Wada, Emi
Emi Wada, born in 1937 in Kyoto Prefecture, is an Academy Award-winning theatrical, movie and ballet costume designer from Japan.
She won an Oscar for the extraordinary medieval costumes in Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1986), a war saga in which the armies wear symbolic colours: red for violence, blue for innocence, yellow for ambiguity. Also, Wada was active in theatre set design. In 1987, the Cannes Film Festival honoured her for her creations. In 2004 she designed the costumes for Zhang Yimou’s film The Forest of Flying Daggers.
The designer has also released multiple books of her works, including My Costumes, EMI WADA WORKS, and My Life in the Making, the latter of which was created on pieces of textiles with pictures of her work inside.
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