William Ivey Long, born in Seaboard, North Carolina, is a costume designer known for his work on Broadway, Off-Broadway, television and film. Attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a Ph.D. in Art History, he went on to Yale University studying with Ming Cho Lee. He moved to New York to work with the legendary couturier Charles James as an unpaid assistant. In 1978, set designer Karen Schulz, from Yale, suggested him to be the costume designer of the The Inspector General, beginning his Broadway career. He has earned 15 Tony nominations, winning six, won an OBIE (ASSASSINS, 1990) and the Henry Hewes Design Award (THE NEW CENTURY, 2011). In 2005 he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. In 2012 he was elected Chairman of the American Theatre Wing, and in 2017 received the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement   Award.

William Ivey Long was brought up in the theater where his father was a set designer and technical director, and his mother an actress.  Both of his parents wrote plays. When at Yale he studied under Ming Cho Lee, Kingman Brewster, and William Sloane Coffin where the focus was on ethics, morality and living a beneficial life. This ethos formed his creative work.  At Yale, he also made the friendships of classmates Christopher Durang, Meryl Streep, Albert Innaurato, Wendy Wasserstein, Michael Feingold, Sigourney Weaver and Karen Schulz. He has also designed for the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, Houston Grand Opera, and Twyla Tharp, Peter Martins, David Parsons, Mick Jagger for the Rolling Stones, and  Susan Stroman.  To this day his passion is to restore historical buildings to their pristine past.