Eiko Ishioka

Sometimes, when you start to look into the origins of an image, you discover all sorts of unexpected connections.

A while back, I came across this great Japanese poster for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, one of the iconic movies of my teenage years.

I thought I'd post it on my Pinterest page (which is here, if you're interested, though I don't often use it)  so I went searching for information about the artist. It turns out to be the work of the designer Eiko Ishioka, who went on to collaborate with Coppola as costume designer on another of his films, Dracula. 

More interestingly for me, she also designed the costumes for Tarsem Singh's extraordinarily strange and beautiful movie 'The Fall', which I reviewed a few years ago. It's one of the most visually stunning films I've ever seen, thanks in part to the costumes. Look at this! 

And these!

Image found on Cinebeats, where it accompanies this very good review of The Fall.

Not only that, she also designed costumes for the 'Hurricane' tour by the singer Grace Jones in 2009. I don't know a lot about Grace Jones, but I do remember being struck by the brilliant first single from Hurricane, Let Me Go. Listen to the lyrics; it's like a compressed autobiographical novel, with the singer playing both herself and her mother, and making us sympathise with both. 

Here she is performing Let Me Go live while dressed like a mad zebra goddess.

Eiko Ishioka died in 2012. There are more pictures of her creations on this Pinterest board.

Photo by Brigitte Lacombe, from eikoishioka.com
(which seems to consist only of this photo).