John David Ridge

John David Ridge is an American costume designer.

Early professional career Ridge started his artistic life in community theater as a child, before apprenticing at the age of 14 at an equity stock company. While he did various work in theatre, he eventually focused on costuming. He attended the Pratt Institute and in 1968 was one of the first to graduate from the New York University School of the Arts in Theatre design.

He then obtained a New York Union card, enabling him to work in professional costume designs in Broadway productions.

Ridge was selected by John Houseman to head the design school at Juilliard in 1970. In 1975, he moved to managing the Brooks-Van Horn Costume Company, at the same time as being the Costume Supervisor for the National Theatre of Great Britain. working for the company for six years after Halston stepped down in 1984.

Ridge worked closely with Halston on the couture range, as well as overall product development. Halston was ousted from the company, and Ridge took over to replace him as the Design Director for the house. He oversaw Senior Designer Bert Keeter who was responsible for designing the Halston collection for JCPENNY and the MTO collections, the couture collection, the ready to wear line, and the Halston III collection.

Post-Halston career Ridge continued work designing theatre costume after leaving the Halston company, opening his own costume shop to service the industry in Hollywood in 1993. He continues to produce individual couture and has worked extensively in cinema.

In 2017 Ridge was chosen as designer for a revival of My Fair Lady. For this Ridge had to reproduce the costumes from drawings of the original designs created by Cecil Beaton for the original production 60 years prior. Ridge had worked with Beaton when the show ran in 1976, so had a connection to and understanding of Beaton's work.

Work in cinema Ridge has worked extensively in the film industry, producing costumes for the last thirty years. He has designed costumes for a range of films including Spider-Man (2002), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Seabiscuit (2003), Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003),