NEW YORK — Costume designer and not your run-of-the-mill makeup artist Van Smith, who let loose on the characters in John Waters’ films, died of a heart attack Dec. 5 at his home in Marianna, Fla., said his sister, Cynthia Van Voris. He was 61.
A memorial is planned for early next year in Baltimore.
“Fashion in our early movies was used to frighten people and to alarm them,” Waters said in an interview. “I think Van helped to invent that.”
After attending a junior college in his hometown of Marianna, Fla., Smith shipped out to Baltimore to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art. There he befriended Waters and other creative-minded people. “We were a bohemian crowd that hung around together and took LSD to tell you the truth,” Waters said.
Smith became a steadfast collaborator of Waters, with the pair canvassing local thrift stores, checking out art galleries and viewing trashy movies. “I wouldn’t have met him unless he was unusual,” Waters said, laughing. “I mean [actress] Mink Stole used to wear Halloween costumes every day, I dressed like a hippie pimp. We always had a look not just in films, but in life.”
Once his school days ended, Smith relocated to Manhattan where he earned his keep as a fashion illustrator at Women’s Wear Daily. He later hopscotched around the country, living in San Francisco, New York and Baltimore. He provided the illustrations for Butterick patterns for years and owned an antiques store in Baltimore. But whenever Waters dialed him up for a new project, he was at the ready. Just last week the pair were chatting about Waters’ next movie, “an insane children’s movie,” which the filmmaker declined to name.
“There was a tradition in my movies that one of the actors always cried when he saw a costume.” Waters said. “It happened in every single movie and we always waited to see who it would be. We were this insane theater group and all the stars were our friends.”
Smith suited up a battery of celebrities including Johnny Depp, Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorf, Ricki Lake and Kathleen Turner. But it was the transvestite Divine with her beyond-severe makeup, circulation-inhibiting eveningwear and buzzed bouffants in the 1972 flick “Pink Flamingos” that really made a name for Smith.
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“He helped invent the trash aesthetic,” Waters said. “His inspiration would be Frederick’s of Hollywood, Jayne Mansfield and Godzilla, and he would put that on a woman who weighed 350 pounds who was a man.”
Divine’s head-to-toe style would be completely overhauled for the next movie, Waters said.
Both Divine and Lake, in their “Hairspray” film appearances, would help perpetuate that offbeat appeal, especially Lake in a Smith-designed pink satin cockroach-covered ballgown.
Smith was well-schooled in art history. “He was guy who could talk about Claire McCardell, too,” said Pat Moran, Waters’ casting director and associate producer who met Smith 40 years ago. “He was a big fan of Balenciaga as well as Stephen Sprouse. He loved Zandra Rhodes’ textiles.”
Smith created mesmerizing costumes despite having limited feeling in his hands from spina bifida, Moran said. Instead of being idle, he started to draw. “He was physically limited with his hands so he would run the fabric against his lip to feel it,” Moran said. “But he could still draw the thinnest line on Divine’s lip.”
Known to be “billy-goat gruff,” Smith wouldn’t hold back whether the question was “Do I look fat?” or “How does my hair look?” “If you asked Van what his opinion was, you certainly did get it,” Moran said. “That was kind of refreshing in a world that is trying to be so politically correct.”
He also wasn’t beyond a little double-dipping. Waters said he and his friend used to double their travelers’ checks — one would report theirs missing and the other would cash them in. “But believe me he bought costumes with that money. We got our budget any way we could. Those were our yippie years.”
In addition to Van Voris, Smith is survived by his mother, Eloise, and a brother, William.