Textile Cocktail Dresses

Costume students from Australia's premiere education institute for the performing arts, the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), have created stunning 1950s-style cocktail dresses utilising unique and original Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prints.

The fabrics were designed and produced at the Bábbarra Women's Centre Maningrida in the remote dessert country of the Northern Territory in Australia.

The project was inspired in part by Georgia Lee, a prominent blues singer in the 1950s and 1960s and the first Indigenous Australian artist to record blues songs.

Bábbarra Women's Centre opened in 1989. The centre designs and hand-prints exquisite textiles that are sold all around the world. Each length of fabric is unique and tells the ancestral stories of Arnhem Land country and cultures. The centre brings together women from more than 12 language groups in the Maningrida region who share knowledge and ideas.

The second-year Bachelor of Fine Arts (Costume) course students researched typical daywear dresses that may have been worn by Georgia Lee in the 1950s for a radio recording. They learnt how to cut and construct 1950s petticoats to create the correct silhouette as well as identifying and fitting the correct underwear for the era. Students advanced their patternmaking skills to develop their individual designs and fitting skills for a bespoke result.

'This is the first time that I am aware of that NIDA has collaborated with a fabric producer,' NIDA Head of Costume Annette Ribbons said. 'I had thought for many years that 1950s dresses could be used to showcase some of the wonderful bold indigenous fabric prints on the market. Prints were very popular for daywear at this time and some of these prints are indicative of the 1950s styles.

'Publisher Textiles in Sydney, who we have used before for printing, work with indigenous communities including the Bábbarra Womens Centre and in 2017 and 2018 produced a line of contemporary clothing from their textiles. Their prints suited our concept and I hoped they may be open to the idea of them being made into a different style of Clothing. Publisher textiles put me onto Ingrid at Babbarra who were very enthusiastic about the project and extremely helpful. Each student then modelled a dress designed and constructed by one of her classmates.'

Jessica Phillips, Assistant Manager at Bábbarra Women's Centre, said that the women designers were happy to work on the project with NIDA, 'to see people making beautiful dresses and having fun. There are a lot of artists here who love designing stories, and really enjoy coming to work printing fabrics in unique colours.'

Jessica said that over the last few years Bábbarra fabrics have been selling quickly including in the USA, United Kingdom and Switzerland. She said that the common garment that is made with the fabrics was dresses and they were perfect for the NIDA project.

For information on Bábbarra Women's Centre: https://babbarra.com/
For more about NIDA: https://www.nida.edu.au/