Martin Izquierdo, a theatrical costume designer whose career took off after he designed the feathery wings that gave phantasmic flight to the spiritual messenger in “Angels in America,” Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1991 play, both onstage and in the 2003 HBO version directed by Mike Nichols, died on June 25 at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.
The cause was cardiovascular disease, his partner, the costume designer John Glaser, said.
At the conclusion of “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches,” the first part of the two-part play, the angel of the title makes an impressive entrance, crashing through the ceiling of an AIDS-stricken gay man’s New York apartment and proclaiming, “The great work begins.”
It was Mr. Izquierdo’s ingenuity, and his flamboyant imagination — assisted by a certain amount of technical wizardry — that allowed Ellen McLaughlin, who played the angel on Broadway, and Emma Thompson, the angel in the HBO version, to hover convincingly some 30 feet overhead, framed by prodigious wings that were illuminated from behind. Those wings became a symbol of the production itself, an indelible part of its “astonishing theatrical landscape,” as Frank Rich of The New York Times described the show in a 1993 review.
Their creator arrived in the United States in the 1940s, a young undocumented immigrant from Mexico who had been recruited to do agricultural work in California.
Mr. Izquierdo (pronounced IZZ-key-AIR-doe), who never became a citizen, eventually gravitated to a career as an artist, painting scenery for the theater before becoming a costume designer. In 1978, he left California for New York, where he opened his own studio and spent nearly four decades making costumes and props for film, theater, and the music and fashion industries.
He was best known, however, for the oversized appendages he created for “Angels in America,” which combined genuine and fake feathers that were glued to a steel frame and then attached to a corset worn by the actress playing the angel.
“Wings symbolized the total imaginary world that Martin created for himself with his studio,” Austin Scarlett, a fashion designer and one of Mr. Izquierdo’s many protégés, said in an email.
“Martin was all about making the fantasy come to life in a tangible way. What could only be dreamed of, he made real,” Mr. Scarlett added. “He was a guardian angel to me and countless other artists he took under his ‘wings.’”
Mr. Izquierdo also conjured the large gossamer wings worn by Victoria’s Secret models in the company’s fashion shows, as well as custom regalia for celebrities. His clients included the supermodel Heidi Klum, who commissioned Mr. Izquierdo to create a shockingly lifelike Halloween costume in 2011 that resembled a skinless body, and the designer Marc Jacobs, who, thanks to Mr. Izquierdo, arrived at his annual holiday party in 2006 dressed as a life-size pigeon.
Martin Nunez Izquierdo was born on Jan. 30, 1942, in Mexico City, one of three sons of Rodrigo Izquierdo, an amateur painter who worked in a brewery, and Amaliz (Nunez) Izquierdo.
When he was a young man, he moved to California under the Bracero program, which brought Mexican men to the United States during the labor shortage of World War II. In the late 1940s, the rest of his family joined him in California; they settled on Mandeville Island, near Stockton.
After graduating from Edison High School in Stockton, he briefly served in the Navy in the mid-1960s. He then enrolled at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in San Francisco, where he received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in the late 1960s. His first job as a designer was creating window displays for Macy’s in San Francisco.
In his mid-30s he moved to New York, where he found a one-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. He lived there for the rest of his life.
Mr. Izquierdo spent several years working as an art department supervisor for the Brooks-Van Horn Costume Company before 1981, when he his own studio, where he was the creative director and Anne Marie Alessi ran the business side. The studio closed in 2020, during the Covid pandemic.
Throughout his long career, he worked on the costumes for some two dozen Broadway shows, including the most recent revival of “Gypsy,” in 2024, and a number of films and music videos, including the 2002 movie “Spider-Man” and Kanye West’s 2010 “Runaway” video. He also worked on costumes and scenery for concert tours by David Bowie, Beyoncé and Lady Gaga, among others, and on window displays for retailers like Ralph Lauren and Armani.
In addition to Mr. Glaser, Mr. Izquierdo is survived by two brothers, Roberto and Rodrigo.
Asked once by Twelv magazine what he would choose to embody if he could be transformed into anything, Mr. Izquierdo picked a bird of paradise. But while he spent most of his life designing costumes for others, he told New York magazine in 2013 that he rarely wore one himself.
“When you work in this world all year round, Halloween isn’t that exciting,” he said, adding: “I was once in a costume contest at Studio 54. I was a mummy — but I didn’t win.”
Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people.
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