Theoni V. Aldredge

Theoni V. Aldredge was a Greek-American stage and screen costume designer.

Biography

Born Theoni Athanasiou Vachliotis in Thessaloniki in 1922, Aldredge received her training at the American School in Athens. She emigrated to the United States in 1949 and attended the Goodman School of Drama at the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago on a scholarship. Her first Broadway theatre assignment was in 1959, designing the wardrobe for Geraldine Page in Tennessee Williams' Sweet Bird of Youth; her last was the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. For twenty years, she was the principal designer for producer Joseph Papp and also designed several musicals for Michael Bennett.

One of the most honored costume designers of the American theatre, Aldredge received three Tony Awards, as well as 11 other Tony nominations, including such productions as A Chorus Line, 42nd Street, and Dreamgirls. She received numerous honors from the Drama Desk awards and other theatrical groups. In 2000, she received the Costume Designers Guild Career Achievement Award. In 2002, she received the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award from the Theatre Development Fund.
Aldredge worked extensively in film and television as well. Her productions included Network, ''Eyes of Laura Mars, and Rich and Famous. She received the Oscar and a British Academy Award for The Great Gatsby'' in 1974. Her designs for the film were adapted for a clothing line sold exclusively by Bloomingdale's in Manhattan.

She was the wife of American actor Tom Aldredge from 1953 until her death from a cardiac arrest on January 21, 2011, aged 88, in a Stamford, Connecticut hospital. He died six months later, on July 22, 2011, aged 83, from lymphoma.