N.p.: N.p. [Paramount Pictures], N.d. [c.1958]

43 x 36 cm, pencil and gouache on paper. Mounted, framed and glazed. Pinholes to upper corners, light wear and rippling to edges. Unexamined out of frame.

AN ORIGINAL COSTUME DESIGN SKETCH FOR KIM NOVAK IN VERTIGO (1958), DIRECTED BY ALFRED HITCHCOCK AND WITH COSTUME DESIGNS BY EDITH HEAD.

The career of Edith Head [1897-1981] spanned more than four hundred films, eleven of them directed (like this one) by Alfred Hitchcock. She was nominated for thirty-five Oscars, and won eight. For sixty years she dressed the stars of American cinema, and in so doing dictated trends in American high street fashion for decades.

Edith Head's own sketches are preserved in the Edith Head Collection of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. Although unsigned, this sketch is almost certainly by Grace Sprague, working to the detailed instructions of 'Miss Head' (as she was always known). Although a peerless couturier Head was not herself a talented artist; Sprague, capable of working both in great detail and at great speed, was often charged with producing the final draft drawings for production approval. (Sprague's work also illustrates many of Head's published books and articles.) Head and Sprague worked closely together for many years on some of Hollywood's most enduring films -- including Vertigo.

Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, Vertigo was voted the best film of all time in Sight and Sound magazine's ten-yearly poll of 2012, and Head's work on the film -- as well as on Rear Window (1954) and To Catch a Thief (1955, both starring Grace Kelly), and The Birds (1963, starring Tippi Hedren) -- was crucial in supercharging the glacial allure of those actresses into the classic cinematic trope of the Hitchcock Blonde.