Aline Bernstein

Aline Bernstein (December 22, 1880 – September 7, 1955) was an American set designer and costume designer. She and Irene Lewisohn founded the Museum of Costume Art.

She was born in 1880 in New York City, the daughter of Rebecca (Goldsmith) and Joseph Frankau, an actor. Joseph was a cousin of London cigar importer Arthur Frankau and thus, by marriage, of novelist and art historian Frank Danby, whom Aline recalled visiting as a child when Joseph Frankau was performing in London. Her family was Jewish. By the time she was 17, both of her parents had died and she was raised by her aunt, Rachel Goldsmith. Goldsmith had a theatrical boarding house on West 44th Street in New York City. Aline married Theodore F. Bernstein, a Wall Street broker, on November 19, 1902. Bernstein and her husband had two children: Theodore Frankau Bernstein (1904–1949), and Mrs. Edla Cusick (1906–1983). She died on September 7, 1955 in New York City, aged 74.

Between 1916 and 1951, Bernstein would do set design, costuming, or both for 51 productions.

Bernstein was a theater set and costume designer for the Neighborhood Playhouse on the Lower East Side, volunteering her work to make her name.

In 1926 she struggled but prevailed in becoming the first female member of the designers union. This membership opened up opportunities for Broadway commissions. However, as a woman, she still found that it was much easier to find work as a costume designer rather than as a set designer. Her career ran in phases; early on, she focused largely on costume design. After about 14 years of work, in 1930, she was able to move into set design. For about a decade, she primarily did set design work, only to return to costume design again around 1940 for the final phase of her career.

In the 1930s she also began to write, with two books published by Knopf, a highly respected publisher at that time. She was personal friends with Arthur and Blanche Knopf.

Ironically her first book, Three Blue Suits, helped to more firmly established her as a designer in New York. The book included a series of three stories in which three very different men wear the same blue serge suit. The details regarding how each man wears – or drags (the jacket on the floor) – his suit, reveal aspects of each man's character in subtle ways. A common trope among costume designer is that costumes, if they are good, should ultimately not be noticed. In contrast, the blue suit stories reveal Bernstein's ability to discern how critical details of costume evoke, and interact with, a character, and ultimately her skill as a costume designer at making this happen effectively.

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