where he was the first Iranian to win an Oscar nomination, died last Monday in Los Angeles. He was 83 years old.
Aghayan said he designed his first dress when he was 13 years old. It was for a member of the royal family. At the time, his mother was employed as a couturier or in-house designer for the women of the Pahlavi family.
Aghayan then went to Hollywood and designed clothes—costumes—for a different kind of royalty—film stars like Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross and Julie Andrews.
His death was announced by his longtime partner, Bob Mackie, who started out as Aghayan’s assistant.
Aghayan was in frail health for several years and recently had a heart attack, Mackie said.
Aghayan was nominated for the Academy Award in costume design three times, but never won the statue.
In 1967, however, he and Mackie shared the first Emmy ever awarded for television costume design, for their partnership in the TV movie “Alice Through the Looking Glass.”
The partners received Oscar nominations for the 43 ensembles worn by Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues,” the 1972 film about jazz singer Billie Holiday, and for the 1930s-style dresses, hats, gloves and shoes worn by Streisand in “Funny Lady,” the 1975 sequel to “Funny Girl.” Aghayan received his first Oscar nomination for “Gaily, Gaily,” a 1969 comedy set in Chicago in 1910.
Costuming Judy Garland for her 1963-64 musical variety show on CBS was one of Aghayan’s most notable assignments. The New York Times said Aghayan was “one of only a handful of professionals who lasted the year with Ms. Garland, who had become famously difficult to work with. Mr. Aghayan was admired in the profession for giving the visibly disintegrating star a convincingly well put-together look.”
In a 1998 interview, Agha-yan described costume designing as more like stage directing or set designing, than fashion designing. A good costume design “gives the actor the character, helps the actor grow into that human being,” he said. It is part of the storytelling, he said, because “it helps the audience to be able to look at that and know what the hell it is they’re looking at.”
Gorgen Ray Aghayan was born July 28, 1928, in Tehran to a wealthy family of Armenian heritage. His father died when he was young. When he was a teenager, his love for American movies made him beg his mother, Yasmine, to send him to California to study, instead of to Paris, where most wealthy Iranians then sent their children. She agreed, and made the arrangements. She followed him there in the early 1970s.
“What he taught me about designing,” Mackie said, “was that it was always about the stars, about making them look good — making the audience excited to see them even before the star opens her mouth.”
