Dance off misery: Chris Robshaw and his dance partner, Nadiya Bychkova (right, in red) were among the first to get eliminated from this year’s Strictly Come Dancing series. But their costumes, and those of many of their rivals, were made in Croydon
Whoever receives the glitterball at the end of the BBC’s pro-celebrity Strictly Come Dancing tonight, they will probably be wearing costumes where every stitch of chiffon, every sequin, has been designed and sewn on by craftspeople at a Croydon-based costume company whose co-founder was at the heart of televised ballroom competitions.
Anyone old enough to recall Strictly’s predecessor programme, Come Dancing and presenters who included Judith Chalmers, Terry Wogan or Angela Rippon, will probably also remember one of the “adjudicators” of that ballroom competition: Len Goodman, who was to become a mainstay “Pickle my walnuts!” judge in the early series of Strictly.
Another regular to tread the boards on the show at The Lyceum was Peggy Spencer.
Spencer was the doyenne of women’s ballroom from the 1940s to the 1980s, a champion dancer and expert choreographer who famously was invited to have her sarf London formation ballroom dancing team perform for the Queen at Buck House. Twice.
Radio old times: there’s been some form of ballroom competition show on the BBC for 75 years
Spencer died in 2016, aged 95, after a lifetime devoted to dance. She was foremost known as a teacher, giving lessons at her studio in Penge, but she also had an entrepreneurial streak which saw her branch out into the design and manufacture of famously glitzy ballroom costumes, for men as well as women, through a company she helped form called DanceSport International.
And it is DSI, based on an industrial estate off the Purley Way, which over recent series has provided to order, usually on a very tight turnround, so many of the bespoke, hand-made costumes worn by the celebrities under the TV spotlights.
So while the Croydon and Sutton sports stars who started out on this latest series of Strictly, Chris Robshaw, the former England rugby captain, and Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, the Olympic sprinter turned Gladiator, didn’t last the course to the finish, it is highly likely that costumes worn by the three finallists will have been stitched together in the past fortnight in a workshop on Progress Way.
Doyenne: Peggy Spencer and her husband, Frank in their trophy-winning days
DSI London was founded in 1982, by Spencer and Geoffrey Hearn, with half an eye on getting ballroom into the Olympics, and after adding a dress-making department in 2000, they have become the go-to place for West End theatre costume directors and, of course, the producers at Strictly.
As well as dressing the celebs and their professional partners on the telly, DSI London’s 52 skilled dressmakers have also provided the wardrobes for stage musicals and movies including Wicked and Hamilton.
The demands of making body-hugging costumes for performance are “completely different” compared to regular fashion, according to DSI’s sales director Gerald Schwanzer.
Made in Croydon: some of the fancy frocks used by dancers on Strictly, made by hand at DSI London
Many of the costumes are closer in design and materials to the kind of thing which might be worn by competitors in demanding sports such as gymnastics.
“Performers want to move, and we want to accentuate the movement,” Schwanzer told the BBC in a recent interview.
“We have the right expertise and machinery to make movement come alive and make it very exciting to watch. You need real experts to do something great.”
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News, views and analysis about the people of Croydon, their lives and political times in the diverse and most-populated borough in London.
Based in Croydon and edited by Steven Downes. To contact us, please email inside.croydon@btinternet.com