Bal Harbour

62 BAL HARBOUR HOLIDAY 2023 SPECIAL EDITION P H OTO G R A P H Y: F R A N C E S CO C A R R OZ Z I N I / T R U N K A R C H I V E How did your role in Barbie come about? Well, I got a phone call from Greta like on July the first. I went to California on the second and we had lunch. We shot on the third, had supper, and I came home. I had no idea about the scale. None. I do have Barbie Crocs, though, and I took a photograph of my feet in them and sent it to Gret! They're not so hotsy-totsy looking. [laughs] As a matter of fact, I was going to the theater with a very good friend of mine and she said, "I'm not going if you're wearing those shoes!" What are you working on at the moment? I have 2,000 pieces of paper here with my drawings on them and, when I die, I'm giving them to Carnegie Mellon, because that's where I went to school. My drawings are made for the director and the tailor. Often they have a little faded red circle on them, which is where a wine glass sat, because I usually spend the end of the day with the tailor, figuring out how we want to make a costume. So the drawings are not sacred; they're not museum-ready. They are working drawings. Are there special pieces that you have collected over the years? I have collected pieces, not because they had labels, but because they appealed to me. Like Pauline Trigère stuff or an Hermès jacket that I used on Christopher Walken in The Merchant of Venice at Lincoln Center and had bought about 20 years earlier. I used to put things in a box or a closet, now I have a really big collection in a barn. Can you speak to how you add imperfections to your costumes? When you're drawing a costume that reflects our current century, if you do a perfect historical accuracy, I feel it's not all that interest- ing. Whereas if, let's say, the actor is trying to be formal and the tie Iconic costume designer A nn Roth recently added "actress" to her lengthy list of credits. Her cameo as "the old woman on the bench" stole the limelight in director Greta Ger w ig's summer blockbuster Barbie, for which Roth also designed the costumes. In the famous scene, Margot Robbie (as Barbie) exclaims to Roth, "You're so beautiful!" Not missing a beat, Roth retorts, "I know it," and the t wo giggle. The scene captures what Ger w ig (a close friend of Roth's) describes as "the heart of the movie." Drop the mic. For 59 years and counting, Roth has called the fashion shots in more than 135 film and television productions, plus more than 100 Broadway shows. Her many laurels include Oscars for The English Patient and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and a Tony for The Nance. Her first project was the 1964 Peter Sellers comedy The World of Henry Orient, and she last worked on Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Yet she's aghast if her costumes draw too much attention. "It should always just look like part of the character," she says from her home in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, where she regaled me with industry tales nothing short of legend. Roth convinced Nicole Kidman to wear a prosthetic nose for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, and has outfitted her "best friend" Mer yl Streep in 13 films, starting w ith Silkwood in 1983, directed by the late Mike Nichols, another long-time collaborator. "I work w ith friends—also George Roy Hill and Neil Simon; almost all my projects connect to one another," she emphasizes. Here, she highlights some of her fondest memories from an illustrious career. ABOVE: The inimitable costume designer Ann Roth has created looks for more than 200 productions, across television, film, and theater. CHARACTER SKETCH With six decades of costume design under her belt, including this year's Barbie phenomenon, Ann Roth has created some of the most memorable looks ever to be captured on screen. And at 92 years old, she continues to inspire and delight. BY INGRID SCHMIDT ROTH Ann

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