A fascinating selection of work from master costume designer Jack Edwards’ storied career — sketches, photographs, news clippings and theatrical ephemera, window displays and couture, as well as 30 complete costumes — is now on view at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Museum of Design in the exhibition, “Character in Costume: A Jack Edwards Retrospective.”

After he graduated from Ithaca College in 1954, Edwards left his working class roots behind for a fresh start in New York City, the story goes, with little more than $5 in his pocket, a suitcase and a head for fashion. Since then, he’s spent more than 50 years using scissors, needle and thread to create memorably fabulous theatrical designs, dressing characters large and small for the stage and television screen, storefront windows and holiday parades. He worked in the Big Apple, Santa Fe and L.A., until the early ‘70s, when he settled for good here in the Twin Cities, running the Guthrie Theater’s costume shop for nearly 20 years.

For his first decade or so in the business, though, he worked in New York, on one notable occasion with Sir Cecil Beaton, whom he helped to create pieces for Katharine Hepburn as Coco Chanel, for a Broadway musical about the legendary fashion designer. In the late ‘60s he headed West — to design for the Santa Fe Opera, followed by a stint in Hollywood, assisting Bob Mackie in outfitting Carol Burnett for her legendary television show. Then in 1971, while on a gig with fellow stage clothing designer Ray Diffen, re-organizing the work room of the Twin Cities’ Guthrie Theater, he so impressed the Minnesotans with his talents, they offered him a spot at the helm of their costume shop, where he remained until 1989.

In the 17 years he designed for the Guthrie’s various productions, he became especially renowned for his flair with period pieces and for his affinity with marrying design and character. On one wall of the exhibition, there’s a quote from Edwards: “Nothing is arbitrary, and if it is — you haven’t done your job correctly.”

His own painstaking efforts are evident in the fine embroidery and delicately tiered ruffles of his Dickensian pieces, and in the careful aesthetic balance of color, cut and texture throughout his work. The details in his millinery, in particular, are marvelous: a surprising wheat stalk, arranged amid the blushing blossoms in a broad-brimmed ladies’ straw hat for Moliere’s “The Imaginary Invalid;” another terrific hat he made for that play is a tall, Pepto-pink little number, decked out with a jaunty twin spray of pink ostrich feathers on each side and finely textured gold detailing just above its narrow brim.

After leaving the Guthrie, Edwards spent the ‘90s crafting “fantasy” vignettes for Dayton’s department store’s large eighth-floor holiday displays, outfitting characters from a different beloved story every year — “Wind in the Willows,” “Cinderella,” “Pinocchio,” “A Christmas Carol.” Among the figures on view in the exhibit, I especially love his pitch-perfect designs for the “Wind in the Willows” figures: creamy spats and pink-accented tweed for Mole and a dapper gold and black houndstooth jacket topped by a casually genteel gray driver’s cap for Badger.

In addition to his costume designs for the theater, the show boasts a handful of sumptuous gowns Edwards has made for solo performers and private clients through the years — among them a number of elegant designs for mezzo-soprano Mildred Miller and over-the-top tulle and satin flounce for popular pianist Lorie Line.

All together, the pieces in the exhibit pay fitting tribute to Edwards varied, accomplished career in theater and fashion design. But the show also offers a fascinating lens through which to consider the crucial contributions of artists behind the scenes at the theater, on whose work the magic and fantasy of the stage rely, but who you rarely see in the limelight themselves.

“Character in Costume: A Jack Edwards Retrospective” is on view at the Goldstein Museum of Design, in McNeal Hall on the University of Minnesota’s St. Paul campus. Gallery hours and additional information about the show is available on the museum’s website: http://goldstein.design.umn.edu/.