Feathers

The Romance Writers of Australia annual conference always kicks off with a costume cocktail party on the Friday night (after a day of workshops by the visiting overseas authors.)

When I first joined RWAust, it was called the “Meet the Authors” cocktail party and was a very sedate affair. There weren’t many published authors back then — maybe 20 who attended, and they’d all chat to each other while the unpublished writers more or less looked on and talked among themselves. I blogged about it here.

Me as Dame Barbara Cartland.

Then in 2002 the conference was in a historic hotel in Melbourne, and we decided to make it a “Retro” costume affair. There were a lot of complaints from people on the loops — “I don’t like costume affairs,” “I don’t know what to wear”, etc — and I, who had run the costume cupboards in my high school, realized that people needed to be led /encouraged.

So I sent an email to the loop saying “Dress up, ya wimps!” (yes. I could have been more tactful) and basically said people could wear any retro historical outfit they liked, or at the very least they could buy a feather boa and wear that, and be in the spirit of things.

I even drove a group of authors into the city so they could buy feather boas a good half hour before the cocktail party started. It worked, a heap of people came with boas, and since then the costumes have got more fabulous and fun and the majority of people dress up — though it’s no problem if they don’t.

Me in a “glittery” costume — the theme that year was “Glitter.”

Since then, I have always worn a feather boa in some fashion. They get a bit hot and prickly when worn around the nck so I generally make some kind of silly headdress with a boa — it’s dead easy: I just wind a boa around my head, tuck the ends in, and voila! It’s done.

The hotel in Hobart has a display of fabulous feathery cabaret costumes. My breakfast friend showed me where the display was, and of course I couldn’t resist taking the photos below.