Renowned Costume Designer Edurne Fernandez
“You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it.” Edith Head, arguably the most famous costume designer who ever lived, said that. She lived and breathed costumes and any one who is a cinephile knows about her or has heard Edith’s name mentioned many times when intelligent conversations move toward famous films, directors, actors, actresses and film history in general. She was nominated for over 30 Oscars and won a record breaking eight of the golden statuettes. She has won more Academy Awards than any other woman. She showed the way for other costume designers and her taste and work ethic has influenced several generations of costume designers.
Edurne Fernandez is also an established costume designer who is blazing her own trail into the future. She has worked on films, commercials, music videos and stage and dance productions. Her costumes run the gamut from simple and unassuming to spectacularly wild, sensual and wide-eyed colorful. Each costume, however, is totally appropriate to the character, the scene and to the overall story. Costumes only stand out if they are supposed to stand out in the script. Otherwise, they, in a big sense, are part of the character, an extension of the character’s personality and environment. Edurne’s costume creations are in effect, like Edith Head’s. Whatever Grace Kelly or Audrey Hepburn wore in a movie 60 or 70 years ago, no matter how the designs might stand out in the line at the supermarket, they were perfectly matched with the actresses and the characters they were playing. One would watch the movie, see the beautiful actress in an incredible dress, along with a string of pearls around her neck with her hair was impeccably in place and experience only a nanosecond of a mild thrill at seeing perfection personified but then would be transported back to the film almost instantly because nothing was really out of place. The costume was part of the movie and its characters and the surrounding ambience of the story in general.
If you look at Edurne’s film and stage costumes, she has achieved the same perfection in her designs and choices of color. Edurne has mastered the seemingly unmasterable. She is able to render a pencil drawing of the costume that was in her mind, choose the correct colors and material and then she manifests it as if she is a magician who just pulled an intricate blouse out of a hat. Is she a magician? No, not quite, but she is an artist, no doubt.
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