Melinda Dancs + Poppaea Bicknell
Fashion Designer + Costume Designer
Fashion designer Melinda Dancs and costume designer Poppaea Bicknell, combined forces in 2024 to create the fashion brand Mel & Pea, which aims to create sustainable fashion using scraps, offcuts and deadstock fabrics wherever possible. Melinda’s amazing flair for creating pieces from patchwork, combined with Poppaea’s intricate costume skills, creates a unique style of fashion that is both playful and dramatic.
Artworks for Just Playing exhibition:
Two of the three pieces on show demonstrate each designer’s unique aesthetic. These different styles are combined into a third piece, which is a fully collaborative creation between both designers. All three pieces relate to the theme of PLAY in different ways. Poppaea’s costume piece is inspired by the Victorian fantasy novel The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, a beautifully playful story about the mysteries of magic and the wonders of the circus. Melinda’s fashion piece, demonstrates an incredibly playful use of fabric scraps, colours and patterns, to create a unique outfit. The third piece is an interplay between Mel & Pea, playing on their different skill sets to create something entirely new….