Daughters of Creation
(group costume)

Elemental Air - Kerri Valkova
Elemental Earth - Gail Adams
Elemental Water - Wendy Purcell
Elemental Fire - Deb Goodwin

This is the most challenging costuming project I've been involved in, mostly because it required four individual costumers to be motivated and organised.... and punctual! We had several early planning sessions to hash out the basic design of the group... we set parameters for height, width, length and also colour palette. We also decided that each gown would basically be comprised of dress, cloak with train, headpiece and staff. Then we all went off to make them ourselves. As the Ball approached we got together to compare progress and rehearse a stage presentation. At this stage it was anyone's guess whether all the gowns would be ready on the night... there was some definite last minute work going on!

Our presentation was carefully choreographed and performed to a piece from the 'Plunkett & McLean' soundtrack. We moved onto stage in full dark, and when the lights came up (before the music had even started) we received a standing ovation! It was thrilling!

My gown was constructed from cheap material and cardboard mostly... the effects are achieved with paint, sequins and lots of glue! The 'clouds' - organza ruffles - around the edge of my cloak was about 30 metres edged with fishing line to give a floating, scalloped effect.... it took bloody ages! The wings were organza stretched over a wire frame then painted with metallic puffy paints and sprayed with glitter... I was very pleased with their final ethereal effect.

AWARDS:

• "Best in Show" (Master Class) Australian Costumers' Guild 5th Annual Ball (Melbourne, August 2000)