American costume designer Adrian Adolph Greenberg, known as Adrian, was BOTD in 1903. Born in Naugatuck, Connecticut, his parents ran a successful millinery business. He studied at the New York School for Fine and Applied Arts, transferring to the school’s Paris campus in 1922. He was talent-spotted by composer Irving Berlin, who brought him to New York to design costumes for the Broadway show Music Box Revue of 1922. He was then invited to Hollywood in 1924 by Natacha Rambova, the wife of Rudolph Valentino, to costume Valentino’s film The Hooded Falcon. He developed a close working relationship with filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, moving with him to MGM Studios where he became head of costume design for 13 years. He specialised in lavish costume dramas, dressing Greta Garbo in Queen Christina, Camille and Grand Hotel, Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette, Myrna Loy and Hedy Lamarr in The Great Ziegfeld, Joan Crawford in Mannequin and The Bride Wore Red and Greer Garson in Pride and Prejudice. Many of his costume designs ignited trends in contemporary fashion, notably Garbo’s Eugénie hat in Romance and Crawford’s white ruffled dress in Letty Lynton, which became hugely popular and were copied by department stores. He is best known for costuming the musical The Wizard of Oz, creating the sequinned red shoes worn by Judy Garland, and George Cukor‘s all-female comedy The Women, which featured a Technicolor fashion show of his ready-to-wear designs. He left MGM in 1941, citing a disagreement with Cukor over Garbo’s costumes for Two-Faced Woman, and established his own fashion boutique in Beverly Hills, selling couture and ready-to-wear designs and branching into footwear, perfume and jewellery. He made occasional returns to Hollywood, creating Crawford’s shoulderpadded “coat hanger” gowns for Humoresque, which became the dominant silhouette of 1940s fashion. He proved an adept match for Katharine Hepburn, dressing her in Grecian gowns for The Philadelphia Story and androgynous pantsuits for Woman of the Year. He married actress Janet Gaynor in 1939, living together in a “lavender marriage”, allowing them to pursue same-sex affairs discreetly. Somehow, they managed to produce a son, and remained married until Adrian’s death. In 1952, he suffered a heart attack, forcing him to close his business. He and Gaynor retired to a ranch house in Brazil, entertaining Hollywood celebrities (including Gaynor’s reputed lover, the actress Mary Martin). He came out of retirement to design costumes for a 1958 musical version of Grand Hotel. In 1959, he started work on Broadway musical Camelot, dying of a heart attack during pre-production, aged 56. He was posthumously awarded a Tony Award for his Camelot costumes. Now considered one of Hollywood’s greatest designers, his work inspired generations of costumiers including Cecil Beaton, Edith Head and Anthony Powell.