Fancy dressing

Kirsten Kemp with some of her recent design. Photo / Babiche Martens

Many of the bespoke costumes worn by the performers in shows at the Auckland Festival this month are one-off pieces of art. Similarly, the costume designers charged with creating the garments all took very different paths to arrive at this point in their careers. Hailing from Auckland, Otago and as far as Samoa, the three designers we profile are as distinctive and unique as the fanciful stage costumes they make for their respective actors, dancers and singers.

Victoria Ingram counts herself lucky that in 2003, her third year of studying at the AUT, she had weekly work experience as a machinist with legendary costume designer, Elizabeth Whiting. "She's the most generous person with her knowledge," says Ingram. "I was the little junior who did all the buttonholes and made cups of tea and cleaned up the wardrobe area and looked over everyone's shoulder nosily asking questions." Their mentoring relationship continues today. Ingram says that last time she saw Whiting: "I parked up alongside her car and asked her a million questions and talked about our show."

Ingram attended Epsom Girls Grammar where she "did Clothing and Textiles as my muck-around subject." It was a subject that came naturally to her and was a welcome counterpoint to disciplines. Her enthusiasm for art and textiles led her to study fashion technology at AUT but this degree initially failed to excite her. It wasn't until she chose to specialise in costume design that her interest was reignited and it all fell into place.

The 26-year-old, who is working on The Ensemble Project for this year's Festival, loves reading a script then digging deep into a character to decide what clothing he or she ought to wear. "I think it's the story and the purpose. You're actually dressing characters ... and it doesn't have to be cutting-edge fashion," she says. "It's actually, like: Ooh, what would that person wear, what are their glasses like, why are they like that ...?"

Once she's met with the director, Ingram's role is to design and sketch the outfits, choose and source fabrics, do costume fittings and attend rehearsals. Usually the actual sewing of the garments is outsourced but occasionally she opts to stitch some pieces herself "because it's easier than describing to someone the complicated way I want it made". A case in point is the lustrous 1930s-style knit dress and gold bolero she is building on to a bra for Life is a Dream directed by Michael Hurst.

The first show for which Ingram designed costumes was The Threepenny Opera. She flew over to Auckland from her Perth base and completed the work in just three weeks. It remains a career highlight. And for sheer intensity, she picks A Clockwork Orange, another Silo Theatre production, which involved 25 cast members who each played several characters. "That was a real turning point. It was a show that was like 'burnout' material but I learnt so much so fast because I had to."

Kirsten Kemp often finds the personal influences of her heritage and upbringing highly influential in the course of her work. And it was no different when she created the costumes for Louise Potiki Bryant's Taonga: Dust, Water, Wind. "The story behind the dance struck a chord with me because there is a strong southern Maori feel in this work and it reminded me of my own childhood," she says. "Being Ngai Tahu myself and living down south I could draw on a lot of my own experiences."

Some of the costumes verge on the fantastical. "There are strong themes of the sea including kelp and feathers," she says, adding that hybrid suits - part man, part bird - also feature. "They're quite mystical pieces." It's a project she completed singlehandedly: from reading and digesting the memoirs that inspired the dance to sketching and finally sewing around a dozen costumes.

The four years Kemp recently spent in Japan while her partner, Dan
Parkinson, played rugby near Tokyo have done nothing to diminish her fierce interest in the stories of her homeland. Mining her own past and that of her ancestors is familiar territory for this 31-year-old who hails from Otakou on the Otago Peninsula.

For her 2002 Ngai Tahu artist in residency at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art, Kemp explored the history of her "own female Ngai Tahu forebears." The resulting body of work was inspired by Victorian-cum-Edwardian clothing. "I constructed them in a more contemporary manner, with embroidery and little secret openings and all sorts of cool things," she says. A powerful story about a fishhook - "a very spiritual piece" - that was handed down through the women in her family was the central concept. "Each woman who wore it hid it in a secret pocket in their garment, so I played on that idea."

Kemp majored in textiles at art school but keeps an open mind as to precisely where her work might take her next. "I don't really categorise myself into any one box. I do a lot of things from painting to textile design, costumes, clothing ... whatever."

Auckland-based fa'afafine, Lindah Lepou has spent the past 15 years championing what she calls "Pacific couture". She believes she coined the term and was the first to legitimise the connection between Polynesian expression and high fashion. In 2005 she was the supreme winner of the Style Pasifika Fashion Awards and for the 2007 Miss Universe pageant in Mexico she created the national costume for New Zealand's representative. "I did it in red which was very Maori-inspired. It had the koru design but it was also very Asian and very tropical and exotic looking," she says.

Lepou's identity as a fa'afafine - a Samoan boy raised as a girl - naturally permeates her work. "I don't necessarily deliberately go out there and do things fa'afafine. It's just always going to be part of what I do. Historically, in Samoan culture fa'afafine were spiritual healers because they had this unique ability to balance their masculine and feminine energies. So I design womenswear with a balance of masculine influence and vice versa."

Wellington-born but raised in Samoa from the age of 8, Lepou returned to the capital 10 years later to study fashion at the Bowerman School of Design. She describes it as one of the last generation of "old school" courses which included millinery, jewellery and pattern-making. In 1994 Lepou entered her first fashion competition - the Benson and Hedges Awards. Her entry was a flax tutu and the judges weren't quite sure in which category it should be classified.

Lepou is proud of the fact her groundbreaking garment was impetus for change in the industry. "That's when they started the Oceania category," she says. "From that point onwards every fashion awards ... acknowledged Pacific fashion so that was a real historical thing for me."

More recently, the 35-year-old was charged with creating the costumes for Tama Waipara's upcoming musical performance: Sir Plus and the Requirements. Her role involved sketching, pattern making, fitting, cutting and constructing. And the influences? "Think glam Sergeant Pepper." Evidently, it's a blend of military, Pacific and pirate with a dash of Salvador Dali.