Miss SA gowns nicked
2007-11-21 23:23
Johannesburg - "Fifty years of my work is completely gone. I feel as if I've been castrated," says top designer Peter Soldatos.
He was talking on Wednesday after the theft of a range of his designer dresses last Saturday from his studio in Rosebank.
The dresses, created by him during a 50-year period, were destined for the Miss South Africa competition at Sun City in North West on December 8.
Soldatos said he had taken the range out of his storage room after one of the organisers had asked him to make some of his designs available.
The beauty pageant is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and Soldatos and designer Marianne Fassler had been asked to provide their designs of the past five decades for the extravaganza.
Soldatos said: "An organiser came to select from the different ranges and decided on these specific dresses.
"I decided not to lock them up again, but instead to hang them out in my studio so that they could be aired, ready for the competition."
Theft puzzled cops, too
Soldatos had taken an afternoon nap on Saturday and woken about 18:00 to find empty racks where the glamorous outfits had been hanging.
"It was very strange that only the dresses had been stolen. They could just as well have ransacked the house, because the door was open."
Soldatos called the Rosebank police, but when they did not arrive, he and a friend went to the station to report the case.
He said police, who came to take fingerprints, also had been puzzled by the strange theft.
Soldatos found two of the 30 dresses in his driveway after the burglary, possibly dropped by the thieves when they fled.
"I'm heart-broken about all of this. One can perhaps recreate them, but you can't ever replace the sentimental and historical value of these gowns."