Stories and portraits from the Millennial Traditional Artists project, a collaboration between the North Carolina Arts Council and Duke University.

You could say there’s something lost about William Ivey Long. Not because he wandered away from his native Seaboard, North Carolina, for a studio in New York’s Tribeca, but because he consistently returns home. Long, a six-time Tony Award–winning costume designer, is nationally known for his work on Broadway hits The Producers, Young Frankenstein, Hairspray, Nine, Grey Gardens, and Cinderella. And in the Tar Heel State, he’s celebrated for a forty-five-year relationship with America’s longest-running outdoor symphonic drama, The Lost Colony.