Lucille Ball is a style maven! Before she became a star on I Love Lucy, Lucille modeled and appeared in films where she learned how to enhance her beauty and hone her style.
“I have an everyday religion that works for me,” she once said. “Love yourself first, and then everything else falls into line.”
Closer rounds up photos of the star’s best and most iconic fashions that she wore on the set of her hit sitcom I Love Lucy.
1930
Lucille described her hair as “mousy brown” when she began working for RKO in the 1930s. On set, she took beauty advice from her acting coach, Lela Rogers, mother of Ginger Rogers.
1933
Jean Harlow’s platinum blonde look was all the rage in the movies when Lucille was an ingénue. For a time, she sported bleached blonde hair — which was taken to an extreme with a Lady Godiva-style wig in the film Roman Scandals.
1942
Lucille never became a huge movie star, but she credited her mentor Lela Rogers for helping her look like somebody special. “Lela took the dungarees off us and put us into becoming dresses,” she recalled in her memoir Love, Lucy.
1944
Studio hairstylist Sydney Guilaroff first colored Lucille’s hair red to make a bigger impact in films shot with the new technology of Technicolor.
1945
Designer Hattie Carnegie showed Lucille how to pose. “[She taught] me how to wear a $40,000 sable coat as casually as rabbit,” said Lucille.
1956
On I Love Lucy, her “most significant style collaborations were with Oscar-winning designer Elois Jenssen,” Dr. Laura LaPlaca of the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum and National Comedy Center tells Closer.
1965
Lucille never minded taking a pie to the face for a laugh, but the actress, who became the head of Desilu Studios after her divorce from Desi Arnaz, also learned to dress like the business executive she became.
1966
“She gave me so many clothes — boy, did I wear them!” Lucille’s longtime assistant, Wanda Clark, who was lucky enough to be the same size as her boss, told Closer.
1984
Lucille kept her signature hair color. “It has become a trademark,” said the star, whose exact dye formulation from a Max Factor colorist remained a closely guarded secret.
