Fashionobit: Bill Belew

TV and film costumier Bill Belew has died.

Belew's long-running career dressing celebrities reached, perhaps, its peak when he created one of the few occasions where describing an outfit as iconic isn't hyperbolic. It was he who came up with the black leather suit Elvis wore for the 68 Comeback Special; a look spoofed, copied and cloned numerous times in the last forty years.

Belew was also, perhaps less kindly to posterity, put Presley in jumpsuits and rhinestones, figuring that by then, they'd established Elvis' masculinity enough to not need to worry how he looked. They never quite went as far as a muu-muu, though.