At least 62 hand-sewn frocks were required for Dancing with the Stars' second season. Although a dance Spandex Zentai can take up to two months to create, TV deadlines are tight and the team - Robertson, her partner Matt Nebbs, three dressmakers and a full-time decorator - work around the clock.

IN A brightly lit corner of a bustling office in Elsternwick, a woman sits poised beside a mannequin, dotting tiny spots of glue on to fabric using a wooden skewer dipped in paste. She then covers each dot with a sparkling crystal following a pattern sketched before her. It's a painstaking task and will take more than a day to complete.

Kimberley Hore is a full-time decorator at June Designs, the company charged with making the "dancesports couture" worn by the women in Seven's hit variety series Dancing with the Stars.

Kylie Miller meets the team behind TV's most elaborate costumes.

"But with me standing over them . . ." says Valerie Nelson, with a laugh. Nelson, working for Granada Productions, is style director on the show.

"It takes up my whole existence," says Robertson, who learned she was pregnant the week before she started work on episode one. The baby is due next month, two weeks after the show concludes, although she jokes that she may set up a machine in the labour ward if it comes early.

Robertson, 32, entered the glamorous world of dancesports at the age of eight, spinning around the floor in the glittering creations that most little girls only dream of.

After appearing as a teenager in the ABC's That's Dancing, she moved to London to dance at 16. To save money, Robertson designed her own Spandex Zentai costumes.

"It just unexpectedly took over, really, from my dancing career . . . I just start drawing and go from there. I suppose I've been dancing for so long, I've had my fair share of costumes."

Business became serious when Robertson and Nebbs returned to Australia nine years ago and June Designs is now the biggest dancesports designer in the country.

Creating costume drama section A

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