Australia artisans recreate gold rush fashions – couture gowns, corsets, crinolines and pantaloons – for living museum
Up to 100 hours of work goes into sewing each replica of a costume worn in the gold-mining town of Ballarat in the mid-19th century at the Sovereign Hill open-air museum – a draw for tourists from China, Hong Kong and elsewhere
Deep in rural Australia, around a two-hour drive from the city of Melbourne, a small team of artisans produce fabulously ornate, couture-level gowns, made with the same meticulous attention to detail as at the renowned maisons of Paris.
The difference is that the sumptuous frocks created by costume manager Erin Santamaria and her two colleagues are not intended to be worn for partying. The dresses are exact replicas of the mid-19th century clothing favoured by wealthy women in the gold-mining town of Ballarat; up to 100 hours of work goes into each and every piece, ensuring that the corsets, pantaloons, chemises and crinolines are all precise, couture-quality replicas.
More durable versions are produced for the teams of crinoline-dress-clad women who patrol the streets of Sovereign Hill, an open-air museum that aims to replicate the clothing, buildings, and atmosphere of the 1850s, when the gold rush was at its height.
Other staff dress in the period-piece clothing of soldiers, shopkeepers, bartenders, waitresses, farriers, bakers and, of course, miners. In total there are 120 different styles, with the more popular items produced in bulk at local factories.
“We are making historical fashion,” says Santamaria, who has worked, and studied, in Paris and London, and now applies her high-grade skills at Sovereign Hill, where Hong Kong and China visitors account for some 70,000 of the annual 750,000 visitors.
