Adrian

Adrian created the most glamorous and widely seen clothing in the world during the interwar years. Ironically, the glittering gowns and flamboyant ensembles made for Jean Harlow, Norma Scherer, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo by this Hollywood designer were film costumes, not high fashion. During his tenure as chief costume designer for MGM, Adrian did more than design: he transformed leading actresses into glamorous movie stars. Watched by millions of fans in the United States and abroad, Adrian’s costumes were thought to have been, at the height of his film design career, the most copied clothes in the world.

Born Adrian Adolph Greenburgh (1903-1959) into a family of milliners, the young Adrian became a film costumer after training at the Parson’s School and working on Broadway. In 1928, at the height Hollywood’s Golden Age, he signed on at MGM, then the most powerful motion picture studio in the world. Adrian’s great skill was his ability to absorb high fashion trends from Paris, modify them for a particular star, and amplify the look to enhance a film’s dramatic story line. He could design an exquisite beaded gown for Joan Crawford or an ensemble of whimsical costumes for The Wizard of Oz. Adrian achieved such diversity by transforming the traditional studio wardrobe department into a full-fledged creative machine akin to the fashion workrooms in Paris and New York.

By 1941, as the glamour quotient in Hollywood films began to wane, Adrian left MGM to open his ready-to-wear and custom salon in Beverly Hills. Although he was based in California, far from the heart of American fashion in New York, Adrian’s influence continued throughout the war years. He produced a wide range of brilliantly-colored and cleverly cut day and evening wear that sold well and was frequently featured in high fashion publications.

For all the diversity of Adrian’s output, his best-known garment was the wool suit, a mid-century wardrobe staple. While many fashion designers in both Europe and the United States crafted tailored garments for women during World War II, Adrian’s versions were unsurpassed. His ability to seam and piece complimentary gradations of striped woolens, varying their widths and placement into seemingly endless pattern variations, attests to his fanciful genius. None of Adrian’s hundreds of suit designs were exactly the same. This creativity and high level of custom-made quality were all the more amazing in the wartime era of fabric restrictions. Yet for all his success as a ready-to-wear and custom fashion designer, Adrian is best remembered as a costumer whose glamorous film costumes still enthrall viewers today.