Julie Harris, Bond and Beatles costume designer, dies

Julie Harris with the Beatles in 1964

Julie Harris (centre) is presented with a birthday cake by the Beatles and actor Wilfred Brambell during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night in 1964

An Oscar and Bafta-winning costume designer who designed clothes for the Beatles and Sir Roger Moore’s James Bond has died in London, aged 94.

Julie Harris died in hospital after a brief illness from a chest infection, a close friend confirmed.

Harris designed clothes worn by the Beatles in the films A Hard Day’s Night and Help! and by Sir Roger in the James Bond film Live and Let Die.

She won an Oscar in 1966 for the Julie Christie film Darling.

Her Bafta came the following year for her work on The Wrong Box.

Harris’s many other credits included the James Bond spoof Casino Royale, Carry On Cleo and 1981’s The Great Muppet Caper.

Julie Harris (right) with Ursula Andress in 1966

Harris also designed clothes worn by Ursula Andress (left) in 1967’s Casino Royale

In 1965, after working with the Beatles, she said: “I must be one of the few people who can claim they have seen John, Paul, George and Ringo naked.”

“Julie worked with some of the greatest international stars in the history of the cinema, and for some of its most legendary directors and producers,” said friend Jo Botting.

It was Botting, a senior curator at the British Film Institute National Archive, who confirmed Harris’s death at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in central London on Saturday.

“Her outstanding work was constantly nominated for awards,” Botting continued, remembering her friend as “an amazing woman”.

Harris’s other Bafta nominations came for her work on the horror film Psyche 59, Help!, Casino Royale and The Slipper and the Rose.

Speaking in 2010, Harris recalled working with such Hollywood legends as Jayne Mansfield – a buxom actress, she said, who had been blessed with “quite a figure”.

“She came to a fitting one day in her mink coat with only her underclothes underneath,” she told an audience at the Cinema Museum in London. “I couldn’t believe it.”

BBC

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