Full Name Kathrina Klotz Role Costume designer | Name Florence Klotz Nationality United States Known for Costume designer | |
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Born October 28, 1920 Brooklyn, New York Died November 1, 2006, New York City, New York, United States Awards Tony Award for Best Costume Design, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design Nominations Academy Award for Best Costume Design Similar People Irene Sharaff, Boris Aronson, Tharon Musser, Harold Prince, Patricia Birch | ||
Education Parsons School of Design | ||
Florence Klotz (October 28, 1920 – November 1, 2006) was an American costume designer on Broadway and film.
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Biography
Originally named as Kathrina Klotz, she later changed her name to "Florence" and was often nicknamed "Flossie".
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she graduated from Parsons School of Design, and went to work painting fabrics for Brooks Costumes.
Klotz began her career in 1951 as an assistant to Irene Sharaff, who designed the costumes for Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's The King and I It was there she met her companion for the next half century Ruth Mitchell who later would co-produce Broadway shows with Harold S. Prince.
She worked with Jerome Robbins, designing costumes for Madama Butterfly for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and the film version of A Little Night Music. She became friendly with actress Elizabeth Taylor on the set of this last venture, for which Klotz was nominated for an Academy Award — Taylor asked Klotz to design the lavender dress she wore for her wedding to Senator John Warner in 1976. Other musicals she designed for included City of Angels, On the Twentieth Century, It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman, Grind, and The Little Foxes.
Costume design
Klotz designed costumes for many Broadway productions, including:
Death
Klotz died at her Manhattan home of cardiac arrest at age 86. She is survived by her niece, Suzanne DeMarco. Klotz's partner, producer and stage manager Ruth Mitchell, died in 2000.
Awards
All of the Tony Awards Klotz won were for musicals directed by Hal Prince, with whom she had a long association.
She won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design five times, three L.A. Critic Circle Awards, and two Outer Critics Circle Awards. In 2002, she received the Patricia Zipprodt Award from the Fashion Institute of Technology; and in 2005, she won the Irene Sharaff Lifetime Achievement Award.