Willa Kim
Tony Award-winning costume designer Willa Kim died on Dec. 23 on Vashon Island, where she had been staying with a niece, according to the New York Times. She was 99 and had been in poor health.
Born Wullah Mei Ok Kim in 1917 to Korean immigrants, Kim attended the Chouinard Art Institute (now the California Institute of the Arts) on a scholarship. She began her design work in film, under the auspices of Raoul Pene du Bois, who is known for the costume and set design of the circus dream-musical sequences in the movie Lady in the Dark, starring Ginger Rogers.
Kim won a Tony Award for her design of The Will Rogers Follies in 1991, 10 years after her first win for Sophisticated Ladies.