Eiko Ishioka

Japanese artist and costume designer

Eiko Ishioka (石岡 瑛子) was a Japanese art director, costume designer, and graphic designer known for her work in stage, screen, advertising, and print media. Noted for her advertising campaigns for the Japanese boutique chain Parco, she collaborated with sportswear company Descente in designing uniforms and outerwear for members of the Swiss, Canadian, Japanese, and Spanish teams at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and was the director of costume design for the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Ishioka was born in Tokyo to a commercial graphic designer father and a housewife mother. Although her father encouraged her interest in art as a child, he discouraged her desire to follow him into the business. She graduated from the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. As director of costume design for opening ceremony of 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ishioka found inspiration from art pieces such as Greek statues and African helmets. As a result, a large number of costumes that are able to visualize fabric texture, actions, and aura were designed under her hands.

Ishioka began her career with the advertising division of the cosmetics company Shiseido in 1961 and won Japan's most prestigious advertising award four years later. Ishioka was discovered by Tsuji Masuda who created Parco Ikebukuro from the ailing Marubutsu Department Store. When Parco did well and expanded to a Shibuya location in 1973, Ishioka designed Parco Shibuya's first 15 second commercial for the grand opening with "a tall, thin black woman, dressed in a black bikini, dancing with a very small man in a Santa Claus outfit". She became deeply involved in Parco's image. Her last Parco campaign involved Faye Dunaway as "face of Parco" wearing black, on a black chair against a black wall, and peeling and eating an egg in one minute as "a film for Parco." She became its chief art director in 1971 and her work there is noted for several campaigns featuring Faye Dunaway and for its open and surreal eroticism. In 1983 she ended her association with Parco and opened her own design firm. In 2003, she designed the logo for the Houston Rockets.

In 1985 director Paul Schrader chose Ishioka to be the production designer for his 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. Her work went on to win her a special award for artistic contribution at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Ishioka's work with Francis Ford Coppola on the poster for the Japanese release of Apocalypse Now led to their later collaboration in Coppola's Dracula, which earned Ishioka an Academy Award. She also received two Tony Award nominations in 1988 for the stage and costume design of the Broadway play M. Butterfly. In 2012, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design for Mirror Mirror and won the Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Fantasy Film.

Ishioka died of pancreatic cancer in Tokyo on January 21, 2012. She married her companion Nicholas Soultanakis in hospital a few months before her death.