The two-time Tony Award-winning theater and costume designer Willa Kim, whose notable works included musicals like “Sophisticated Ladies” and “The Will Rogers Follies,” died Friday in Washington, aged 99.
Kim — who was in reportedly poor health and living with her niece — was a celebrated innovator in dance, theater and screen costume design: the first to introduce Lycra jersey, now used as a default, to dancers’ costumes, and the first to begin fabric painting, which became another modern standard.
She received her first Tony in 1981, and then again a decade later, in 1991, and was nominated for four more. In 1981, she was also the recipient of an Emmy for Outstanding Costume Design, for “The Tempest Live” with the San Francisco Ballet. Beginning in the 1940s, Kim worked with Broadway legend Raoul Pène du Bois, for whom she was an apprentice. She would go on to dress stars like Julie Andrews, Liza Minnelli, Gregory Hines, Judith Jamison and Raquel Welch.
Kim, born Wullah Mei Ok Kim to Korean immigrants in Southern California on June 30, 1917, was one of six children. The family would later move to Los Angeles, though Kim would call New York home most of her life after settling there in the 1960s. Her brother, Col. Young Oak Kim, was a decorated war hero and a pillar of the California Korean American community.
In 2003, Myung Hee Cho — herself a noted set and costume designer — told KoreAm Journal that seeing Kim’s designs as a young girl “gave [her] hope.” “It was inspiring to read that a Korean American can be successful and respected in theater.”
Kim said she never ran into problems being Asian American in the theater world.
“It chose me, rather than my choosing it,” she said.
