Edward Baker, top designer for Boston Ballet; at 65

Edward Baker designed his own Father Christmas outfit.

Edward Baker, who as head of wardrobe for the Boston Ballet for two decades enhanced the company's productions with breathtaking designs, died March 29 of congestive heart failure at Eagle Pond Rehabilitation and Living Center in South Dennis. He was 65.

"Eddie's work is alive and well," said Bruce Wells, a former Boston Ballet director and resident choreographer. "His costumes were beautiful and held up against the test of time."

In particular, colleagues recalled Mr. Baker's designs for Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Wells said he had recently used Mr. Baker's 24-year-old original costumes when he choreographed the Shakespeare play for the Orlando Ballet.

The Boston performance of the Shakespeare play in February 1984 was a world premiere, Wells said, and Mr. Baker's costumes, through rental by other companies, "have been seen many times since."

Mr. Baker moved from Jamaica Plain to West Yarmouth 10 years ago and became well known on Cape Cod for dressing up for events in a Father Christmas costume he created.

In Boston, Mr. Baker was not only the ballet's resident designer and manager of a staff of seamstresses, but he also sewed some of the costumes himself

In 1986, the Globe reported that Mr. Baker had "designed and overseen the execution of 79 costumes for "Midsummer" on a tight one-time budget of $29,000. "That's something of a feat," the story said, "considering that a single tutu may easily cost $750 or more."

For "Midsummer," Wells said: "We invested in Eddie's ideas, and he captured [the mood of a twilight time of day] with gossamer tones of blues, greens, and grays. Eddie was cognizant that dance had to express itself fully. He didn't bring his ego into his work, but his craftsmanship."

Mr. Baker was beloved by his staff and dancers, former colleagues said.

Laura Young, of Boston, a former principal dancer for the Boston Ballet, who danced the role of Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and of Irenia in Chekhov's "Three Sisters," wore Mr. Baker's costumes in both.

She recalled her dress for Titania as "diaphanous and most beautiful. Eddie created a gossamer effect by using several different types of chiffon and tulle that would make it float," she said. "Everywhere it moved, it would create a shimmering effect that you would see in the moonlight."

In addition to the dancers' costumes, Mr. Baker also had to make the head for the donkey and the large fairy wings for "Midsummer," said Arthur Leeth, a former dancer with the ballet.

"Eddie was a great guy and a heck of a lot of fun," he said.

In appearance, Mr. Baker did not look like a ballet dancer himself, friends said, but more like Father Christmas.

John Steczynski, Mr. Baker's companion of 25 years, said little was known of Mr. Baker's life before he was 2, when he was adopted from the Home for Little Wanderers in Boston by Clarence and Theresa (Gorman) Baker.

Edward Baker grew up in Somerville. When he was about 14, Steczynski said, the Bakers adopted another toddler, Kenny, from the home. His older brother looked after him.

Mr. Baker enrolled at the Massachusetts College of Art, where he studied textiles and design. In 1983, he told the Boston Ledger that "when he tried to be the first male fashion major, the woman department head balked."

The Ledger quoted him as saying: "She just couldn't deal with it. And parents didn't like the idea of a boy being in class with all these girls running around in slips. So I changed my major to advertising for lack of any other idea."

But he didn't like advertising and took fashion courses at the New England School of Art, the newspaper said, and opened a summer boutique in Hyannis with a friend. After a year in the Army, he opened a shop named Cockatiel in Harvard Square.

In the 1960s, he had a boutique in Cambridge called Arabesque. Holly Alaimo of West Tisbury, who worked there as a sales clerk, recalled Mr. Baker as "a wonderfully talented man who was able to get people to work very hard and feel very good about it."

Some of his creations at Arabesque, she said, were the mini-mu, a mini dress cut in a T-shape with a belt and blousy sleeves, pirate blouses, and "eyelash dresses, made of loopy metallic fabric."

He would design and make dresses for his female friends and made the dress Alaimo's daughter requested for her wedding - black velvet with cut-outs to show her tattoos. Mr. Baker closed Arabesque after about five years, spent several years in California and did some theatrical designing on Cape Cod before getting a job with the Boston Ballet, according to the newspaper report.

After leaving the ballet, Mr. Baker ran an antiques shop on Beacon Hill for several years before moving to the Cape, where he found a new persona of Father Christmas. So taken was he with that role that he made his own costume that included pantaloons and a flowing fur-lined robe with a wreath on his head and his walking stick.

It was his wish, Steczynski said, to be dressed in it for his wake.

ln addition to Steczynski, Mr. Baker leaves their two daughters, Madeleine of East Boston and Rachel of Cambridge.

Services have been held.