Jean Louis

Jean Louis (born Jean Louis Berthault; October 5, 1907 – April 20, 1997) was a French-American costume designer. He won an Academy Award for The Solid Gold Cadillac.

Life and career Before coming to Hollywood, he worked in New York for fashion entrepreneur Hattie Carnegie, where the clientele included Joan Cohn, the wife of Columbia Pictures studio chief Harry Cohn.

He worked as head designer for Columbia Pictures from 1944 to 1960. His most famous works include Rita Hayworth's black satin strapless dress from Gilda (1946), Marlene Dietrich's celebrated beaded souffle stagewear for her cabaret world tours, as well as the sheer, sparkling gown that Marilyn Monroe wore when she sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" to John F. Kennedy in 1962.

The dress was so tight that he is believed to have actually sewn it while Monroe was wearing it. The idea of a dress being a nude color, with crystals coating it, stunned audiences. It gave the illusion that Monroe was nude, except for discretely placed rhinestones covering her head to toe.

Louis had originally designed a version of the dress for Marlene Dietrich, who wore it in her concert shows. An impressed Monroe asked Dietrich about it, who told her how the dress's illusion worked, and sent her to Louis to design a similar dress for her Kennedy appearance. While Dietrich had been seen wearing her version before Monroe, the press coverage surrounding Monroe's appearance at Madison Square Garden in her style of gown swept the globe. This dress became — besides the white one from "The Seven Year Itch" — Marilyn Monroe's most famous dress, selling at auction in 2016 for 4.8 million dollars.

In 1993, four years after the death of his second wife, Louis married former client Loretta Young; they remained married until his death in 1997.

For over forty years, Louis designed clothes for almost every star in Hollywood. Around sixty of his designs appeared in movies, and he was eventually nominated for 13 Academy Awards. Some of his clients included Ginger Rogers, Irene Dunne, Lana Turner, Vivien Leigh, Joan Crawford, Julie Andrews, Katharine Hepburn, and Judy Garland. Some of his film credits included, A Star Is Born, Ship of Fools, From Here to Eternity, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and he won an Oscar for his designs in The Solid Gold Cadillac in 1956.