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Fashion Fantasia is an annual awards event for wearable art. Initially the dream of Rossy Roberts-Thomson, it is now in its seventh year.

It provides an opportunity for international textile artists, national and state craftspeople and students to air their creativity to a wide audience. Fashion is taken to its limit into the area where the body is the canvas on which an installation, an idea, an aesthetic creation or a fine example of saleable wearables in the numerous areas of textile craft (machine embroidery, silk, felt, knitting, weaving, crochet, dyeing, collage from recycled products, and any other new mediums) is exhibited to an audience for their admiration, appreciation, inspiration and possible sale, whilst at the same time giving the maker/designer/creator an opportunity to make an impact as an artist in a legitimate sense.

Rossy Roberts-Thomson - Director
Rossy grew up on a farm at Table Cape, Tasmania. After gaining her BA & Dip.Ed, she began her career teaching in Tasmania. She married and went to India for two years with Australian Volunteers Abroad before transferring to the Guidance Branch of the Education Department where she spent 3 years as an educational psychologist. After having two children she trained as a teacher librarian and worked in school libraries for about 21 years. During that time she studied for her Master of Education and her Bachelor of Fine Arts. This led to a real interest in the art and craft movement and she became a sculptural potter, and worked a bit with textiles in collage. She remarried and shared this interest in craft with her husband and they jointly set up two galleries in the Salamanca area in Hobart. As if not enough she also opened an Art Cafe which she ran for two years. Rossy has bred cats for most of her adult life and became an International Cat Judge,and has judged in South Africa, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia.

Rossy has pushed her interest in craft to trying to raise the profile of textile crafts as a legitimate craft in the artistic sense and in doing this came up with the idea of Fashion Fantasia. Inspired by what she has heard about the Wearable Art movement in Nelson, New Zealand, she hopes to run a similar but different style of event here in Tasmania, starting small and hopefully growing to a significant event.

Karel Fontaine – Co-Director
Karel Fontaine, feltmaker, costume designer and photographer seen here taking inspiration from Central Australia recently. Known as Photo-Queen by her daughters, in 2006 Karel was our Hall of Fame artist with her Suite of costumes. “Veils of the Spirit".

Sarah Bishop - Assistant Director
Sarah Bishop has a background in fine art, majoring in Photography at the University of Tasmania. Since then she has been an Art Teacher and a public gallery coordinator. It was whilst working for Rossy Roberts-Thomson that she rediscovered her interest in textiles. Sarah is now passionate about creating her own wearable art. She has been on board Fashion Fantasia since 2002 and entered for the first time in 2004. I had great pleasure in winning the 'Peoples Choice Award' for 2004 & 2005, and having a garment accepted for the 2007 WOW in Wellington, NZ.

In 2008 Fashion Fantasia is powered by the elephant. Our Silver sponsors in 2008 are: