COSTUME DRAMA
Heidi Hollywood dresses for success
● If the madness of Hollywood gets too much, Heidi du Toit has a good cry under her desk. Then she gets up, dusts herself off and starts work on her next outrageous outfit.
She is, after all, Heidi Hollywood — reality TV star and owner of one of SA’s biggest costume warehouses.
She makes anything to order, with some of her more unusual commissions being a giant whale penis for a movie prop and a camel-toe outfit for a real Hollywood star.
Helping people play dress-up in her three-storey fantasy store in Krugersdorp on Gauteng’s west rand is hard work, Du Toit sighs.
For the past 24 years, she and her bevy of seamstresses, prop-makers and prosthetic experts have dressed, designed and transformed anything from kids in school plays to celebrities.
In an otherwise drab neighbourhood, the castle-like building, complete with turrets, a moat and a giant lion guarding the entrance, offers a delightful reprieve.
Inside, organised chaos reigns. “Sometimes I think we are getting too big, so I am trying to scale back a little bit this year,” says Du Toit as she floats past a table with legs made from the bottom half of male mannequins.
“We made that too,” she says, pointing to the thongs covering up the necessary bits. “This is a family shop so we need to keep them covered.”
Speaking of legs, Du Toit and her team also make silicone prosthetics with realisticlooking injuries for a company in Denmark to use as training tools for paramedics.
She has expanded into making silicone masks, couture evening and wedding wear, and landed her own reality show, Heidi Hollywood, last year. Across the road are her prop shop and theatre.
She ducks out of the way of men returning props “from a big international film”, but she can’t divulge more.
One of the strangest things she’s made was a life-sized whale penis for the Afrikaans movie Roepman, set in the 1960s and released in 2011.
“But the scene was cut from the film. Actually, the weirdest thing we made was a camel-toe for Drew Barrymore when she shot Blended in SA. That was pretty weird.”
All manner of people cross the moat into the store. The cameras catch a lot of the action, but some things will forever remain between Du Toit and her clientele.
“We get a lot of cross-dressers coming in here, some of them have been dressing up with us for years — without their wives knowing,” she says.
The store is also a favourite among drag queens, the most colourful being Betty Bangles, alter ego to stylist and makeup artist Bernard Buys.
“Oh, it’s always fun when you visit Hollywood Costumes!” says Betty Bangles. “You don’t just pop in and out. If Heidi knows you’re coming she will be ready, waiting with coffee and snacks! After an hour of gossip we get to business.
“I have never heard Heidi say, ‘No, I can’t’!”
Du Toit’s office is basically an extension of the shop floor, boasting outfits for her regular showbiz customers.
The name tags tell all: actress Lizz Meiring, singers Chris Chameleon, Daniella Deysel, Anna Davel and Rocco de Villiers, entertainer Nataniël and comedian Casper de Vries. Pointing to a “Parlotones” name tag she says: “We also rebranded the Parlotones; they’re more stylish now.”
Her next big project is a line of underwear and sleepwear in collaboration with South African fashion designer Peter Bondesio, who is known for his bridal wear. “It’s going to be outrageous, with wings and things, like Victoria’s Secret,” she smiles.
Her love of design started with her mom, a dressmaker, who always let her play with the offcuts. Du Toit has since bought the Dream Brides shop next door — the shop her mother used to own.
“She was a self-taught fashion designer, but I decided to go to fashion school,” she says. “The costume shop is still our most successful business. There have been so many memorable and amazing moments in the 24 years I’ve worked in the shop.
“Sometimes I just crawl under the desk and cry like a baby because we have difficult clients. They will order hundreds of costumes and they want them tomorrow. There’s no business like show business, and in show business there’s no time.
“But after a cry I crawl back out, pour a cup of coffee and complete the order.”
The show, which launched last July, airs on Wednesdays at 10pm on channel 147 on DStv. Du Toit is in talks for a second season.