Dede Ayite
21st century costume designer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dede Ayite is a Ghanaian-American costume designer. She won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Play for her work on Jaja's African Hair Braiding, and has received 5 other Tony nominations for costume design. She is best known for her work costuming the Broadway productions of Buena Vista Social Club, Slave Play, A Soldier's Play, Hell's Kitchen, and Jaja's African Hair Braiding.
Dede Ayite | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Education | |
| Awards | Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Play (2024) |
Early life and education
Ayite grew up in Ghana in West Africa.[1] In 2001, she moved to live with her mother in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she finished high school.[2]
Interested in pursuing her dual interests in science and the arts, Ayite attended Lehigh University, where she studied theater and behavioral neuroscience.[3][4]After graduating in 2007, Ayite apprenticed at Lehigh for a year managing their scene shop. After, she apprenticed at the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico.[4] She studied scenic design at the Yale School of Drama, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree.[1]
Career
In 2020, Ayite designed costumes for Slave Play and A Soldier's Play, receiving her first two Tony nominations for costume design.[2] For A Soldier's Play, Ayite carefully crafted dog tags for each character with their name, age, and religious affiliation, giving the actors something to hold as they got into character.[5] Later that year, while live theater was on hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ayite formed Design Action with fellow designers. Design Action worked to address racism in the theater community and support incoming designers of color.[2]
In 2022, Ayite earned a special Drama Desk Award for having "costumed half the actors of this theatre season with her designs for “Merry Wives,” “Seven Deadly Sins,” “The Last of the Love Letters,” “Chicken and Biscuits,” “Slave Play,” “Nollywood Dreams,” “American Buffalo,” and “How I Learned to Drive,” demonstrating a knack for conveying characters' means, values, and aspirations before the actors utter a word."[6][7]
In 2023, she designed costumes for the Off-Broadway and later Broadway productions of Buena Vista Social Club, earning a Tony nomination for the latter.[8] The following year, she designed the costumes for Alicia Keys' jukebox musical Hells Kitchen, drawing inspiration from 90's street fashion.[9] This also earned her a Tony nomination.[10] She won the 2024 Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Play for her work on Jaja's African Hair Braiding. This made her the first Black woman to win a Tony Award in this category.[11][12]
In 2025, she designed costumes for Broadway's Othello starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal. Her work was praised for its modernized depiction of a historic play and for its well-researched military accuracy.[13]
Theatre credits
|
Broadway[6]
|
Select Off-Broadway and Regional[14]
|
Awards
Outer Critics Circle Awards
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Outstanding Costume Design | Topdog/Underdog | Nominated | [15] |
| 2024 | Jaja's African Hair Braiding | Nominated | [16] | |
| 2026 | Goddess | Nominated | [17] |
Drama Desk Awards
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Costume Design of a Musical | Bella: An American Tall Tale | Nominated | [6] |
| Outstanding Costume Design of a Play | School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play | Nominated | ||
| 2019 | By the Way, Meet Vera Stark | Nominated | ||
| If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka | Nominated | |||
| 2024 | Outstanding Costume Design of a Musical | Buena Vista Social Club | Nominated | |
| 2025 | Outstanding Costume Design of a Play | Our Town | Won |
Lucille Lortel Awards
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Outstanding Costume Design | School Girls; Or, the African Mean Girls Play | Won | [18] |
| Bella: An American Tall Tale | Nominated | |||
| 2019 | By the Way, Meet Vera Stark | Nominated | [19] | |
| 2020 | BLKS | Nominated | [20] | |
| 2024 | Buena Vista Social Club | Nominated | [21] |
Tony Awards
| Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Best Costume Design in a Play | Slave Play | Nominated | [22] |
| A Soldier's Play | Nominated | |||
| 2024 | Jaja's African Hair Brading | Won | [10] | |
| Appropriate | Nominated | |||
| Best Costume Design in a Musical | Hell's Kitchen | Nominated | ||
| 2025 | Buena Vista Social Club | Nominated |