Renié

Hollywood is a place where you can reinvent yourself. A girl from Republic, Washington, born right around the time the gold mine shut down and the town started to dry up, could go on to win an Oscar in part for designing a spectacular and iconic golden dress. Irene Brouillet could become Renié, costumier to the stars. She could linger in pop culture long after her name had faded by designing the original “Kitty Foyle” dress, the dark-coloured dress with white collar and cuffs worn by Ginger Rogers in the movie Kitty Foyle and since then by figures such as, you know, Wednesday Addams.

I will admit that my first reaction to an often-nominated costume designer is to wonder how many Oscars they lost to Edith Head. In her case two, and both of them are Edith Head wins I have feelings about. (Streetcar Named Desire should’ve beaten A Place in the Sun, and she should have at least shared the nomination with Givenchy for Roman Holiday.) Her other two losses were to Elizabeth Haffenden for Ben-Hur, ironically the year she herself costumed The Big Fisherman, and to Anthony Powell for the 1978 Death on the Nile, and they both probably should’ve lost to Tony Walton for The Wiz. And I’m not naming most of Renié’s movies because frankly I’ve never heard of most of them.

But her win was for Cleopatra, and there’s no disputing that. Lord knows I have my problems with that movie, but the costuming isn’t one of them. The costume design and set design of that movie are the best bits, and while Renié was one of three nominated designers on the movie, it seems likely that she was designing Elizabeth Taylor’s gowns, which are the most noteworthy bits of costuming in the movie. She was freelance at the time, too, so they’d gone out of their way to hire her for the production.

Because she worked at RKO initially, she has one of the most bonkers credit lists we’ve seen in a while. She costumed the Mexican Spitfire, the Falcon, and the Three Stooges. (Snow White and the Three Stooges, definitely a movie that exists.) She worked on Hitler’s Children and Cat People. Her first movie appears to be a noir called Criminal Lawyer that I’ve never heard of. She costumed Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in The Body Snatcher. Not to mention Henry Fonda, Vincent Price, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Elisha Cook Jr. in The Long Night. It was a hell of a list.

Her work after leaving RKO is equally bonkers. Her work for Disney wasn’t limited to The Big Fisherman. She designed the costumes for The Golden Horseshoe Revue among other things, having served as Disneyland’s original costume designer. Does this make her responsible for the horrific original character suits? My usual sources do not say. It seems not, but since she spent some time working for the Ice Capades, from whom costumes were borrowed, maybe? At any rate, she also designed for everyone from Clark Gable to Frankie and Annette. She had quite the career, all told, working long enough to costume Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.