Fashion This article is more than 11 years oldObituaryNolan Miller obituary
This article is more than 11 years oldFashion designer best known for creating the glamorous clothes worn by the stars of Dynasty and Charlie's AngelsNolan Miller escaped from his hardscrabble childhood to the movies each Saturday to admire every peplum and ruffle worn by the stars. His ambition was to dress Joan Crawford, and he fulfilled it. More importantly, Nolan, who has died aged 79, revived Crawford's merciless chic for the television series Dynasty (1981-89), recreating the hard drama of her style for Joan Collins as its resident bitch, Alexis Carrington Colby. He set such a dominant norm for dressing up that to this day wedding guests and Ascot attenders take Alexis as a model.
Miller was born in Burkburnett, Texas, one of five children of a carpenter and a cotton-picker who followed the Okie route west to San Bernardino in California. He studied at art college, longing to be a studio designer, graduating just as the studios were closing their design departments, and made do with a job in a flower shop.
He met Crawford when dispatched to trim her Christmas tree, and encountered Carolyn Jones, a contract player at Paramount, who visited the shop with her then husband, Aaron Spelling, a television scriptwriter. Jones asked Miller to design her clothes for a PR junket. Spelling was impressed by his unfazed grasp of glamour, and when Spelling turned to television production, he hired Miller to design costumes for the Zane Grey Theatre series. Miller opened an atelier in 1957 for private clients, and for television work, which he believed was the future.
Besides Zane Grey, Miller created the wardrobe for the live TV Matinee Theatre, anything from a biblical melodrama to a romcom, scrambled together for pennies, and he carried over his expertise at working with low budgets into the new made-for-television films of the 1960s. He kept his spirits up by dressing Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor, sometimes for Oscar ceremonies. After Spelling set up a production company in 1972, he relied on Miller for TV films, and then for series – Fantasy Island, The Love Boat – where the ambient glitz was on the backs of the female leads, and, with Charlie's Angels, on their fronts, too, although barely. Miller put Farrah Fawcett into semi-sheer blouses without a bra, in imitation of Paris couture, and refused to tape over her nipples: "Everyone said ... you won't get by with this. But we did."
Spelling, the son of a tailor, translated to television the old-time movie moguls' understanding that a mass audience enjoyed vicarious luxury, especially clothes. Miller said that Spelling knew how a show should look, and like Louis B Mayer, usually left the realisation of that look to his chosen talent. The executive producer Douglas Cramer called Miller "Aaron's secret weapon", and Spelling deployed him full strength in 1981, telling Miller he would be happy with a new project, costume budget $35,000 a week: "I don't want to see anybody in the same thing twice."
The first series of Dynasty was restrained – six suits, two blazers and 50 ties for the male lead, John Forsythe, and a tentative experiment with the shoulders of Linda Evans as Krystle Carrington.
Miller had made period costumes for her in other shows, with correct lines that did not flatter her swimmer's shoulders atop a narrow body. He awarded Krystle the jutting shoulder pads which had just been shown at fashion shows in Paris and Milan. Alexis was not cast by the last scene of the first series, so Miller dressed an extra in a stock suit and improvised hat with concealing veil. When Collins was confirmed for the part, he made a $3,000 upgraded version of the suit, and realised that this Joan had the elan of Crawford, plus her ability to carry off simultaneously a hat, stole, clutch bag, cigarette and gauntlet gloves. "I say, darling, d'you think we're going over the top?" Miller recalled Collins asking. He told her no, utter intimidation was the goal. Miller won an Emmy for the show in 1984, created more than 3,000 outfits for it, and profited from retail sales of Dynasty labelled suits and from a cheaper range under his own name.
He also designed costumes for the TV series The Addams Family, adapting Charles Addams's drawings of the garb of the ghoulish Morticia as a gown of black cobwebs. Miller continued to work through the 90s, but seemed behind the times as glamour went out of fashion in television.
In 1980 Miller married Sandra Stream, the daughter of one of his early private clients. They divorced in 1993, and for some years, Miller lived with the Spelling family. After a quarrel, he moved out and retreated to the Motion Picture & Television retirement community.
Nolan Bertrandoff Miller, costume designer, born 8 January1933; died 6 June 2012
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