Edith Head gets her say in a one-woman show

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Eight-time Oscar-winning costume designer Edith Head (“The Heiress,” “Roman Holiday,” “The Sting”) never changed her appearance over the decades. She always wore dark glasses and business suits, and kept her hair cropped.

But Susan Claassen, who plays the designer in the one-woman show “A Conversation With Edith Head,” which opens Friday at the Odyssey Theatre, said that her personal style was once criticized by the famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.

“When Hedda Hopper put her on the worst dressed list -- she said how dare this fashion ingrate dress the world’s most glamorous women when she looks like her clothes come from the pages of the Sears Roebuck Catalogue -- Edith locked herself in the office for a few days,” Claassen said. “There were things that were really painful to her, but it didn’t stop her.”

Read more about Edith Head and Claassen’s ‘A Conversation With Edith Head.’

-- Susan King