RISING TALENT 2023 - COSTUME DESIGNERS

COSTUME DESIGNERS

So impressed are we with the industry’s up-and-comers, we have decided to make our Rising Talent list an annual fixture. These are the people we think the industry needs to sit up and take notice of; the names you’ll need to know and want to work with in the years ahead. Some faces are relatively new, while others have recently moved up the chain into leadership positions where they are making change.

Thank you again to everyone who helped us put this list together, including the hundreds of submissions we received through our public call out. We know this list is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the talent in this industry, but we hope it hints towards its future.

EMMA LAMP

Emma Lamp grew up in regional Queensland and then moved to London at 17. At 22, she studied a BA Design at Goldsmiths College. During this time, she started work experience as fashion assistant at Men’s Health Magazine, leading to a job as an assistant on Vogue Russia and Vogue Japan.

Her first break into the screen industry was styling a KFC commercial. This soon turned into TVCs and music videos for artists such as Ed Sheeran, Rufus Wainwright, Florence and The Machine and Take That.

Lamp moved to Melbourne in 2018 and became a mother. She primarily works in TVCs, having recently having opened a studio space specifically for costume fittings, Lampy’s

In 2022, she designed her first TV show, SBS Digital Original Latecomers. The project gave her a taste for long-form which she hopes to explore further.

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OLIVIA SIMPSON

Olivia Simpson is an British/ Australian costume designer living between Sydney and London.

Since 2010, she has worked her way up from runner to designer, working across film, TV, music videos and commercials. After working under greats such as Lizzie Gardener and Catherine Martin, Simpson completed postgraduate studies in costume design at AFTRS in 2013.

Simpson’s long-form credits as costume designer include Pimped, Measure for Measure, Friends and Strangers, and UK feature A Christmas Number One. She has worked in the costume department for numerous productions such as The Dig, The Nightingale, Pacific Rim: Uprising, Peter Rabbit and 2:22.

In 2020, Simpson was nominated for both an AACTA and an APDG Award for her work on the Measure for Measure, and in 2022, was twice nominated at the APDG Awards for A Christmas Number One and Friends and Strangers.

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VICTORIA PERRY

Victoria Perry is a costume designer and maker predominantly working between Sydney and Adelaide. She is a graduate of NIDA, where she was the 2019 recipient of the Judith Meschke Award for excellence in costume-making.

Her recent experience has spanned both Australian and international productions. She has designed costumes for both short and feature films, such as Stakeout Films’ debut thriller You’ll Never Find Me.

Perry has worked as a costume maker for films such as Furiosa, Thor: Love and Thunder, Three Thousand Years of Longing and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

As a designer and collaborator, Perry is drawn to colour and texture, and has a special interest in textile design and manipulation. She draws on this and her experience in costume construction to help bring characters to life.

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ERYN BURNETT-BLUE

Born and raised in Sydney, Eryn Burnett-Blue moved to Perth to study costume construction at WAAPA and graduated in 2017. She worked on a few theatrical productions between Sydney and Perth before entering the screen industry in 2019.

Her career began in Perth as a costume standby assistant, and she has since had work opportunities in both Australia and to London, where she was costume assistant on Stath Lets Flats and Ladhood. More recently, she has started to step-up as an on-set costume standby.

Burnett-Blue’s Australian credits in the costume department include Class of ’07, The Messenger, Itch, The Furnace, Blueback, How to Please a Woman, Kid Snow, and Sweet As. Burnett-Blue considers her favourite jobs as the ones that have involved visiting rural towns, seeing costumes come to life within the Australian landscape. She looks forward to challenging herself and exploring costume design in the future.

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GENEVIEVE GRAHAM

Genevieve Graham is NIDA graduate with both a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Design for Performance) and a Masters of Fine Arts (Design for Performance).

In 2017, Graham received the APDG Emerging Designer Award for Live Performance for her production and costume design of Eurydike and Orpheus, directed by Priscilla Jackman. That same year, she designed the costumes for The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra’s Bittersweet Obsession, a new Baroque opera.

After graduating from NIDA, Graham was appointed costume designer for season two of Seven’s children’s series Drop Dead Weird. Since then she has designed costumes for both stage and screen, including The Ensemble Theatre shows Diplomacy, The Appleton Ladies Potato Race and A Christmas Carol.

In 2022, Graham was costume designer for SBS Digital Original Appetite and ABC ME series The Disposables. Earlier that year, she was lead costume buyer for Netflix’s Heartbreak High and most recently, costume buyer for Paramount+ series Paper Dolls

When designing costumes, Graham takes character as the starting point, and places the collaboration between designer, actor and director at the forefront of her design process.

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