Adrian: The designer who shaped hollywood glamour
At a time when designers for Hollywood films were called costume designers in the credits, his work was acknowledged as “Gowns by Adrian,” distinguishing him from the pack by virtue of his reputation for creating high-fashion couture for the most famous stars of the 1930s to the ’40s, making the world look toward Hollywood as a source of style inspiration.
Adrian’s flattering dresses for Joan Crawford with their broad shoulders and nipped waists crossed the seas, even influencing Philippine cinema actresses like Carmen Rosales who can be seen in the 1949 LVN film Kampanang Ginto going padded shoulder-to-padded shoulder with Rogelio Dela Rosa. It was a fitting power outfit since the film was a triumph for the actress who was earlier refused a screen test at LVN. She then became a star at Sampaguita Pictures where she had a feud with Dela Rosa and did not speak to him for years, during which he became an LVN star. She agreed to make this LVN film with him only for an exorbitant fee that made her the highest paid movie actress at that time.
Adrian always made women look their best. “He created glamour,” says Adelia Bird, who cites how Greta Garbo “was not chic, yet she possessed a certain quality” that made her clothes by Adrian exciting since he elicited that elusive je ne sais quoi, which was dubbed glamour—a word that became one of the most publicized in the film industry. For their first collaboration, A Woman of Affairs (1928), Adrian designed pieces that became Garbo trademarks: the famous slouch hat and the loosely belted trench coat. For the 1930 Romance, the Eugènie hat he created for her became a sensation and influenced millinery styles for the decade.
His fashionable parents actually owned a millinery shop where fabrics, tulle, ribbons and other embellishments surrounded his early life. Born Adrian Adolph Greenburg in 1903 in Naugatuck, Connecticut, he later changed his name to Gilbert Adrian, pairing his first name with the first name of his father, before adopting the single moniker of Adrian after arriving in Hollywood.
As early as three, Adrian was already drawing circus scenes, moving on to knights and dragons, before exploring darker imagery inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. His father dreamed of Yale Law School for him but at 16, he chose the NY School for Fine Arts (now Parsons). At 17, he was hired to do stage design and was transferred to the Parsons branch in Paris but wasn’t really into attending classes, preferring to intern at the theater. He caught the attention of Irving Berlin who hired him for Music Box Review on Broadway.
Back in New York, he honed his talents in lavish costumes for the stage, where fate intervened again when he met Natacha Rambova, dancer and wife of film idol Rudolph Valentino. She thought he’d be the perfect designer for Valentino’s new film, Cobra. His career in Hollywood flourished from there, securing his place in its elite circle which included director Cecile B. De Mille who joined MGM and took along Adrian who would lead the wardrobe department from 1928 to 1941.
It was a crucial job during those years of the studio system because actors were not simply actors; they were stars who were “manufactured” and had to present a defined public image, one that was maintained off-screen to maintain their persona. Adrian was a leading factor in their star status, creating and maintaining looks for Jean Harlow, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Katherine Hepburn, though his relationship with Garbo and Crawford would be his two most intimate and longest-lasting. Garbo portrayed fallen women or doomed romantics which Adrian played up with simple, subtle designs.
While Garbo was foreign and mysterious, Crawford was the more relatable American girl, playing working class characters who try to rise above their circumstances—an image the public could relate to. Their most famous collab was for the 1932 Letty Lynton where Crawford’s long white dress with oversized ruffled sleeves became iconic, dubbed “the single most important fashion influence in film history” by costume designer Edith Head. Replicas of the dress were made everywhere, including Macy’s which sold 500,000 pieces. Within department stores, there were actually boutiques called cinema shops featuring ensembles based on costumes seen on film, with MGM even releasing a short film in 1940 entitled Hollywood: Style Center to the World.
Hollywood films really shaped public fashion, with Adrian dominating during this time when Depression-era Americans trooped to the cinemas for escapism which they found in the stories as well as the costumes which helped set trends—from dolman sleeves, stripes and bows to black and white ensembles in dramatic designs which he made for the 1930 Madam Satan and the 1932 Grand Hotel.
Adrian also created the modern sex goddess through his bias-cut silk gowns for Jean Harlow, complementing her platinum blonde hair with white dresses—a contradiction he loved playing on her since white represents innocence and purity yet her gowns were skin-tight, on the verge of slipping and exposing her virtue.
The designer’s Hollywood career ended in 1941, the same year Garbo left. “When the glamour goes for Garbo, it goes for me as well,” he said then. With America on the brink of WWII and the studio system changing, he saw the end of the glam period he helped to establish, opting instead to launch his own independent fashion house and adopting the same esprit and grace which women found irresistible. He retired in 1952 after a heart attack, living the remainder of his life in Brazil with his wife, Janet Gaynor, until his death in 1959.
He left his stamp on Hollywood films—over 250 of them—and inspired generations of designers with his creations. Azzedine Alaïa, for one, collected over 150 of his pieces sold at auctions, studying them for their innovations and impeccable craftsmanship. When Alaia died in 2017, they stayed in his foundation’s archive to benefit future designers and the public who get to see them at numerous exhibitions where one can still be amazed by Adrian’s impressive output and artistry.