EXCLUSIVE: This weekend, the hit BBC One dance show will be broadcasting live in from Blackpool’s iconic Tower Ballroom
07:09, 22 Nov 2025Updated 08:52, 22 Nov 2025
Strictly Come Dancing in the Blackpool Tower Ballroom(Image: PA)
Thousands of crystals and hundreds of pairs of shoes can only lead you to Strictly Come Dancing’s costume department on any given week – never mind when they’re packing up and heading to Blackpool.
This weekend, the beloved dance show packed up its Elstree Studio and hit the road as it headed up north to the seaside town where the latest live show will take place in the famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom.
Every year, Strictly heads to the seaside town to bring one of its live episodes to viewers from the world-famous venue that is said to be the ‘home of ballroom dancing’.
Strictly first decamped to Blackpool for the third ever episode in May 2004, and the 2005 final, which is when actress Jill Halfpenny won. But Blackpool Week didn’t become a regular thing until from 2009, when Children In Need temporarily took over the Strictly studio at BBC Television Centre every November.
The show no longer needed to make way for Children In Need when TV Centre closed in 2013, but by then, “making it to Blackpool” had become an established milestone just over halfway through the series.
The upcoming episode will see Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman back steering the BBC One dance contest, for what will be the last time in Blackpool, as they leave at the end of the current series.
With an expanded cast of professional dancers and the electric Northern atmosphere, this year’s Blackpool special promises to be an unmissable celebration.
But the effort that goes into the show, let alone when moving it up the country, is staggering. Vicky Gill, the show’s costume designer, is one of those who know just what it takes to get Strictly’s Blackpool show looking like it does when it goes out live on a Saturday night, followed by a pre-recorded results show on a Sunday.
Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom will be transformed by the arrival of Strictly(Image: Getty Images)
When the Manchester Evening News exclusively caught up with Vicky ahead of the show, she was just taking a few hours to work out the logistics of the week ahead. “It’s mad this week and I like a few hours at the kitchen table making sure that we’re all doing what we need to be before I actually go into the work room because you can’t answer anything once we go in there,” she told us.
Vicky has been in the role for 13 years, but has actually been a part of the Strictly team since around the programme’s third series back in 2005, when she was an advisor to Sue Judd, the costume designer at the time.
“You know what, it’s really strange because time just flies by and I think that Strictly, although it wasn’t intended, has been such a huge part of our lives as a family and, you know, in career terms, so it’s amazing,” Vicky said.
“It’s difficult because the team, obviously, we love it, but it takes a lot of hard work to get it where it needs to be. But like I say, we’re also lucky because we get to work within an environment and our creative environment that we set out to do when we, you know, when we got involved in all the things that we did.
“It’s fantastic and I think that we’re all really, really proud of the show and work incredibly hard to sustain and keep the level of the shows kind of up there really.”
But it’s not just Strictly where you’ll have seen – or will see -Vicky’s work. Away from the sparkle of the ballroom, she was involved in the costumes Girls Aloud wore during their ‘The Girls Aloud Show’ reunion tour last year, and has already revealed she’ll be working on the Priscilla Queen of the Desert The Musical tour next year.
For now, though, it’s all about Strictly. Vicky explained how the preparations for the series start in May, which is when she describes herself as being a “lone wolf”, looking at past series and thinking about what changes need to be made or how they can be improved.
“As we move into June, it really starts to hot up,” she said. “Then further members of the team will join me. We meet the celebrities in July time and then through to about the middle of August, that’s when we’re really investing in thoughts about group numbers and pre-records going into the series.
Strictly’s costume designer Vicky Gill
“Once we get into the series, after week two becomes a 10-day turnaround, but with a lot of pressure, really the week of. So the thoughts about what the creative is for either the week we’re in or the following week. It’s all there, it’s all down on paper. There’s been lots of discussion about where we want to go. But we’re not really getting heavily involved until the week of.
“And even though we’re going to Blackpool this week, we have been thinking about Blackpool. We’ve been trying to prep as much as we can, but the heavy work is happening now.”
The van for Blackpool was loaded on Wednesday morning, and after what she called a “last swoop” of anything they think they might need, the deliveries to the Tower Ballroom continued through until Friday evening.
