Biography

Marilyn Vance is a successful Costume Designer in the entertainment industry, having costume designed over 60 Feature Films, 5 Television films and a Mini-Series. Vance has an innate talent for communicating her broad creative vision to collaborating with directors, production designers and cinematographers all the while serving the integrity of the film moving the story along....from Contemporary to Period to Fantasy, all with the same eye for style and design to enrich the film and characters. Vance set the trends of the time with her character designed portrayals in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Pretty in Pink and Pretty Woman.Vance was the first female to costume design for the action genre, designing 48 hours, Die Hard 1 & 2, The Untouchables, Predator 1 & 2, Time Cop, Road House and The Last Boyscout. Being devoted to character and story she achieves an authenticity no matter the genre: from the gripping period dramas Sommersby and The Untouchables to the fantasy world of Mystery Men, Streets Of Fire and The Rocketeer to the adventure films Romancing The Stone and The Getaway to name a few. All designed with vision to create consistently believable characters.Marilyn Vance's career has garnered her an Academy Award nomination for The Untouchables, BAFTA nominations for The Untouchables and Pretty Woman. In addition she was nominated for the Saturn Award for Mystery Men and won the Saturn Award for The Rocketeer. She was nominated for a Costume Designers Guild award for the mini series Bonnie and Clyde and was on the cover of the Costume Designers Emmy issue magazine with a two page spread of Bonnie and Clyde being it was a first time two night event for THE History Channel, A&E and Lifetime simultaneously.

In 2009 The Costume Designers Guild honored Vance with the Career Achievement Award at their yearly event sponsored by Lacoste and Swarovski. A collage reel of some of the films she costume designed was edited for the event. In 2012 Vance was asked by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to participate in an exhibition to be mounted and travel for four years around the world exhibiting Characters through Costume in Film from 1912 to 2012. The films chosen to represent Pop Culture and considered Iconic for character are Die Hard, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, The Untouchables and Pretty Woman. In 2015 an exhibit mounted by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences along with The Victoria & Albert Museum, London and curated by Deborah Nadoolman Landis an Academy Award nominee for costume design launched the exhibit held in the soon to be Academy Museum for a limited time. The Hollywood Costume exhibit celebrated and examined costume design as an essential tool of cinematic storytelling. The Pretty Woman Red Gown and the very distressed Die Hard Undershirt and Pants were displayed in this unique setting along with 100 other iconic costumes from the 1900's to present day. At this time the Die Hard costume is in the permanent collection at the Smithsonian.

For Vance, total involvement and a collaborative spirit are key. As a costume designer she found she had influence over the look and feel of a film, producing was a natural segue. Not one to limit her creative reach, she channeled her energies into producing as well as costume designing the studio films Time Cop, Judgment Night and The Getaway. The Independent films that Vance shepherded from script to screen and produced are Embrace of the Vampire, The Legend of Gator Face and Digging to China. Vance developed the concept, designed and was an executive producer on the television series Pacific Blue. She also designed and produced the television series Unknown Sender. For theater she designed the play In Heat and painted the scenic backdrop for the play along with another designer/painter. The play was reviewed in the LA Times as being OZ like. In 2016 Vance costumed designed Betraying the Lion a play (filmed) set in the16th century Venice Ghetto with 25 actors having significant parts. The play was staged at The Museum of Tolerance.
- IMDb mini biography by: Marilyn Vance

Designing Hollywood