family and relocated to El Paso, Texas.
In 1901, Head's mother Anna married Frank Spare, a mining engineer from Pennsylvania. Anna and Frank passed Edith off as their biological child, giving her his surname, and raised her in his Roman Catholic faith. Due to her stepfather's job, the family moved frequently during her childhood to various mining camps, with a significant portion spent in rural Searchlight, Nevada. A shy and introverted only child, Head often spent time building makeshift dollhouses out of cardboard boxes, and creating figures out of greasewood that naturally grew in the desert. She would also create costumes for animals, including her pet dog and cat, as well as wild horned lizards. "I had no other children for playmates," she recalled. "Naturally, all of my intensive imagination in child's play had to be connected to activities I could pursue alone." Head was teased by classmates due to her front teeth never growing in properly, and because of this, rarely smiled.
She completed her elementary school education in Redding, California in 1911, before the family lived for a period in Mexico, where Head learned to speak Spanish. Head and her mother subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she graduated from Los Angeles High School.
Head enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley in 1915, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and sciences with honors in French. She subsequently enrolled at Stanford University, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in romance languages in 1920. She became a language teacher with her first position as a replacement at The Bishop's School in La Jolla teaching French and Spanish. After one year, she took a position teaching French at the Hollywood School for Girls, where her students included Cecilia and Katherine DeMille, daughters of studio executive Cecil B. DeMille. Wanting a slightly higher salary, she told the school that she could also teach art, even though she had only briefly studied the discipline in high school. To improve her drawing skills, at this point rudimentary, she took evening classes at the Otis Art Institute and Chouinard Art College.
On July 25, 1923, she married Charles Head, a salesman for the Southern California Super Fine Metals Company, and the brother of one of her Chouinard classmates, Betty Head. Due to Charles's drinking problem and her reduced teaching salary during the summer months, Head began seeking work as a sketch artist to help supplement their income.
1923—1929: Famous Players–Lasky
In 1923, despite lacking significant art, design, and costume design experience, the 26-year-old Head was hired as a costume sketch artist at the Famous Players–Lasky studios, which was later absorbed by Paramount Pictures. Later she admitted to "borrowing" other students' sketches for her job interview with the studio: "I was studying seascape and all I could draw was oceans. I needed a portfolio, so I borrowed sketches—I didn't steal them, I asked everybody in the class for a few costume design sketches. And I had the most fantastic assortment you've ever seen in your life. When you get a class of forty to give you sketches, you get a nice selection."
At Paramount, Head studied under lead designers Howard Greer, and later, Travis Banton. Head recounted the experience favourably, saying: Travis Banton and Howard Greer sort of adopted me, and I went with them to all their fittings. I was accepted as part of the team in the fitting room, which also included the head fitter and usually a wardrobe girl. Sometimes I just watched and took notes; I did whatever I was told. With both Howard and Travis there was never any feeling that I would be a threat to them, as is so often the case in boss-and-assistant relationships in any profession. They were secure in their own careers. Both went overboard in encouraging and helping me. I think I had the greatest break that any young designer ever had. Working for them was the kind of training you couldn't get any place else, in any school in the world.
Head began designing costumes for the studio's silent films, commencing with The Wanderer in 1925 and, by the 1930s, had established herself as one of Hollywood's leading costume designers.
Head remained employed by Paramount Pictures after the studio absorbed Famous Players–Lasky. After Banton's resignation in 1938 she took over as head designer for the studio. Her association with the "sarong" dress designed for Dorothy Lamour in The Hurricane (1937) made her well known among the general public, although Head was a more restrained designer than either Banton or Adrian.
She gained public attention for the top mink-lined gown she created for Ginger Rogers in Lady in the Dark (1944), which caused much comment owing to the mood of wartime austerity. The establishment, in 1949, of the Academy Award for Costume Design further boosted her career, giving her a record-breaking run of Award nominations and wins, beginning with her nomination for The Emperor Waltz. Head and other film designers like Adrian became well known to the public.
Head was known for her particular working style and, unlike many of her male contemporaries, usually consulted extensively with the female stars with whom she worked. As a result, she was a favorite among many of the leading female stars of the 1940s and 1950s, such as Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman, Rita Hayworth, Shirley MacLaine, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, Head was frequently "loaned out" by Paramount to other studios at the request of their female stars. She herself always dressed plainly, preferring thick-framed glasses and conservative two-piece suits.