The Masked Singer SA costume designer reveals intricate process to hide stars' IDs

UFC world champion Dricus du Plessis became the fifth celebrity to be revealed as "Wildebeest" on The Masked Singer SA, joining Nthati Moshesh (Springbok), Celeste Ntuli (Tortoise), Khutso Theledi (Lion) and Nonkanyiso “LaConco” Conco (Star). 

While the unmasking of the big celebrities is the big attraction of the TV show, have you ever wondered what goes behind the making of the larger-than-life costumes? The show's costume designer, Heidi du Toit, has spilled all the details behind the making of some of the memorable costumes this season.

“Every costume we manufacture has its own challenges, we must always make sure that the costume looks like the design that we were given to create,” said du Toit.

“The day we met Dricus du Plessis, I was surprised by his pleasant and likeable character. He was very excited to be part of The Masked Singer SA and so were we.

“His necklaces were made out of AVA foam. The shirt underneath the jacket was printed to look like a six-pack and we padded it to give a muscle look and we covered his shoes with AVA foam to create the look of the wildebeest feet."

Du Toit said they also worked hard to make the costume comfortable.

“We always added a fan on the inside of the mask to make sure there is ventilation and we put some breathing holes that are not visible. Dricus had to look through the mouth of the mask to see where he was walking,” she said.

On Saturday, Wildebeest ended up going head-to-head with Diamond, another intricate costume that required hours of construction. Only time will tell who is the celebrity behind Diamond.

“Diamond is supposed to be very glamorous and stylish, so we made sure to execute that. The Blue Crane was also a challenging costume to make. It’s massive with a long neck, wings and a huge petticoat, and every little piece of fabric that was printed had to look like feathers… it was quite a test but very joyful to work on," she said.

“Fortunately, I have a large team that worked with me on the manufacturing of the costumes at Hollywood Costumes. Only four of us worked on the set behind the scenes and knew who the celebrities behind every mask were.

“There is no greater job satisfaction for us when the mask goes on stage and you see the reaction of the judges and the audience. This makes you feel very proud of all the hard work we’ve put into these designs.” 

Du Toit said the audiences' jaws are going drop when the rest of the masks are revealed this season.

“The reference picture of Springbok that was given to us was a little bit of a challenge, because of the body shape of the real person [Moshesh]. But we pulled it off,” she said. 

“Tortoise’s [Ntuli] jacket took a long time to complete because we had to cut little pieces of the fabric to create the look we wanted. It was like building a puzzle with all the little pieces of silver fabric. We had to sew every little piece separately."

She adds that the Star [Conco] was a big costume and they had to make sure that it didn’t show any body parts and that is why they made palazzo pants so that you couldn’t see her legs to make sure that someone didn’t recognise her legs.