Creative isolation works for Aurelio Fashion designer Aurelio Costarella at his studio in North Perth. Picture: Marie Nirme Source: TheAustralian MILESTONES are, in my opinion, well worth celebrating. And in Australian fashion, with so many stories of retail gloom and closures, a big anniversary is all the more worth popping some champagne corks for. While I was in Perth this week, I visited Aurelio Costarella at his studio, where he and his team are readying themselves for an exhibition at the WA Museum in November marking his 30 years in fashion At this point I must confess that as a Perth teenager I would regularly pop into Costarella's first shop, Creme Soda, down a dingy arcade in the Perth CBD, and there seemed to be no cooler place in the city, especially as it was situated right next door to Dada records, another haunt of the hip that so many of us craved, feeling as we did so isolated from the rest of the world. That isolation has never bothered Costarella, who made a decision early on to stay in Perth and run an increasingly global operation from there. And his North Perth flagship, Post, in a former post office where his studio is also situated, is a far cry from that dark arcade in the city where he started, filled with his ready-to-wear, gowns and beautiful items sourced from around the world. The exhibition will cover fashion and stylish artefacts from the past 30 years of arguably Perth's most successful designer. "We've really only started keeping an archive in the last 15 years," says Costarella, who was in Sydney last week to see his eveningwear on the catwalk at the Myer spring-summer launch. Prior to that I just didn't even think I'd still be doing this 30 years on. To pad out those archive pieces, loyal customers have been in touch to loan some of his earliest garments. We've had quite a bit of contact from women offering up pieces, mostly from the 90s, pieces I'd forgotten about. Anything from the 80s is rare. I'm waiting to get some of my pieces back from the Creme Soda days -- someone got in touch that lives in Bali and had some pieces stored away in a trunk, some of my early tie-dyed calico pieces. They're likely to be a far cry from his most glamorous work, which includes a number of gowns worn by celebrities, which will be on display in the museum foyer during the exhibition. These include designs worn by Dannii Minogue, Dita Von Teese and Geri Halliwell, among others. Some of those pieces have been returned after having been kept from shoots and events, although Costarella declines to name names. The exhibition will run throughout the museum, with mannequins housed among skeletons and mammal displays, videos set inside gem displays, feathered gowns in a native bird display and handwoven raffia gowns within the woven basket display. A true meeting of Perth fashion and history.