Richard Bruno: Award-Winning Costume Designer
Costume designer Richard Bruno, who worked on a wide range of films—including “Goodfellas,” “The Untouchables” and “Raging Bull”—died Jan. 11 in Port Townsend, Wash., from kidney failure. He was 87.
Bruno worked closely with director Martin Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro on a string of gangster films. He worked on so many gangster films that he told one newspaper interviewer that he thought he must have been a gangster in a former life.
“It is a sad loss,” said Mary Rose, president of the board for the Costume Designers Guild. “Richard Bruno was a remarkably gifted designer, especially in designing costumes for male characters. Always a professional, he was well-respected by the industry and will be greatly missed by all of us.”
Bruno won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award in 1990 for “Best Costume Design” for “Goodfellas.”
The costume designer began his career in the 1950s at American International Pictures. He later worked with Scorsese as the men’s costumer on “New York, New York” in 1974 and then as costume designer for “Raging Bull” in 1980. That was followed by “The King of Comedy” in 1983, “The Color of Money” in 1986 and “Goodfellas” in 1990.
The costume designer was known for his exaggerated deep-collared, steep-pointed shirts for the gangsters in “Goodfellas” that caught on with the public in the early 1990s. Bruno designed the collars, a throwback to earlier days of mob attire, to hide the top part of the tie, adding a tab to the double-lock collar to line up the steep collar points.
Bruno also introduced a Brooklyn-centric style of crisscrossing the tie at midpoint and tucking it into a belt.
Other directors the costume designer worked with included Brian De Palma, Sergio Leone, Roman Polanski, Warren Beatty and Ivan Reitman.
After Bruno retired in the late 1990s, he moved to Port Townsend. He is survived by two daughters, three grandchildren and one great-grandson. Donations may be made in Bruno’s name to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. —Deborah Belgum
