Vicky Gill on designing costumes on board Priscilla Queen of the Desert

A frock is never just a frock.

It’s something that costume designer Vicky Gill and I bond over instantly when we video call. A frock has feeling, it has soul. It’s transformative and transportative.

Gill has known this from a young age. She grew up in the North East (“a hive of industry”) in awe of her seamstress mum, even following her to work at times (“that just doesn’t happen nowadays!”). Since then, the creative has won a BAFTA for her showstopping designs on Strictly Come Dancing and works designing for TV and music.

“When you’re busy, you just keep going, you don’t really think about much,” Gill laughs when I ask how she’s feeling – she wrapped on the hit dance show just before Christmas, went straight into the tour, and has now hopped on Priscilla, Queen of the Desert for a road trip across the UK with a new tour of the hit musical.

She’s used to her work being seen close up on television screens, but designing for a live audience is totally different. To make sure the pieces are seen from every seat in the house, she has a lot to consider: “It’s thinking about combinations, the vibrancy of colours, movement, and quick changes…” There are so many looks that the cast are wearing masks which have makeup lasered on.

Gill estimates there are just shy of 200 costumes in the show for the cast of over 20. She has catered to body shapes, what the performers like and what makes them feel good – and the same applies for the covers in the show, too: “The main thing is that we’re trying to make people comfortable and feel great within that moment.” It’s a key message in Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, which follows two drag queens and a transgender woman as they travel across Australia together in a bus named Priscilla, putting on a show while confronting personal challenges and societal prejudice.

“Because I’m old, I was at college when this film was released. One of my lecturers was really flamboyant, and he would walk up to college with a pair of massive feather wings on, like that was his character,” Gill remembers, “[The film] was hot on the lips of everybody at that time… It’s really nice to be going back to that era.”

Those wings remain in this new revival. Streams of ribbon flow from them, and headdresses are made of long, spiked feathers. “Every time I watched the film, I’d focus on a character, because it is really important that I really understand the premise of their journey… I hate using the word journey, but that’s what the film is about,” Gill says. “It’s about them coming together as friends, supporting each other, and also all the things they hate about each other.”

She has taken care to “honour” the film and the previous stage show, seeing the revival as more of a “refreshing” of the original creative. Taking on the lead roles are Adèle Anderson, who plays Bernadette, Kevin Clifton as Tick/Mitzi, and Nick Hayes as Felicia/Adam. Gill has applied a signature colour to each of them to ensure they are always identifiable in a big ensemble to an audience.

Hayes’ Felicia is a bright yellow with touches of gold, the costumes are short and playful: “He’s very excitable, has such a warmth like his character – Adam is always pushing boundaries.” Anderson, meanwhile, is more regal in a silk rose pink with decadent silver sequins: “I just wanted her to be really sophisticated and beautiful.” Clifton, who reunites with Gill after many years together on Strictly, wears costumes with more of a punk edge – black choker necklaces and net in dark purple angular shapes. In combination, the colours look like all the best parts of a sky.

“There’s an awful lot of night and day, light and shade… I was imagining all of the different skylines that we would see, certainly in Australia… and we needed to be able to identify each person’s vibe.”

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The costumes are reminiscent of pop eras – Cyndi Lauper’s layered skirts, Shirley Bassey’s elegant gowns and Madonna’s cheeky bodysuits. Listening to the disco anthems, like “It’s Raining Men,” “I Will Survive,” and “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” Gill was reminded of what we all love about live performance. “It is how we feel when we come out,” she says, “This particular production has made progress in really tapping into all of the key emotions. There are moments where you absolutely feel sad, and then, a second later, you’re absolutely laughing your pants off… It’s definitely got all of the kind of undulation of emotion running through the show.”

It is particularly well known that Strictly forms a huge and ever-growing family, and Gill is pleased that the same seems to be the case with Priscilla. As we video call during the last day of tech rehearsals, behind her, the team are busy steaming, stitching and adding sequins.

Though she does confess to putting her team’s nerves on edge, explaining: “Because I’m dealing with live events a lot, my instinct is always to wait because things change so much. We can make a garment based on what producers or directors want to see, and then when it comes to fruition and everybody’s on stage and moving, it doesn’t actually work for the piece and we have to replace it. So I’m always thinking, I don’t really want to waste the budget, I’d rather know and do what is required.” Costume design works intrinsically with all other aspects of the production – how it serves the choreography (by WhatsOnStage Award winner Matt Cole), how the costumes hold up against the lighting and set (Andrew Exeter), and complements the hair and make-up design (Craig Forrest-Thomas).

During the company’s very first meet and greet, “One of the team said that everybody on the show was first choice.” You could say that they have much ding-a-ling!