Donald Brooks: A Designing Life

In two weeks, on June 1 at Radio City Music Hall, the movers and shakers of the theater world will gather for their great evening, the annual Tony Awards. Among the attendees will be Donald Brooks, a three-time Oscar nominee for his costume designs and a man whose name has been synonymous with classic fashion for men and women for nearly four decades.

As a member of the 25-person nominating committee for the Tonys, Mr. Brooks sees more Broadway shows than most people. It's lucky, he loves the theater.

"I've attended 33 shows this year," he says, "and this is my fifth year on the committee."

He admits that so many plays and musicals packed into a few months, even weeks, is "a little frantic," but says it can't be helped. With the Tonys in mind, said Mr. Brooks, many shows open late in the season to be "closer to the nominations, so their productions are fresh in everyone's minds."

Grueling Schedule

"I suppose there is logic to that, except that nominating committee members have 17 or 18 new show openings just in the month of April, just prior to a six-hour day of nominations in 22 theatrical categories."

The grueling schedule "can become wearing," said Mr. Brooks, "when you are analyzing and remembering performers and performances and comparing one to the other, seeking the serious, the worthy, the valuable, the beautiful, the stunning."

Mr. Brooks is a director of the American Theater Wing, under whose auspices the Tony Awards are presented. He has had a lifelong affair with the theater, and his career is as much associated with Broadway and Hollywood as Seventh Avenue, though his name may be more familiar to the fashion-conscious from the labels of many a black cocktail dress or gentleman's sports jacket.

Something In Theater

Born in New York City but reared in Cheshire, Conn., near New Haven, Mr. Brooks remembers himself as an "unpopular little kid, ambitious, strange, and artistic, who, when on my own, read or went to the movies and often to the Schubert Theatre in New Haven with my parents."

As a boy, he was fascinated by the "look" of movies - by what the designers had done to make them "glorious." "I knew I wanted to do something in the theater, either design theaters themselves, be a scenic designer, a costume designer, or do all three. And I wanted to do the same for the movies."

After studying English, fine arts, and textile design at Syracuse University and attending the Parsons School of Design, Mr. Brooks landed a summer internship at Lord & Taylor in the mid-'50s. He was guided by the department store's president, Dorothy Shaver, whom he recalls as "that brilliant visionary," not just for her talent but because "she made sure I had a crack at Seventh Avenue."

The Brooks Look

"I was interested only in theater design," he said. "But they sent me to Seventh Avenue, and that was how I got into the fashion business."

A big break came in the late '50s when the Townley Corporation invited him to take over after Claire McCardell died. It was at Townley that the "Brooks Look" was created. It "had to do with really very simple clothes and beautiful fabrics that supported women with confidence and flair. The lines depended on the character of the woman wearing them to make the clothes seem more important then they really were."

His work caught the attention of the fashion press, and over the next few years Mr. Brooks won three Coty Awards, the most prestigious prizes in the American fashion industry. Those were among the most creative years of his design life, he said, the years when he added evening and dinner clothes to the sportswear he had become noted for - making, he said, "a well-rounded collection."

Live Audition

But never, even during his early success as a fashion designer, did he lose sight of his dream of designing for the theater and the movies.

Having read in a newspaper that Richard Rodgers was writing a new musical about a black model in Manhattan, he asked Mr. Rodgers's daughter, Mary, a friend, for an introduction.

"Instead of showing up with a bunch of sketches of pretty dresses, I engaged six models, including one black model, Mozella Roberts, and a black model, Mozella Roberts, and a couple of porters, and we took steamer trunks loaded with clothes. Twelve of us turned up, and Mr. Rogers's receptionist was thrown off - she was expecting just me and some sketches."

"I also brought a windup Victrola, some Richard Rodgers music, cranked the thing up, put on the music, and the models showed off the clothes."

"No Strings" And After

Within 48 hours he signed a contract to design the costumes for "No Strings" and its star, Diahann Caroll. It was his first Broadway show and it won him the New York Drama Critics Design Award.

