ONZM
Costume Designer
Biography
Ngila Dickson - Costume DesignerONZM
"I'm speechless, dumbfounded! Wow! How do you react when someone rings you up and tells you you've won lotto – well, it must feel something like this...But more than anything, thank you for considering a frock tart fit to be in such fine company."
Ngila Dickson is an award-winning costume designer. Born in Dunedin in 1958, she has worked as a magazine editor, stylist and fashion designer, before entering the film industry.
Ngila's costume design work includes New Zealand films Ruby and Rata and Heavenly Creatures. She also spent several years designing for the television series Xena Warrior Princess and Hercules, receiving Best Contribution to Design Award at the New Zealand Television Awards for her work on Xena: Warrior Princess in 1997 and 1998, and Best Costume Award at the 4th International Cult TV Awards.
Ngila has received numerous nominations and awards. Her work dominated the 2004 Academy Award's Costume Design category with a double nomination for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and The Last Samurai, winning an Oscar Award for Best Costume Design with Richard Taylor for The Lord of the Rings. She also received a Bafta Award and an American costume industry award, judged by her peers, in the same year. Ngila's costumes designed for The Last Samurai were displayed in Barney's department store windows, Madison Avenue, New York in the build-up to the 2004 Oscars. Also during this award season Ngila garnered the Costume Guild Award for Lord of the Rings and a Saturn Award for The Last Sumurai.
Ngila has been working off-shore since 2004 on such diverse projects as The Illusionist, set in 1900's Vienna, Blood Diamond in Africa, and The International, a contemporary thriller set in Berlin, Istanbul, Milan and New York.
Ngila was awarded an Officer of the Order of New Zealand (ONZM) for services to design and the film industry in the 2004 Queens Birthday Honours. In 2008 she received an Arts Foundation Laureate Award.
Ngila is married to art historian Hamish Keith and lives in Auckland.
1983: Get ready to cha cha
Photographer Max Thomson and Rip It Up editor Murray Cammick presented struggling fashion designer Ngila Dickson with a makeshift desk and a cheque for $2000 so she could start up her own magazine. ChaCha was the result. Under Dickson's editorship, the magazine became an incubator for new creative talent, including photographers, writers and stylists, many of whom still permeate our creative scene.
From a NZ Herald article by Claire Regnault (28 October 2010) - review of The Dress Circle:
The Dress Circle takes an in-depth look at our fashionable past, going as far back as the 1940s and seeking out "the stories of those who have designed the clothes that fashion-aware New Zealanders have worn". But what are the key moments that have helped shape the industry as it stands today? Co-author Claire Regnault looks back and brings you 16 fashion moments you probably haven't heard of - from trouser cuff angst to Chacha magazine's special indie fashion spirit.
