There was a handful of women so far ahead of the times that fashion didn’t catch up to them for fifty years. What ground breaking diva wore the man’s tailcoat first? Was it Josephine Baker, Louise Brooks, or Marlene Dietrich? No matter who wore it first, or who wore it best, it was costume designer Travis Banton, Dietrich and Swarovski crystals that minted an icon.

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New York Times:
There’s another Oscar-related clothes issue currently getting Hollywood all worked up: the fight for equal pay being waged by the members of the Costume Designers Guild. Costume designers, who are 83 percent female, are paid 30 percent less than production designers (their organizational-chart peers), who are 80 percent male, according to research from the U.S.C. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and the Annenberg Foundation. Read More

For years, costume designers have been fighting for pay equity — an issue thrown into sharp relief by the difference in remuneration between the largely female Costume Designers Guild and the predominantly male members of the Art Directors Guild. Read More

Always pushing her creativity, Arianne Phillips often takes breaks from film to design theater, music videos, and concert tours, as well as styling print work and cover shoots for fashion magazines like Vogue Italia. “It’s kind of a path cleanser,” she explains. “I’ve gone out of my way to work across genres, so I can be choosy with the films I do.” The breadth and scope of her career is astonishing.

RAD changed the conversation on the red carpet from “Who are you wearing?” which promotes a product, to “Why are you wearing?”