# Annie Hadley

Annie Hadley was a fashion designer, entrepreneur, and pattern cutter for film and theatre costumes. As Chief Cutter on major British and Hollywood films, she contributed to five films that won Best Costume Academy Awards, with a further six of her projects nominated for the award.

### Training and early businesses

Annie (birth name Dorothy Ann Brown) was born in 1939 in Sheffield, England. Aged sixteen she enrolled at Sheffield School of Art, where she met Colin Hadley. The couple married in 1958, and by 1965 had four daughters.
In 1961 they had moved to Brighton, where Colin was studying at Brighton College of Art, and in 1965 Annie started an haute couture college course, to become qualified in cutting and sewing high fashion garments. When she graduated, Annie established Bib & Tucker, a childrenswear boutique featuring her own designs. After a couple of years, she closed the shop and moved into high-end production. Annie Hadley Ready-to-Wear was a small factory in King Street in Brighton, which supplied designer boutiques and department stores including Harrods.

### Move into costume

In the late 1970s, Annie Hadley started making working as a freelance maker of costumes for theatre and television. From 1980, she joined the workroom at Glyndebourne Opera in Sussex, working with the head cutter John King. Around 1982, Annie went to Los Angeles to gain experience in Hollywood film costume, and observe studio costume methods. In 1984, she established a workshop on Rock Place in Brighton and employed a team of seamstresses. Projects from this time included the BBC series Blackadder, to designs by Annie Hardinge.

### Collaboration with James Acheson

Annie Hadley's fruitful collaboration with Oscar-winning designer James Acheson started on the film Brazil (1985, directed by Terry Gilliam), when she was part of a small team making the Samurai warrior and the silver winged suit worn by Jonathon Pryce in the dream sequences. Acheson retained Annie for his next project Highlander (1986), a time-travelling action movie.
Acheson and Annie Hadley's next collaboration, The Last Emperor, was an epic-scale film set in Imperial China. Acheson has described how the costumes were made on a tiny budget, requiring ingenuity from Hadley and her team to piece together damask tablecloths and embroidered placemats, to create the luxurious impression of hand-embroidered silk. The Last Emperor was Acheson's first Academy Award win for Best Costume.
Hadley's workshop continued to make costumes for television and theatre alongside the huge film productions. Annie was photographed making costumes for Fat Pig the Musical in pantomime season 1987, and was credited with making costumes for Carrie: The Musical in 1988, a notorious flop that faced serious wardrobing problems when gallons of blood soaked the cast every night.
The Rock Place workshop team was sewing showgirl outfits for Ziegfeld Follies and the Royal Variety Show, when Acheson approached Annie to cut and make the costumes for Dangerous Liasions, an adaptation of the eighteenth century novel and later play Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Hadley and her team had two months to create the structured, elaborate costumes for John Malkovich and Glenn Close. One of Annie Hadley's trainees at the time, Karyn Moriarty, described the “huge amount of work” that went into the "very lavish, colourful costumes". Acheson recalled, “the film was so rushed. We had to start at the end of May and get it out by the end of the year (to qualify for Academy Award consideration)... Dangerous Liaisons was shot in 9 or 10 weeks for $14 million". Once again, Hadley and her team delivered, and James Acheson won the Oscar for Best Costume Design for the film.
The costumes in Dangerous Liaisons were central to the film's theme of aristocratic excess, repression, and sensuality, and they have retained their reputation for historical accuracy. Several costumes made by Annie Hadley for the film were displayed in the Art of Character exhibition at Indiana University in 2021.
Annie Hadley and James Acheson worked together again on Little Buddha.

### Evita (1996)

Annie Hadley was chief cutter on the film Evita, working with costume designer Penny Rose.
Director Alan Parker stated that "Madonna’s wardrobe alone consisted of 85 changes, 39 hats, 45 pairs of shoes and 56 pairs of earrings. Almost all of these were handmade in London". So many costumes, in fact, that Madonna achieved a Guinness world record for most costume changes for a single character.
Annie Hadley travelled with the production team to Buenos Aires to continue making and adjusting Madonna's costumes. The production of the film was famously difficult, due to the hostile atmosphere around the subject and star of the movie. The filming locations were in constant renegotiation and the schedule was compressed into nights and weekend, which meant that costume changes were in flux and outfits for any scene had to be ready at a moment's notice. In addition, Madonna announced during filming that she was pregnant, and so Annie Hadley needed to adjust costumes to hide the star's growing bump.
The film's costumes were praised for avoiding "turning the film's star, Madonna, into a caricature," the New York Times reported, "Ms. Hadley and Ms. Rose edited artfully and interpreted like crazy".

### Collaboration with Sandy Powell

One of Annie's most successful collaborations was with British costume designer Sandy Powell.
The first film that Annie Hadley worked on with Powell was Interview with the Vampire (1994, directed by Neil Jordan).
Powell, Annie Hadley and cutter Dominic Young also collaborated on Elton John's costume for his 50th birthday party in 1997; this enormous and flamboyant costume cost over $80,000, and attracted attention in the press of the time. The costume's lasting impact was recognised by the V&A Museum, where it was showcased in the Diva exhibition in 2023-24.
In 1998, Annie started work as chief cutter on Shakespeare in Love (1998, directed by Jim Madden). Annie Hadley’s team of seven makers worked from February to May 1998 to make 78 costumes for the main cast. The team, including assistant Sue Stevens, was based in a small workshop in Brixton.
Powell commissioned Annie Hadley to make her own outfits for award ceremonies. For the 2004 Oscars ceremony, Powell collected her Best Costume Design award wearing a replica of a dress worn by Cate Blanchett in The Aviator, made by Annie in a different colour and size. In her acceptance speech, Powell acknowledged Annie Hadley as her "partner in crime".
Annie Hadley's last film project was The Young Victoria (2009), for which she made Emily Blunt's nineteenth-century style costumes as the young monarch.

### Death and tribute

Annie Hadley died of cancer in 2010. During her acceptance speech for the BAFTA for costume design, received for The Young Victoria, Sandy Powell said, "I'm surprised to be here. I want to dedicate this to the memory of Annie Hadley who cut the costumes for most of my films. The Young Victoria was her last one. Annie is irreplaceable and we will miss her".