Acclaimed costume designer Eiko Ishioka was featured on Google search’s Google Doodle this week. The Tokyo-born designer would have been 79 years old on July 12 if she hadn’t passed from pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Ishioka’s transformational designs won her an Academy Award for “Best Costume Design” for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” in 1992. Some of her later works included “The Cell” and “Cirque du Soleil: Verakai.”
Ishioka is part of the growing list of notable public figures lost to the world’s toughest cancer, including fellow Academy Award winners Henry Mancini and Joan Crawford.
Other Hollywood notables claimed by pancreatic cancer include Patrick Swayze and Alan Rickman. Just this year, John Hurt and John G. Avildsen succumbed to the disease.
Pancreatic cancer remains the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. and has a five-year survival rate of just 9 percent.
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is the only organization attacking pancreatic cancer on all fronts through research, clinical initiatives, patient services and advocacy. Help us reach our goal to double survival by 2020 by donating today.