Any designer knows that without talented craftspeople to make your vision come to life, there is no point putting pen to paper. I have been fortunate enough to have worked with many of these people and I am very grateful for their work.

All of these gorgeous hats were made for me by a friend of mine. The very talented Mr Phillip Rhodes – Milliner Extraordinaire, gave his up his time to make these beautiful hats for a production of “Hello Dolly” that I designed again for an amateur theatre company in Melbourne Victoria.

This was a very low budget production and the wonderful thing about Phillip’s hats (apart from how spectacular they are) is that these ones were all made using off cuts and scraps of fabric from the dresses we made. It is very true to say that Phillip’s work finished the frocks off perfectly.

Many people worked hard on this show with me. Another friend of mine – Jocelyn Creed – made all of Dolly’s frocks. Both Phillip and Jocelyn are professionals that were happy to make these for nothing for me because, apart from anything else, they love what they do and in Australia there is not a huge opportunity for such talented people.

It is very frustrating to see talent like this go unused.  There is so much talent of this calibre in Australia and a large percentage of it is being wasted.  People such as Sarah Douglas, Claire Lambe, Sue Ferriman, Kelly Farrow and Rosalinde Surace all of whom spend there time doing work for lots of gratitude but little money while we should be celebrating them as great artists.

We need to start celebrating and appreciating the work of these people and all of the other costumers world wide who are yet to get their due..