Studio photos by Carlton Mickle.

I made this one in February/March 2007. It was inspired by Candy Barr, a very

popular dancer in the 50's. We spent weeks discussing the colors. Kitty is a

seamstress as well so she was very involved in the design. We wanted pink and

turquoise. Rick Delaup, the producer/director, wanted red with blue and white.

Since Kitty and I aren't really patriotic, we hated the idea of red, white and

blue. Rick wanted red because lots of vintage cowgirl pics have red, whether a

skirt or kerchief or some other item.  We probably spent about 3 days shopping

and didn't buy anything. Wild Cherry had some satin given to her by a friend

she knew from her dancing days and lo and behold we had an entire bolt of

creme colored polyester-backed vintage satin. I think the colors are very

vintage-like. This costume took a while to make because I made just about

every stitch she's wearing. I got the bandana-kini idea from a Vargas book my

friend Phil had. Phil has the best western collection probably in the entire

south. Kitty is wearing one of his outfits in the pose with his Studebaker, taken

one afternoon while visiting/researching at Phils. Kitty got the boots at a

thrift store and spray painted them silver for another costume. We painted

them with red acrylic and added rhinestones. Shortly thereafter, the paint

(with attached stones) started peeling. Apparently you can't put acrylic over an

oil-based paint. Yet another irritating lesson learned. She had to peel all the

paint off, pick the paint off the stones, paint them with oil-based red and

reattach the stones. They still peel a little and have to be touched up

periodically. This costume has about 2000+ rhinestones on it.