Liquorice Black talks designing Corrie’s orange wedding dress

Coronation Street resident Gemma Winter will be turning heads when she walks down the aisle next week in her bright orange wedding dress.

Her huge jaw-dropping orange wedding gown has been co-designed and made by drag queen and fashion designer Liquorice Black – famous for their stunning unique creations for shows such as RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Manchester designer Liquorice Black worked in conjunction with Coronation Street Head of Costume Alex Hatzar and actress Dolly Rose Campbell to create the dress of Gemma’s dreams. On-screen Gemma has bought a charity shop dress which has been dyed and customised by her pal, seamstress Izzy Armstrong, played by Cherylee Houston.

In reality, the impressive two-metre wide dress, with a stunning seven-metre long train, complete with fairy lights, was crafted at Liquorice Black’s studio in Manchester. The dress is so large that a short version had to be made as Dolly’s co-stars couldn’t get near enough to film close-up scenes.

Here Liquorice, real name John Roberts, talks about creating the look…

John Roberts aka Liquorice and his sister Louise Roberts pictured with Corrie star Dolly Rose Campbell

How did you come to get involved in making this fabulous dress?

A mutual friend of mine and Dolly’s got in touch with me and said that someone from Corrie was wanting to talk to me about possibly making a wedding dress. Initially I turned it down as I wasn’t sure it was my sort of thing. I didn’t realise what sort of wedding dress they were looking for or that I would even be able to do it. Then Dolly got in touch directly and explained what it was and that she would love me to do it. I had a meeting with Dolly and the head of costume and the two of them completely convinced me that it would be a really fun project to do and they had faith that I could make their vision come to reality. So I accepted.

Did you know anything about the character of Gemma before you got involved?

No, I didn’t know anything about the character so I set about watching clips on Youtube and reading up about her and I realised how much fun she is and what an outlandish dress sense she has and I knew it was going to be fun to help create this wedding dress.

How did the collaboration with Alex and Dolly work?

I asked them what they wanted and what their initial thoughts were on how they wanted the dress to look. Alex and Dolly showed me some images of more outlandish wedding dresses as jumping-off points and made it clear they didn’t want it to be the traditional white dress. We kind of threw around some ideas and we all agreed that orange was the way to go. It is a bold colour and it will really stand out and it’ll work for the character with Chesney obviously. 

Dolly wanted a really long train, and lights and flowers. Lots of collaborative ideas were thrown together. It wasn’t a case of ‘could you make something?’ and then I just went away and did it, it was very much a team effort.

Did you also have to consider the practicalities of Dolly filming in the dress?

Absolutely, it is a dress she has to wear for a long time. There are actually two dresses. So there’s a shorter and longer one to allow for close up filming. Myself and my sister Louise were there on the filming day. My initial intention was just to be on hand just to help out if they needed any help with moving the dress around and getting her into the dress because there are lots of complicated moving parts to it with the zips and buckles and underskirts. I was also on hand if there was any mishap so I could do any fixing in the spot, there was a needle and thread on hand if anyone accidentally stood on the dress. We had a really nice experience seeing stuff from behind the camera and how it’s all made and how the costumes work in the spaces and for filming. 

Did you enjoy working with Dolly?

I did very much, Dolly really is a glorified drag queen. I think she’s probably more of a drag queen than I am. She had as great an imagination as any other drag queens that I’ve worked with so it was a very similar process to be honest. She wanted everything in excess and sometimes I had to be the bearer of bad news and tell her she couldn’t have a fifteen-metre-long train or more fairy lights. I loved working with her. I think she is absolutely fabulous. 

How does the dress compare to costumes you have made for RuPaul’sDrag Race? Was there anything that was particularly tricky?

Definitely, the scale of the dress because it’s probably the biggest dress I’ve ever made. I had to keep on going back to the fabric stores to get more and more material as the dress was basically eating the material, I would sew some more underskirts then realise it needed to be bigger. There are hundreds of metres of tulle in the underskirt alone. There are also the details like all the lights that had to be fitted into it. My sister was assisting me and it took her seven days to sew in 125 metres of fairy lights. 

So was it just the two of you working on it then or did you have a whole team?

It’s generally just me, but my sister comes in and she assists when I need some help. She sewed a lot of the rhinestones by hand and all the lights that are in the dress were all hand sewn in by my sister. Those things take time as they are so fiddly.

How will you feel seeing your creation on Coronation Street?

I am from Manchester so it has been such an honour to work on this dress and to be asked to be involved in the filming of a wedding on the show. Coronation Street is a UK institution and I am so grateful to be a small part of Corrie history. I can’t wait to see it on screen.