Biography

Albert Wolsky was born in Paris, France in 1930. He graduated from City College of New York and began to work in the travel industry. After several years of doing this, he decided at age 30, he wanted to pursue a career as a costume designer. His first entree was working as a "gofor" to legendary costume maker Helene Pons during her execution of the Adrian/Tony Duquette designs for the original Broadway production of "Camelot". His abilities were noticed by many of the designers working with Miss Pons and he began to work his way up to assisting some of the highest regarded designers in New York, including Theoni Aldredge. Within six years, he was designing Broadway productions under his own name and in 1968, he would have his first film credit, "The heart is a Lonely Hunter".

Bringing the knowledge he learned while working on Broadway, Mr. Wolsky would concentrate his career on the designing of feature films. Over the next three decades he built a body of work impressive not only by size but by its addressing every possible film genre with a consistent level of design quality. His easy manner and eye for detail would not only bring him repeat assignments from his colleagues but earn him the reputation as both Paul Muzarsky's and the late Bob Fosse's costume designer. To date, he has been nominated for the Academy Award five times, winning it twice. He was also honored by The Costume Designer's Guild with their lifetime achievement award.
- IMDb mini biography by: anonymous

Frequently worked with Bob Fosse.

Has distinguished his work by the use of highly controlled color palettes inspite of being partically color blind.

Longtime partner of actor/dancer James Mitchell, who died in 2010.

Worked as a travel agent until age 30.

As of 2022, he has contributed with the costume design of five films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: Lenny (1974), The Turning Point (1977), An Unmarried Woman (1978), All That Jazz (1979), Bugsy (1991) and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014). The latter film is a winner in the category.

[on Academy Awards for costume design] What happens is the one with the corsets wins, always, always, always.

When an actor says, 'I wouldn't wear that,' I answer, 'neither would I, that's why I call it a costume'.