West began her career as a fashion designer in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she owned a boutique on Gilman Street in West Berkeley. There she created and sold her eponymous "Identikit by Jacqueline West" line.^[1]

West ventured into film costume design in the 1990s after being persuaded to do so by Philip Kaufman. She first worked for the director as a creative consultant on Henry & June (1990).^[1] Their professional relationship continued on the films Rising Sun (1993) and Quills (2000); for creating costumes in the latter, she garnered her first Academy Award nomination.^[1] West thinks that Kaufman, who shaped her approach to dressing actors, was among the major influences on her career; the other was her mother, an avant-garde fashion designer of the 1940s and 1950s.^[2] 

West worked with director David Fincher on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), which turned out to be a difficult task for her due to its epic scope and the need to maintain the integrity of each character's garments in a story that takes place through almost 100 years of different clothing styles and fashions.^[2] Another challenge was making Benjamin (Brad Pitt) look both old and young at the beginning of the movie and young and old at the film's end.^[3] West later said that Pitt called her a method costumer for those approaches.^[2]

West and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising established The Jacqueline West Scholarship for “an outstanding Native American interested in the study of fashion or costume design.”^[4]

West is a member of the LGBT community.^[5]

Major associations edit

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Miscellaneous awards edit

• Jacqueline West at IMDb