Dressed to be queens: Ron Muncaster
The queen of glitter and sequinned frocks responsible for transforming the Mardi Gras into the iconic spectacle it is today shared his boldest secrets on how to strut your stuff in this year’s parade.
Costume making extraordinaire, Ron Muncaster, 76, was joined by a panel of designers and discussed the dos and don’ts of parade fashion at Customs House Library.
The Frock Me: Mardi Gras Parade Costumes was held on February 22, as part of a string of events belonging to its new Library Up Late Saucy Sydney nights series.
“There is the political side of Mardi Gras which I don’t get into, but I don’t like the way it’s going because 50 per cent of people in the parade don’t bother to dress up anymore,” he said.
“Ok everyone likes to see a naked body, but they also like to see a nice costume with the glitter, the spectacle, the artistic side of us which we are.”
Mr Muncaster urged young designers and marchers to look to the parades in Rio for inspiration and advised those unable to experience the famous Carnivale to explore local fabric shops.
“Find the material first … a good place is Marrickville, because you’ve got all the Indian shops and they’re all full with glitter,” he said.
Although Mr Muncaster has adopted a quieter lifestyle these days, he said the library event made him excited again.
“Because I couldn’t find the tiara, it made me do something, it got me all excited to go out there and get a tiara, and I went through all my stuff and I made it,” he said.
He was joined by last year’s Best Costume Design winner, Drew Lambert, award winning-artist and float designer Philippa Playford and photographer C Moore Hardy who has been snapping the community for over 20 years.
It wasn’t until 1980, after witnessing a gay group marching down Flinders Street, when his friend and artist, Peter Tully, said “I think we can do better than that … next year we’ll dress it up”.
His group of friends introduced the first float costumes to Mardi Gras the following year and inevitably set a cultural trend.
The master of sequins has won 15 awards for his costumes and admits he gets ideas from strange places.
“One year I was walking through SIMS scrap metal yard and I saw rolls of mesh. So I got a few rolls and straightened them out and I spent weeks and weeks sticking individual sequins on every piece of mesh and in the skirt I counted them … there was 5000 sequins stuck on one by one, just in the skirt,” he said.
Although he did a course in textiles, he said: “I learnt just how fabrics are made and dyed, not how they are made into garments. No one has ever taught me anything, I had to do it all myself,” Mr Muncaster said.
His costumes are on show at the Powerhouse Museum and one of his famous costumes, Lucille Balls, is part of the Eternity exhibition’s Thrill theme at the National Museum of Australia.
By Leanne Elahmad
