Who

William Ivey Long is one of the most prolific—and highest paid—costumers on Broadway.

Backstory

Long was raised in a theatrical family. He spent the first three years of his life living in the stage-left dressing room of Raleigh Little Theater's amphitheater where his father, William Sr., worked as technical director and his mother, Mary, acted and designed costumes. (Long's siblings would also inherit the theater bug: His brother Robert is now a set designer, while his sister Laura is an actress.) At age six, he designed what would become the first article of apparel in his oeuvre—an Elizabethian ruff for his dog.

After studying design at the Yale School of Drama (where he roomed with Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep), Long moved to New York in the mid-'70s, settling into the Chelsea Hotel. For a few years he worked as an unpaid apprentice for couturier and fellow Chelsea Hotel tenant Charles James, keeping himself afloat by designing handmade dolls on the side. Then in 1978 a friend from Yale hooked him up with a gig designing costumes for a revival of Gogol's The Inspector General. When he earned a Drama Desk award for his costuming work on 1979's The 1940s Radio Hour, a career was born. He now has an endlessly long list of costuming credits, and is one of the most connected players on Broadway—he's worked with virtually every big-name Broadway director (Joe Mantolla, Susan Stroman) actor (Harvey Fierstein, Nathan Lane, Bernadette Peters) and producer (Rocco Landesman, the Weisslers, RFP) in the business. Long has also created costumes for a string of movies, as well as for choreographers like Peter Martins, Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp.

Of note

The most prolific costumer on Broadway—others costumers, in fact, often grumble that he hoards commissions—Long has designed getups for more than 50 Broadway shows, including Nine, Guys and Dolls, Smoky Joe's Café, Hairspray, Little Shop of Horrors, the Weisslers' long-running Chicago, The Producers (both the stage and film incarnations), Contact, and Grey Gardens, not to mention dozens of off-Broadway shows. Not exactly as successful on the movie front, he's costumed films like 1992's ice-skating rom-com The Cutting Edge, 1993's Michael J. Fox-fronted Life with Mikey, and the 1999 James Spader comedy Curtain Call. And he's even lent his sequined expertise to Siegfried and Roy's Mirage hotel performances in Vegas.

Trophy case

Long has won five Tonys including a 2007 award for Grey Gardens, five Drama Desk awards, and was also inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in January of 2006.

The look

Though his costumes are famously gaudy, he's worn the same sedate uniform for over 30 years: a navy blazer with a white shirt, striped tie, khakis and black lace-ups.

Personal

The single Long says he's never had a steady partner. On her deathbed, his mother refused to acknowledge that her son was gay, saying, "I still hope you find some nice girl and settle down and have children." Long lives and works in a restored Chelsea townhouse. A historic preservationist, he also owns five houses in Seaboard, North Carolina (where his relatives settled in 1676), as well as a number of other buildings in the town, including a public school that his father once attended.

True story

Long was friends with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg at school and close to her mother, Jackie O. He helped plan Caroline's wedding as well as John Jr.'s wedding to Carolyn Bessette. And he was one of the few non-family members to accompany Jackie O's coffin to Arlington.