Eiko Ishioka was a visionary and absolutely unique art director and costume designer who died nine years ago, on January 21, 2012. Her work on Tarsem Singh’s films, including The Cell and The Fall, is a large part of why they are so visually memorable. Her operatic, magisterial costumes have an otherworldly quality, fusing Eastern and Western influences, and at the same time seeming to have no referents to existing sartorial styles – sui generis creations that are utterly fantastical. Lush, innovative, and outlandishly dramatic, her surreal designs linger in the memory with all the force of the truly original.
