Eiko Ishioka’s Final Bow

Paying homage to late costumier Eiko Ishioka, we present unseen photographs of the imaginative creations the designer produced for director Tarsem Singh’s new cinematic fairy tale, Mirror Mirror. Photographer Brigitte Lacombe went behind the scenes to capture the delicate hats and masks adorned with miniature sailing boats and ribbon-faced cats that would become Ishioka’s swansong. Winning the hearts of Hollywood with her surreal designs, director Francis Ford Coppola described Ishioka’s extravagant Oscar-winning ensembles for his 1992 film Dracula as “breathtakingly original, strange and sensuous.” The Japanese visionary’s partnership with Singh saw her transform Jennifer Lopez into an armored seductress in The Cell, and provide Eastern-inspired outfits for The Fall’s exotic, imaginary land. Turning her hand to a plethora of varied projects, Ishioka oversaw costume design for the 15,000 performers participating in the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics, created Lycra-based visions for Cirque du Soleil, and produced appropriately fierce outfits for Grace Jones’s 2009 Hurricane tour. “Her work was so inventive and very poetic,” says Lacombe, a long time friend of Ishioka. “She was an extraordinary woman.”