The dresses were last seen in public in 2015 during a fashion show at the Palm Springs Woman’s Club, when Rancho Mirage resident Bill Marx (Harpo Marx’s son and the husband of Barbara the modeling agent) remembers being at the piano to accompany the cat-walkers. In 2011, Marx gave them to the Palm Springs Historical Society, which stores the treasures in a climate-controlled vault. Upon her death in 1985, she bequeathed her precious few archives (the studio owned and sold almost everything), which also include a couple of choice costumes made by fellow designers Adrian and Cecil Beaton, to local Palm Springs modeling agent Marilyn Visel and her business partner Barbara Marx (no relation to Mrs. “I did always depend on Barbara Marx and Nelda Linsk to lend their beauty and style to my fashion runway.” “Many fashion models would consent to return to do some of my fashion shows,” she wrote of her recurring events at Palm Springs Racquet Club. She retired to the desert in 1970 and was a mainstay on the charity fashion show circuit, raising money for local hospitals by showing her collection and archival costumes (and providing live commentary) alongside Don Loper, Ernest Newman, and other designers. When the studio system started to wind down, with directors increasingly turning to store-bought wardrobe, Rose found a second career in fashion, designing her namesake collection from 1957 to 1972. I understood their problems, and they knew I was their friend as they were mine.” “I treated them as I would all other girls, especially if they were young. “I was never subservient to the stars, nor was I in awe of them,” Rose wrote in her 1976 autobiography, Just Make Them Beautiful.
In an age when women looked to the big screen for fashion ideas, she offered enduring inspiration for lingerie as outerwear, chiffon ball dresses, and classic wedding attire, because when MGM’s Hollywood starlets decided to marry, Rose was the go-to to throw showers and design their wedding gowns, which were gifted from the studio as part of the publicity machine. Still, Rose managed to design some remarkable work, including Betty Hutton’s spirited Western wear in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Anne Francis’ genre-defining mini-dresses from sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet, which were ahead of their time in 1956, and Taylor’s sexy slip from Butterfield 8 (1960).
There was no studio marketing machine promoting Rose’s work - not until much, much later.” “But she also started in the 1920s at Paramount assisting Howard Greer and Travis Banton designing for Clara Bow. Copley Center for Costume Design at UCLA. “It’s true that Edith Head’s story was exceptional and that she controlled her own narrative,” says costume historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis, founding director of the David C. Rose earned a reputation for having a way with chiffon, creating romantic, “dancing look” dresses (as Palm Springs Life once described them) for the most beautiful women in the world, including Judy Garland, Esther Williams, Lana Turner, Cyd Charisse, and Debbie Reynolds. See related story: We profile four young Hollywood actresses who bring Helen Rose's costumes to life.Ī two-time Oscar winner, she headed the costume department at MGM between 19, designing for more than 200 films.Though Helen Rose may not be a household name like her contemporary Edith Head, she was a costume design legend in her own right who was able to parlay a feathers and froufrou beginning, making burlesque and Ice Follies costumes, into a glittering Hollywood studio film career.
And she designed the sultry white crepe halter dress worn by Elizabeth Taylor in 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that sold hundreds of thousands of copies at retail.
She set bridal trends for generations to come with her long-sleeved lace creation for Grace Kelly’s 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier. She stepped in to do Lena Horne’s hair on set of the 1943 film Stormy Weather when the studio hairdresser refused to work on a black woman, and the star became her lifelong friend thereafter.
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