What a Way To Go!: A Story Told In 73 Costumes

Edith Head was an American fashion designer who won a record eight Academy Awards for Best Costume Design and is now considered to be one of the greatest and most influential costume designers in film history.

Head’s work for the 1964 black comedy film What a Way to Go! is often praised as being one of her best works since the movie displayed costumes on what is now popularly termed “camp.” What a Way To Go starrs Shirley MacLaine who plays Louisa, a humble but incredibly wealthy widow when we first meet her. She has a spectacular but terrible gift where every man she marries becomes extremely rich and then dies quickly after. This movie is what I can simply say… a kaleidoscope of fantastical feathers and diamonds from rural America to glitzy New York. It’s very satirical and even parodies popular movie styles such as the movie musical and silent films when she tells her series of unfortunate marriages and eccentric husbands who all met their ends.

As I’ve said, this movie is campy and has layers upon layers on what could be discussed, but what makes this movie so memorable to me and many others almost 60 years post-release is the costume design. To make the 73 costumes, Head was given a budget of half a million dollars for the clothes and Harry Winston provided roughly 3.5 million dollars worth of jewels.

Remember, this is in 1964.

Louisa’s costumes, other than being fun and campy, tells a story on its own. They reflect where she is in life and which husband she’s married to. Before she got married, she wore a red and white polkadot babydoll dress to go on a date with Leonard, the wealthiest man in town, to reflect her youth and naivety.

However, Louisa has no ambition of marrying for fortune, she wants to marry for love. So, she dumps Leonard and falls in love with Edgar, a working class man, instead. Before Edgar became successful, Louisa wore stereotypical small town farm girl outfits with gingham and plaid to match her husband’s attire. However, as Edgar became much more successful, plaid and gingham became suits and fur lined coats to signify their ascend in status.

Life after riches isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, as we see Edgar’s descent into work addiction and spending less time with Louisa. This extravagant red and white polkadot dress she wore when she fought with Edgar is a clear direct upgrade from the earlier red and white polkadot dress, showing that she’s still a small town girl at heart who misses the simple lifestyle, but is now able to afford the extra fabrics.

“A little hard work never killed anybody!” Edgar said, as he collapsed from exhaustion. Edgar’s death led Louisa to Paris, where she married the starving artist, Larry. Since her curse never allows Louisa to relish in simple poverty bliss, Larry became successful after marrying her. At this moment, Louisa wears abstract colourful dresses courtesy of her husband’s artwork. Like Edgar, Larry became obsessed with his work, and only sees Louisa as another one of his canvases.

Her escapade with Larry had to come to an end when he died and finally Louisa meets an already rich business man, Rod. Rod and Louisa live a luxurious and glamorous city life where she wears an abundance of fur, jewels, pearls, and other high fashion items that fit with his upper class circle. We can see that the costumes for these parts are the most expensive and lavish, which fits her status at the moment.

Can you guess what happens next? Yep, Rod dies.

Next, she married Pinky, a struggling actor who became a Hollywood star overnight after they hitched. His narcissism caused him to become obsessed with the colour pink, and Louisa had to suffer the brunt of it. At the premiere of Pinky’s latest film, she uncomfortably wore a gorgeous head to toe cotton candy fur coat over a pink gown, with matching pink gloves, a pink purse, and even a pink beehive wig. This look is so over the top and so undeniably camp.

Despite the many incredible looks made by Head for Louisa, this pink look remains the most iconic. It was even referenced in Lizzo’s look for 2019’s Met Gala “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” — very fitting.

But under all of that feather filled fantasia, these costumes also implies something very sad. From the variety of looks, we can see how Louisa can easily change her style for the men she loves, and in the case of Larry, she even lets herself become another one of his canvases, completely abandoning the integrity of dressing herself. For me, this shows how much she puts herself into her marriages, completely devoting herself into fitting into her husbands’ world — making personas of herself.

She can never truly find happiness not because she keeps losing husbands, but because she lacks self identity. When she’s not swooning over a man, she always wears dark and muted colours, proving that she feels her life is colourless without someone to please. Four times a widow, four times wearing black.

-written by Anggi(kru’20)-