“Luck was with me,” costume designer Theodora Van Runkle, right, said of *Bonnie and Clyde* star Faye Dunaway. “It just turned out that Faye looks ravishing in berets.”

When Film Set the Fashion

Theadora Van Runkle—the costume designer behind Bonnie and Clyde, Bullitt, and The Thomas Crown Affair—defined Hollywood cool

By Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger

As a young woman, Theadora Van Runkle was desperately trying to break into show business while struggling to make ends meet. She had already spent several years in the Hollywood wilderness, illustrating fashion designs for the May Company and drawing at night while holding her children in her lap, when one Sunday afternoon she was hand-watering the roses in her garden. A rainbow suddenly appeared in her sprinkler.

“I just felt the presence of a great spirit,” the Oscar-nominated costume designer recalled years later for the Oral History project at the Margaret Herrick Library. Van Runkle had a message for the spirit: “I said, ‘Please, please give me some recognition for my artwork, I beg of you!’”