Tony Winner, Broadway Costume Legend, FIT Alum

It’s hard to imagine Broadway musical history without legendary costume designer and FIT alum Patricia Zipprodt (1925–99). She received 11 Tony Award nominations and won three—for Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Cabaret (1966), and Sweet Charity (1986), and also designed Pippin (1972) and Chicago (1975). Before she died, Zipprodt worked on an illustrated memoir with Arnold Wengrow, now a professor emeritus of drama at University of North Carolina Asheville. This spring, the book, If The Song Doesn’t Work, Change the Dress (Bloomsbury), was finally published, including research that Wengrow conducted in the Special Collections unit of FIT’s Gladys Marcus Library. 

Zipprodt, Fashion Design ’53, already had a degree from Wellesley when she attended FIT, back when the college held classes at the High School of Needle Trades three blocks south. In her typically spirited style, she writes, “I kept going down the ‘up’ staircase and getting demerits. If I was sick (I had a lot of strep throat at that time) I had to bring a note from home. I became my own mother. I would write to the dean and say, “Patricia Zipprodt couldn’t go to school today because she had strep throat. Signed, Patricia Zipprodt.” In 1977, she received the Mortimer C. Ritter Award, presented to an outstanding FIT Art and Design graduate.

Below, a few sketches of her Tony Award–winning costume designs from the memoir:

Zipprodt was the sole gentile on the production team of “Fiddler on the Roof,” a musical based on stories by Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. Seeking authenticity, the producers arranged for her to interview Jewish garment workers and visit Jewish communities in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The look of the show was inspired by the dreamy, modernist paintings of Marc Chagall, but her costumes were meant to “deal with the homely realism of poverty.” Her fee for a year of work was a mere $5,000. “I don’t know what I lived on,” she writes. Photo: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; ©Estate of Patricia Zipprodt.

Zipprodt won her second Tony for Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret,” produced by Hal Prince. The looks worn by female dancers at the Kit Kat Club became famous, but Zipprodt’s real education was working with cabaret legend Lotte Lenya, who originated the role of Frӓulein Schneider. Lenya didn’t like one of Zipprodt’s designs, Zipprodt writes. “My ego was still tightly bound to my work in those days, and I had to put my thoughts to the needs of the performer ahead of my own needs as a designer.” Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; ©Estate of Patricia Zipprodt.

Zipprodt’s designs for “Chicago,” directed by Bob Fosse. Working with the celebrated director could be challenging. As they began the process of creating designs for Pippin, Zipprodt found his direction puzzlingly laconic. He wanted the styles to be “magical” and “anachronistic,” he said, but she remained blocked. What did he mean, she asked, by “anachronistic”? Fosse replied, “Jesus Christ in tennis shoes.” Those five words were all she needed to create a “costume plot” for the entire show. Photo: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; ©Estate of Patricia Zipprodt.