As a result of "No Strings," Otto Preminger asked Mr. Brooks to design costumes for the movie "The Cardinal." An Oscar nomination for costume design followed.

So did many more Broadway shows, more than 30 of them. Among them: "Barefoot in the Park" with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley, "Promises, Promises" with Jerry Orbach and Jill O'Hara, "Baby Want a Kiss" with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, and "Flora the Red Menace" with Liza Minnelli.

He has also designed for Ethel Merman, Tammy Grimes, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and Alice Faye, among others.

"Star"

Two of Mr. Brooks's most successful movies starred Julie Andrews. One of them, 20th-Century Fox's "Star," the story of Gertrude Lawrence, was his "most elaborate job," he said.

"Its time frame covered the years 1917 to 1954 and required 3,500 costumes - 150 of them for Julie alone." His work earned him his second Oscar nomination.

On the heels of "Star," Mr. Brooks did Ms. Andrews's costumes for "Darling Lili" and received another nomination for an Academy Award.

Mr. Brooks lived in Hollywood that year, commuting back to his fashion design business in Manhattan a total of 78 times. In Hollywood, he rented Lee Remick's house, had offices at both 20th-Century Fox and Paramount, met every star, writer, composer, and director imaginable, and went to parties with such as Cary Grant, Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert, and Gary Cooper.

Among his closest friends were Judy Garland and Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. He was working on a project with Ms. Wood at the time of her death.

Donald Brooks Inc.

In 1966 Mr. Brooks set up his own fashion business, Donald Brooks, Inc. "As a creative person," he said, "I was never interested in being a recreative person, so I didn't follow the Paris shows or succumb to the European influence. I was strictly a local boy trying to keep pure."

He acknowledges, though, the influences of Adrian, Norman Norell, and Mainbocher.

During the 20 years he maintained his business, he designed swimsuit, sleepwear, sunglasses, lingerie, and menswear collections. He also designed his own fabrics - "the only way I could control the way my clothes would look in the stores."

In 1986 Mr. Brooks closed the business and "backed away slowly" from fashion. He felt tastes had stalled, he said, and clothes were becoming standardized. "All those separate tops and jackets - it became arduous and boring to design the same things over and over again."

These days, besides the Tony Awards and the American Theater Wing, which brings Broadway to schools and hospitals, he maintains an active and meaningful schedule.

He is on the board of the Parsons School of Design and teaches theatrical design there. His students undertake an annual project, constructing costumes of Ziegfeld proportions, that blossoms into a full-fledged show at the Marriott Marquis hotel, an annual fund-raiser for the school. This year it raised just under $2 million for scholarships.

Mr. Brooks is also a director of the Theatre Development Fund, helps raise money for the Actors Fund hospital and retirement home in Englewood, N.J., and serves on the board of the Theatre Hall of Fame.

No Time For Fashion

On the East End, where he has had a house since 1954 (he lives in Bridgehampton when not in Manhattan), he raises money for the Southampton Fresh Air Home and for Southampton Hospital.

In his leisure time he reads murder mysteries (Ross McDonald and Raymond Chandler are his favorites), paints (abstracts and geometrics), and is researching 1940s Hollywood for a possible musical based on the life and career of Rita Hayworth.

He occasionally designs clothes for private customers, but says these days he gives fashion "as little thought as possible" and sees "little that is really fascinating or wonderful or beautiful."

Recommended

He admires Armani, however, and thinks the designer Geoffrey Beene's clothes are distinguished. His own creations are showcased in the Smithsonian, at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Collection, and in the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Mr. Brooks says if you miss the Tony Awards at Radio City or on television, Broadway is teeming with fine productions.

He recommends "Titanic" ("scenery design the likes of which has never been seen: You almost see the ship go down before your very eyes"), "Barrymore" with Christopher Plummer, a revival of "The Gin Game" with Julie Harris, Rip Torn in "The Young Man From Atlanta," "The Life," a new musical by Cy Coleman, and "London Assurance"