Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Phyllis Dalton: A Career in Costume: From Lawrence of Arabia to the Princess Bride

Phyllis Dalton: A Career in Costume: From Lawrence of Arabia to the Princess Bride

Ballinger, Alexander

Hardcover

Fashion BiographiesFashion & AccessoriesFilm Studies

ISBN10: 1399995642
ISBN13: 9781399995641
Publisher: Clapperboard Books
Published: Jan 6 2026
Pages: 320
Weight: 4.20
Height: 1.38 Width: 9.29 Depth: 11.19
Language: English
The extraordinary story of costume designer Phyllis Dalton, filled with insights, recollections, and revelations from a life spent on the great film locations of the twentieth century

In conversation with film historian Alexander Ballinger, Phyllis Dalton (1925-2025) reveals how she created some of the silver screen's most unforgettable and iconic costumes, working with such legendary directors as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, a woman in a man's world.

The book spans Dalton's extraordinary fifty-year career in the film industry, from sewing in Soho workrooms on Laurence Olivier's Henry V via intelligence work at Bletchley Park; apprenticeship at Gainsborough Studios to designing costumes on The Man Who Knew Too Much; the epic undertakings of costuming Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago (Oscar, Best Costume Design), and Oliver!; through to cult classics A Private Function and The Princess Bride to her successful late collaboration with a young Kenneth Branagh on Henry V (Oscar, Best Costume Design), Dead Again, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Many of the book's illustrations, sourced from Dalton's personal archive, showcase unique ephemera, fabric swatches, production stills, large format pencil-and-watercolour sketches, and production notebooks from six decades of filmmaking. Many of these stunning images, including Dalton's personal on-location photographs from the Lawrence of Arabia shoot, have never been published before.

Distributed for Clapperboard Books

Also in

Fashion Biographies

View All