And the challenges don’t stop. “I mean, anxiety levels go through the roof, as you can imagine,” Vicky laughed. “But once you calm yourself down and think practically about where people are gonna work, how best to create, working with Jane Marcantonio, who is the wardrobe supervisor on the show with us, working out where we’re gonna put dressing rooms, where we’re gonna do quick changes…”
But errors can be inevitable. “Honestly, I could probably write a book. I could probably make the money out of it,” Vicky laughed when asked about what could go wrong. “It can be as small as a shoe,” she went on. “So, for example, one year, we’d agreed on what shoes people were wearing, because you can imagine we can’t take everybody’s shoe wardrobe with us, we would need a van in itself just to transport shoes.
“So we agreed what shoes in group number they were going to wear and then on the Friday morning, they decided that, actually, we needed a different shoe. But with 50 people in a group number, that’s a massive decision, even though it seems like a really small change.
“People are coming up to Blackpool on Friday, ready for the Saturday. We even have to get family involved because there’s certain people travelling up to go into Elstree, look through the stores. It’s like anybody and everybody gets involved in solving a problem. So there’s, there’s always stuff like that.
“I’m just sat now and working out the week and working out who the last person is leaving London on Friday and if there’s a problem with X, Y or Z, then that person can be the courier. So it’s really, really to the wire and all sorts of things happen.”
Even those blunders that happen live on the show don’t faze Vicky. “I don’t mind those moments either because it just reminds people that it is live, it is real,” she said. “Working as a designer, when I work on other jobs, I’m a little bit of an oddity because I don’t t just illustrate or draw pretty pictures and then expect other people to deliver. It’s very much, again, an organic process where the looks are being built, they’re being developed kind of as we go.
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“Because it’s so tight, like living through a weekly live, it has to work that way because there’s no time for it to work any other way. So as you say, we’re not finished until we’re off air, and then we’re still not finished because we’re loading out, we are packing down, and all of the team get involved. There’s no kind of hierarchy where I leave the building and leave everyone else to it or anybody else on the team. We’re very much the multi-taskers. Whatever needs doing, needs doing. And I think, again, that’s the power, really, that everyone’s invested and works incredibly hard from beginning to end.”
But the scale, even just for the wardrobe alone, is immense. Vicky explained: “We probably have 150 looks at Blackpool, and so if you imagine that’s 150 pairs of shoes or 150 options, and then we have to have backup in case something goes wrong. So it could be as many as like 175 pairs of shoes.
“If we got 150 looks, they wouldn’t all be embellished heavily, but if we take our main show, we’ve probably got 30 garments that would be embellished, and here’s normally a minimum of five packets on a garment. Our leading ladies this week will probably have 10 to 15 on there, and there’s 1,150 crystals in a packet. So you can imagine just the size of application and attention to detail.
“So it’s the number of garments. In those 150 garments or those 150 looks, they’ve all got to be put on hangers, they’ve all gotta be bagged, they’ve got to all be labelled. They then all need to then be put in a specific spot. So the sheer effort in preparation to get us to Blackpool, before we even start putting the clothes on people or doing dress runs or on-camera rehearsals, is massive. “
Vicky went on: “We take it all in our stride, again, because everyone’s so brilliant and it’s such a well-oiled machine. Everyone’s just fantastic. There’s just, you know, there’s nothing else to say apart from that because it just wouldn’t happen without everybody investing the way that they do.
“But it’s the small things that I think people don’t understand. Like I say, purely labelling everything. In one of the numbers where we possibly will have a silver boot this week, these boots don’t come in silver, so they’re all going to be sprayed and painted and upcycled.
“So, you know, that’ll probably be 20 pairs of boots that someone’s doing. If they take an hour and a half to do and that’s just one fiction.”
Once the magic of Blackpool is done and dusted, the work continues for Vicky, the costume department and the rest of the team right up until the Strictly final, which is currently set for December 20. But despite the chaos, she can’t think of anywhere better to be.
“My husband’s losing his mind because he’s having to, you know, fill the gaps that I’m not doing,” Vicky laughed. “It definitely spills out, but we’re all still there and we all really love it and hopefully that comes through the airwaves and people, you, know, still tuning in and are invested as they ever were.”
And Christmas will soon be upon us. “That’s always my goal,” Vicky said. “I don’t need a lot. I just look forward to my Christmas lunch and all my family and friends and stuff and that is my goal because the only thing is, Santa Claus feels like the grim reaper for a little bit of time because you’re like, ‘Oh my goodness, he’s coming and I haven’t bought one present yet’. But again, it all happens.”