Ngila Dickson

Ngila Dickson's work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy involved designing and overseeing the making of thousands of costumes, from elven silk dresses to 15 copies of Gandalf's cloak. The result was eight awards, including Oscars and BAFTAs for best costume design (both shared with Richard Taylor). Dickson first honed her design skills on five feature films, and 100 plus episodes of Xena and Hercules.

Ngila - pronounced Nyla - Dickson began her love affair with clothing and design while growing up in Dunedin, where she regularly lapped up her mother's issues of French Vogue.

After moving north to Auckland, Dickson began selling her own clothing designs at the Cook Street Market. Thanks to Rip it Up editor Murray Cammick, she soon got the chance to edit her own fashion magazine, ChaCha. After five years commanding ChaCha, the magazine folded after the stock market crash.

Dickson turned her hand to designing music videos, then began working in costume design on television and film. After costume designing mini-series The Rainbow Warrior Conspiracy in 1989, she made her feature debut on offbeat, visually-ambitious comedy User Friendly, directed by Gregor Nicholas. The film saw Dickson designing costumes for everybody from villainous doctors to a fornicating couple in over-the-top science fiction outfits, recreating the docking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

More features followed, including dark tales Crush (which marked the feature debut of Alison Maclean) and Jack Be Nimble, before another big break: being shoulder-tapped by Peter Jackson to design the 50s-era costumes for Heavenly Creatures.

Dickson's next gigs offered a valuable opportunity to practice creating convincing costumes for imaginary, quasi-historical worlds: twin TV series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess (which she worked on till the end of the fourth season.) The fast turnaround demands of these locally-shot fantasy shows provided valuable experience to New Zealand film crews across many disciplines.
 
The shows' freewheeling styles saw Dickson designing costumes across a range of cultures and time periods, from Greece to revolutionary France, to 1940s Macedonia. Sometimes she found herself having to design and supervise construction of 100 costumes in just 10 days; there were also fruitful collaborations with Weta effects talent Richard Taylor, who created a number of monsters for the shows. Dickson was awarded design gongs at the 1997 and 1998 Film and TV Awards for her Xena contributions.

Dickson's work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy would dwarf even the manifold demands of Xena and Hercules. Aside from the thousands of costumes that needed to be designed, sourced, dyed and aged, identical sets of costumes were required for stunt doubles, horse-riding doubles, and actors of completely different sizes. To help create the illusion that the hobbits were a different size than other races, costumes were recreated identically, in a larger scale weave. A single costume for one of the villainous Dark Riders required more than 50 metres worth of layered material.

Dickson began work on Lord of the Rings in April 1999, six months before shooting began, and set about assembling a 50 strong crew. Although the look of the films "had already been more or less established" by Richard Taylor's team of artists and effects wizards, there was no lack of things still to do. Dickson quickly found herself charged with establishing the look of the hobbits, dressing them in a "slightly off-kilter" late 17th/early 18th century look.

The hard work of Dickson, Richard Taylor and the Rings costume team resulted in more than 20 award nominations - including a BAFTA win for The Two Towers, and Oscars and American Costume Designers Guild gongs for the much-awarded Return of the King.

Since leaving Middle Earth, Dickson has been in demand in other exotic locations. Tom Cruise epic The Last Samurai saw her supervising crew and kimonos in Japan, Los Angeles and Taranaki; the result was another Oscar nomination. She also costume designed the South African-shot Blood Diamond, Tom Twyker thriller The International, and joined the Kiwi-heavy team on the Louisiana shoot for superhero movie Green Lantern.

In the 2004 Queens Birthday Honours, Dickson was awarded an ONZM "for services to design and the film industry".