Canonero was born in Turin, Italy. She attended university in Genoa, studying fashion, period design, and art history before moving to England in the late 1960s to complete her studies.[1] She designed for friends' boutiques in London and began assisting in commercials, meeting many filmmakers along the way, including director Hugh Hudson.[2] He gave Canonero her first break on his short film, which was shot on location in Sicily. She was involved in all aspects of the production and found the entire process captivating.[1] By chance, Canonero was also invited to watch Stanley Kubrick shoot parts of the landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and the director asked her to collaborate with him on his next feature film.[2]
Career
Canonero received her first major screen credits for designing costumes for Kubrick's dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange (1971). She created an instantly recognizable character's wardrobe that perfectly captures the film's discourse on class, money, and power through provoking aesthetics, which has since become an enduring inspiration for fashion icons and designers.[3] Canonero continued her professional relationship with the director on the epic period drama Barry Lyndon (1975). During an extensive preproduction period, she and Swedish costume designer Ulla-Britt Söderlund examined original 18th-century attire at London's Victoria and Albert Museum and copied patterns from the collection to produce authentic-looking film garments.[1] They also drew inspiration from period-defining art, including portraits by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds, genre paintings by Jean Siméon Chardin, as well as the bawdy paintings by William Hogarth, among others.[1] For their work in the film, Canonero and Söderlund won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design.[2] Then film director George Lucas approached her to design costumes for his space opera Star Wars (1977), an offer she eventually turned down and later considered the biggest missed opportunity of her career.[2] Canonero worked with Kubrick once again on the cult psychological horror The Shining (1980). She won her second Academy Award for another collaboration with Hudson, this time on his iconic sports drama Chariots of Fire (1981), the true story of two British athletes in the 1924 Olympics. She superbly interpreted the 1920s English tweeds, blazers, and college garb to the extent of inspiring 1980s fashion trends; such great success led to an offer for Canonero to create a clothing line for men's-wear manufacturer Norman Hilton, for which she received a special Coty Award.[2]
Canonero’s next major film was Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), based on Danish author Karen Blixen's autobiographical memoir of the same name about her decade-long experiences in colonial Kenya starting just before the outbreak of World War I. Canonero faced a formidable challenge when tasked in a strict three-month term to research, design, and produce hundreds of costumes appropriate for a vast ensemble of characters that includes African natives, white hunters, and European nobility. It took her on an intense journey everywhere, from the New York Public Library to the various museums and costume houses across England and Italy, and from the Blixen’s home in Denmark to Africa, where she met anthropologist Richard Leakey, who consulted her on less known aspects of African fashion in the 1910s, especially those regarding the ingenious groups.[4]
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