As well as making theatre costumes, I have a large archive of different costumes and installations made for parties. I’ve got particularly interested in larger sculptural forms in the past couple of years – I keep an are.na channel of costumes that I find inspiring.

moth + lamp, halloween 2025

This costume was made over 2 evenings and a day, and involved quite a few different processes. The wings were made from three layers of fabric – an orange polycotton outer shell and calico lining, with a layer of foam sandwiched between. I first cut the outer part of the wings and heat pressed spots onto them, then sewed on fur and red webbing to make the pattern. The inner part was painted once I’d quilted the wings together (I think this was the right order).

I’d learned a lot about padding from doing the beast, and the quilting worked really well. The antennae were inspired by these instructions. The padded wings came in geninely handy in the storm on our walk home.

Here’s some in-process pictures of the wings:

the beast with 7 heads from the book of revelation, feb 2025

This one was a really interesting process, and one of my more successful sculptural costumes. If I were to do this again I’d choose a different order for sewing – integrating the smaller heads onto the main head before sewing the larger head would have saved me a lot of time and hassle. The placement of the mouth was funny and made the costume almost entirely unwearable, though it did fit my (much smaller) friend cesca quite well.

Here’s a picture of the heads in progress:

large insect, summer 2024

Very inspired by this image. Enjoyed using the structure of plastic items found in hardware store, and wandering around Khan’s Bargains and Terry’s looking for the ideal colander. It was surprisingly not so uncomfortable but the fronds were dangerous on a dancefloor.

black hole, summer 2023

this was not my best work – the idea was to make a kind of Rei Kawakubo style jacket based on the image of the black hole (here for context), using layers of coloured cotton. In the end I was working too large, and the neoprene I selected for the main body was floppy at scale. A woman in the pub where I got changed asked if I was a pizza. sad!

the seasons, summer 2022

For this I made a simple A-line dress, onto which I stitched laurel leaves from the back garden, using a zig zag stitch so as not to just slice the leaves in half. This worked pretty well, and these held up okay for the first part of the night, but by the end my friends’ house was covered in crunchy leaves that had flaked off the lower layers of the dress.

nudibranch, winter 2019

This costume was heavily inspired by Sandra Leonard’s soft sculpture costumes for children. It was made quite quickly, and without stuffing for the spines!

grand canyon, summer 2017

This was surprisingly easy and effective – light netting sewn in an a-line with felt layered on top. I feel like making multi layered clothing with sheer elements is a really nice way to structure a costume.

solar system, winter 2016

This one was made almost entirely from felt (I felt like a children’s wall hanging).

hand-eye coordination, summer 2016

We ran out of felt for the hands and couldn’t cover the whole coat. This was an extremely labour intensive idea, but george’s makeup really brought it together. The plastic hands on our shoulders had zero structural integrity and fell off almost immediately.

apple product packaging, summer 2015

It’s a bit sad there aren’t many photos of these as they’re probably one of the best costumes I ever made. makeup by george.

salad, winter 2014

coal, summer 2014

This was mine and George’s first collaborative costume, and involved making coal pieces from scratch using expanding foam and black glittery spraypaint from the hardware store. Makeup by George.