Nolan Miller

Nolan Bertrandoff Miller (January 8, 1933 – June 7, 2012) was an American fashion and jewelry designer on QVC and a television costume designer best known for his work on the long-running 1980s series Dynasty, its spin-off series The Colbys and the 1991 miniseries Dynasty: The Reunion. He collaborated on many projects with television producers Aaron Spelling and Douglas S. Cramer, including Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Hotel, Hart to Hart, and Vega$.

Early life Miller was born at Burkburnett, Texas in 1933. He was the fourth of five children born to William and Marie Miller. Nolan later stated, "When I was about in the 5th or the 6th grade I made up my mind I fell in love with movies and I thought I want to design gorgeous costumes for gorgeous stars and it was my lifelong ambition. I never wanted anything else. I never changed". He worked in the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana after high school. His family moved at least twice before settling in San Bernardino, California. He studied design at the Chouinard Art Institute, now the California Institute of the Arts. Unable to find work in the entertainment industry, he worked in a florist shop in Beverly Hills, where he met Aaron Spelling, who hired Miller to design clothes for the various television series.

Career Miller designed costumes for multiple Spelling-produced television series, including Charlie's Angels, The Love Boat and Green Acres, His designs, in particular those made for the characters Alexis Colby (Joan Collins) and Dominique Deveraux (Diahann Carroll), set a fashion trend for thick shoulder pads, power suits and "old-Hollywood-style wardrobe of sequined gowns, luncheon suits, wide-brimmed hats, frivolous veils, fur stoles and the occasional turban."

For two decades he designed a line of jewelry for QVC. A 2005 collaboration with Joan Rivers and Kenneth Jay Lane, the Scoundrel Collection, was designed for the Broadway production of the musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The collection was presented on QVC with an April 25, 2005 broadcast and sold at the Imperial Theatre's concessionaire.

In 2000, he received the Costume Designers Guild Career Achievement Award.

Personal life and death In 1980, Miller married Sandra Stream, the daughter of one of his private clients, New Orleans socialite Matilda Gray Stream. They divorced in 1993. Friend and actress Joan Collins broke the news that Miller had died in his sleep in Woodland Hills, California on June 6, 2012; he was 79 years old.