1902-1979
Influential German costume designer Aenne Willkomm (name sometimes spelled Änne) was born on this day in 1902. Her early life is basically a complete mystery, save that her birth place is given (curiously) as Shanghai, in what was then empirical China. She seemingly came to the 1920's film industry in Germany from out of the blue--and left just as quickly before the end of the decade. She was the costume designer on five very influential films in the mid-1920s (two in 1924 and three in 1927). The first of these was Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (which is sometimes listed as two separate films). But, by far the most well known film that she designed for was Lang's science fiction nightmare Metropolis in 1927; her designs for that film are instantly recognizable even today--though very few people know that they are looking at the work of a single designer. The last production that she designed for was Gerhard Lamprecht's Betrayal (1927), before marrying Lang's film set designer/architect/production designer Erich Kettelhut and retiring from designing altogether. The couple lived together in Hamburg and died some three months apart in 1979 (by this time Hamburg, was of course a city in West Germany). Willkomm herself died on the 20th of June, just three day after her 77th birthday. She is buried, with her husband Erich, at the historic Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. [The other two films that feature her designs are: My Leopold (1924) and Schwester Veronica (1927).] Just a few of her highly original, beautiful designs--many of them well known--are posted below (the sketches all bear her signature).
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