Philippe Halsman · Public domain

Adrian became MGM's head costume designer in 1928 and spent thirteen years dressing Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Jean Harlow, and Katharine Hepburn in gowns so recognizable that the studio credited him onscreen simply as 'Gowns by Adrian.' His best-known design endures almost by accident: the ruby slippers he made for Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), created to show off Technicolor rather than for any symbolic weight later readers gave them. He left MGM in 1941 to run his own fashion house, winning a Coty Award in 1945.