Costume designer Wendy Cork in the Southern Highlands visiting a relative last year when she wandered into Gillian Herne’s store, Twisting Vintage on Bowral Road. 

"She was interested in how dresses were made, what the fabrics were, how things were cut. I could tell she was really looking at things, she wasn’t just having a browse,” Ms Herne said. 

Just a week prior, Ms Cork had been given the budget to costume an upcoming Australian film directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Mao’s Last dancer).  

The film was Ladies in Black, an adaptation of the Madeleine St John book The Woman in Black, which Beresford had spent a quarter century attempting to get made. 

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The film follows a group of women working in a department store in the late 1950s. 

It was shot on the unrenovated and empty seventh floor of David Jones in Sydney. Subsequently, the costume department had to not only find outfits for the actors, but enough stock to fill a department store. 

“[Cork] bought lots of packeted hosiery, hat boxes – they just about cleaned me out of hats and gloves, jewellery and outfits,” Ms Herne said. 

“There is a strong local connection in that quite a number of the garments featured actually belonged to several local ladies,” she said. 

A special screening of Ladies in Black is being held at Empire Cinemas in Bowral on Thursday, September 20.

The event will be hosted by Ms Herne and features a Twisting Vintage fashion show and Q&A with the costume designer, Wendy Cork.