Julia Squire

Julia Squire (1926–1989) was a British costume designer for film. Squire established a career within British period, comedy and melodrama cinema in the 1950s, costuming at least fifteen films within the decade.^[1]

Julia Squire
Born	26 February 1926 Hambledon, Surrey
Died	9 August 1989 (aged 63) Oxfordshire
Occupation	Costume designer

Born in Surrey, Julia went to St Michael's school, Petworth, then aged 18, she enrolled at Central School of Art, London.^[1] Her father was the author and editor J C Squire.

Career

Squire's first film costuming credit was as an assistant to Orry-Kelly on London Town (1946). In 1948, she assisted George K. Benda on Bonnie Prince Charlie, starring David Niven.^[2] For the whole decade of the 1950s, Squire was busy with a range of British films, working with renowned directors Powell and Pressburger, John Huston, and David Lean, in the "experimental" early days of Technicolor.^[3]

In Gone to Earth (1950), Julia and her co-designer Ivy Baker created a period drama that retained the style of the mid-twentieth century. Film historian Jonathan Faiers has described their design of a dress for actor Jennifer Jones as a "shocking shade of yellow... contrasting against the dazzling Technicolor azure sky ... it is otherworldly, exotic, sexual, bewitching and repulsive".^[4]

The Magic Box, for which Squire was main costume designer, was made for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and had a costume budget of £20,000. Interviewed to promote the film, Squire explained she had two months to find the right "faded grey suit" for the star Robert Donat, and had a "tricky problem" with Laurence Olivier's policeman's tunic.^[2]

In 1952, working from Berman's costume house, Julia designed the costumes for Moulin Rouge, a colourful biopic of Toulouse-Lautrec, starring José Ferrer.^[5] The New York Times praised Squire's costumes' contribution to the "vivacious and exciting" film.^[6]

Squire's first marriage was to actor George Baker. In an interview in the 2000s, Baker described how their marriage was "marred by debt" and hurt by his infidelities.^[7]

She died in 1989, in Oxfordshire, England.

Selected filmography

• Gone to Earth (1950), directed by Powell & Pressburger.
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1950), co-designed with Beatrice Dawson.
• The Magic Box (1951)
• Moulin Rouge (1952)
• Women of Twilight (1952)
• The Heart of the Matter (1953)
• The Captain's Paradise (1953)
• An Inspector Calls (1954)
• Father Brown (1954)^[8]
• Hobson's Choice (1954), co-designed with John Armstrong.^[9]
• The Man Who Loved Redheads (1954)
• Double Cross (1955)
• Port Afrique (1956)
• Beyond this Place (1958)
• Web of Evidence (1959)