Costume jewel
We spend the afternoon with Tony Award-winning costume designer and North Carolina native William Ivey Long, whose work will be featured in a retrospective exhibit at the Cameron Museum in April.
By Isabel Heblich - Star-News Correspondent
What am I going to wear? Many times this question has plagued me, but never so heavily: I am meeting a 50-time Broadway costume designer, and I am running late.
I'm reminded of Daisy in The Great Gatsby tossing shirts into the air, her laugh like jingling money, but my demeanor is one of disdain. My entire wardrobe is strewn about the room, hopeless combinations apologizing for their inadequacy. I scrap the attempt to impress a fashion authority and settle for what is very me: a navy and white polka dot skirt, a ruffled button-down, big turquoise earrings and leather wedge heels. It'll do.
At the Cameron Museum I am bustled upstairs by the faculty, who are beaming about William Ivey Long's upcoming costume exhibition this April, which Long is in town to plan and promote.
To my surprise, Long is dressed like, as he puts it, "a lawyer, a banker, a college professor, anything but a costume designer": khakis, white button down, navy blazer, black belt, black shoes, a regiment striped tie. (What was I expecting? A feather boa?)
He proclaims himself "the opposite of cool, the opposite of chic, of with-it New Yorker." I am immediately charmed by his humility. He is a North Carolinian.
His uniform is intentional genius. "It is a tool. I have costumed myself to achieve anonymity," he says. "When I meet with people, they don't feel I'm competing in clothing methods. Theater is the maddest assemblage of egos and personalities. I need to disappear, to become part of the background."
I revere this elves-and-the-shoemaker silent work ethic, but today, he is the main attraction.
Today, Long has come to scope the space for his first solo museum exhibition, the result of museum director Deborah Velders tracking him down and proposing a show. "I'm a very loyal fellow," Long says. "Whoever asks first gets the goods." (I experience this policy firsthand. Other interviewers are waiting patiently in the hall. I got there first.)
We let in Donny, with the rumored coffee. Donny and Bryan are Long's Phi-Beta-Kappa MFA-grad-minions, his "back-up singers." The coffee mugs are navy with white polka dots. Long is thrilled, matching them to my skirt, playfully whispering, "Take this home with you." I silently pause to thank God for letting me wear this polka dot skirt.
"I am born - thank you, Charles Dickens," in Seaboard (passionate about his roots, Long whips out his driver's license to prove residency). He began as a child actor in Paul Greene's The Lost Colony.
After receiving a History degree from William and Mary, Long became the live-in companion of author Betty Smith, who wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Smith, possessing a writerly oracle knowledge, advised him to apply to the Yale Drama School for Design. Accepted, he left UNC-Chapel Hill midway through an Art History degree and packed a van.
Responding to "roommate wanted" ad on a Yale bulletin board, he got Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep. (He still types on the Royal Upright he used to type Streep's first resume.) He befriended playwright classmates Paul Rudnik and the late Wendy Wasserstein.
"This was the '70s," Long says. "It was crazy. Everybody was so into everything."
Together, they built the still-running Yale Summer Cabaret from scratch.
Upon graduation, Long moved to New York City.
The town-mouse-country-mouse conundrum is an eternal dilemma. "There were 15 years (that) I denied by background when I was getting started … crawling up the ladder with bared teeth and fangs," Long says. He ended that sabbatical 20 years ago when he returned to North Carolina to design for the 50th anniversary of The Lost Colony. He's been back ever since.
"You begin at the beginning, you carry a spear. And you're lucky to get it," Long says. For him, the magic of theater has not been limited by prestige or geography: "Telling stories is life or death. The reason I take on the shows I take on is because they mean something to me.
With more than 50 Broadway shows (including Chicago, The Producers and Guys and Dolls) and four Tony awards under his standard-issue black belt, he's still in it for heart.
"You have to believe in those stories," he says. "You can't just do that because of pretty dresses. No. It can't be all Broadway and movies."
Long's next Broadway show (Grey Gardens) opens in October, rehearsals have begun for Rudnik's new off-Broadway show (Regrets Only) and he fund-raises year round for The Lost Colony, "which is very off-Broadway - about 900 miles!"
Somehow, Long is also finding time for his retrospective exhibit at the Cameron. Tossing ideas like Gatsby's shirts - "The Gershwin Room! The Red Room! Turn the corner, The Fantasy Room!" - he is in the exuberant planning stages.
I leaf through his overstuffed binders, coo at the hand beaded "pearl-girls" from The Producers, finger a slice of feather boa (wink) from Hairspray, find that all I really want out of life is the black lace body suit from Nine.
Long has a delightful way of wrapping up stories with, "Isn't that funny?" or "And that was that!" or "The world is just mad!"
Wait. His Yale MFA was in Set Design: "Oh. I taught myself to sew. I've only taken a half-semester class in costume design, the rest is by osmosis. Isn't that funny?"
I want to stow away in his luggage for, you know, osmosis.