Fleur Thiemeyer Fleur Thiemeyer

Costume designer, Fleur Thiemeyer was interviewed by Glen Manton on 3AW's Sunday morning program (17/8/2025) in one of the most fascinating conversations ever.

The exploits of this amazing woman are quite incredible. Who she has met, knows and become friends with is a who's who of the international entertainment industry including our very own Olivia Newton-John and Bon Scott.

She's not shy (and neither should she be). It was quite honestly wonderful listening to her recount stories of how she has met famous (household) names/people. I have no doubt her sexual adventures would be incredible (oh to hear even just a few stories).

About Fleur Thiemeyer

The amazing Fleur Thiemeyer was born in Sunshine in 1949 and grew up in St Albans. She spent her teens doing athletics, playing softball and basketball, swimming and surfing in bayside Melbourne before going on to define the look of a generation of global music superstars.

She started writing a book in 2020 and and finally finished it in March 2025. The untitled book will be released by the end of 2025. Sign up today to receive updates and an exclusive notification when the book is published. (scroll down to bottom of page)

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There is no Wikipdedia page (shock) but she has an incredible instagram.com page.

Fleur Thiemeyer

Source: famousfix.com

There are few in the industry who can say they've sustained a colourful life in costume design like Fleur Thiemeyer.

The Melbourne-born designer, who spent 30 years abroad working with Olivia Newton-John, Rod Stewart, Liza Minnelli and Motley Crüe, lives vicariously through the threads she creates for these music icons - and now she's back. This time she's adding the gracious touches to Cole Porter's Anything Goes musical, which opens on July 20 at the Arts Centre's State Theatre.

Thiemeyer is a walking, talking encyclopaedia of pop-culture information. Blessed with a bubbly and charismatic nature, it's easy to see how she gets her work. If anybody else dropped the names of as many stars in one sentence you might think they were trying their best to make a fabulous impression, but Thiemeyer has been there and done that and has rubbed shoulders with the industry's finest, many of them now her friends.

Her career milestones are many, from styling Bette Midler in her duet with Mick Jagger for the Beast of Burden video filmed at the former Peppermint Lounge in New York City to dressing Sheena Easton, Donna Summer, Dusty Springfield and Van Halen - she's done the '70s, '80s and '90s time and again. Pat Benatar even wore her outfits when she won Grammys in the '80s and, heck, even Michael Bolton's '80s image was tweaked by Thiemeyer.

Since returning to Australia in 1999, Thiemeyer has dedicated her life to live-theatre production, last year working on the stage show Sugar. She has worked with big and small budgets, different time frames and describes her fate as a matter of luck, timing and talent.

"When you do shows like this there's a lot of boxes you have to tick," says Thiemeyer of working on Anything Goes. "It's about what the director wants, what the budget allows. Do you have the personality You can't just say 'yes you can do it' and off you go. It has to work within the framework of the performance and no matter what your budget, you still want all your costumes to look a million dollars on stage."

Directed and choreographed by Andrew Hallsworth with Dean Bryant (Next to Normal), Anything Goes is about lovers, liars, gangsters and sailors on board the SSAmerican as it leaves New York to cross the Atlantic. All up, Thiemeyer has to create more than 30 character costumes, the majority built from scratch. "If I can't find what I want at fabric stores, I tend to screenprint my own," she says. "Sometimes finding socks for a certain character means the argyle-printed ones for Todd McKenney's character will come from England."

Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (McKenney) is eccentric and Thiemeyer had fun putting his look together. "He'll be wearing plus fours, argyle socks, a velvet jacket, striped shirt and a bowler hat."

Thiemeyer says the outfits aren't specific to a time in the play - there's a bit of Jessica Rabbit channelled in Amanda Harrison's character of Reno Sweeney (a cabaret singer), while the dancers in the show wear outfits inspired from the 1920s to 1960s.

"It's a bit more glamorous than typical. The costumes are in the colours of red, white, blue and sky blue - there is no other colour on the stage, everything is put into a theme, so within staying in that it's important to keep the look classical. In this kind of job, interpreting line, shape and silhouette is important."

When working in LA, Thiemeyer only had to go downtown or visit the film studios in the Valley to source items. Now, based in Australia, she travels to Hong Kong for inspiration.

"I find Hong Kong has a mass of fabrics and beadings that is a lot cheaper than sourcing from Los Angeles," she says. "Sadly, in Melbourne, our garment industry isn't as big these days, so it's harder to source fabrics. You just don't find the volume you would have years ago. It's all gone overseas."

Thiemeyer nailed Rod Stewart's leopard-print look in her 24 years of working with him (they discussed starting a menswear label together), and even made his bright-coloured blazers long before Armani and Versace put them on the catwalk. She worked on Vegas shows for Donna Summer and got flamboyant and glam-savvy with hair-metal acts such as White Snake.

"I was probably one of the only designers around at the time that did what I did," says Thiemeyer of her illustrious career in design. "In the early days I worked with the Bee Gees and ELO. Then it led to Motley Crue and Ozzy Osbourne and KISS. I would say 80 per cent of the good, the bad and the ugly on MTV in the 1980s were my creation. More hair and make-up than I care to think about now," she says, laughing.

"I met Olivia Newton-John in 1973 and we started working together, and still do to this day. She was my first and Rod Stewart was my second client, and with their careers taking off as they did, my work steamrolled from there. Timing is everything."

We were in Xanadu: How a girl named Fleur gave Olivia her look

ByNeil McMahon | smh.com.au
February 26, 2023

As Australia pauses to remember the life and career of Olivia Newton-John, Fleur Thiemeyer has more memories to summon than most, more tears to shed and more laughs to remember. Her friendship with the star spanned half a century, and was the spark for a story that has never really been told.

"I think for me, more than anything, I felt like her protector, because I was the tough kid," Thiemeyer says of the woman she met in Los Angeles in 1973, when these two Melbourne girls were in their mid-20s and on the verge of conquering Hollywood.

"No one could get near her. We gelled so well. I looked at her as being a soulmate, a protector. She was the person who would confide in me if she wasn't sure about something. The silly stuff. I love the photos where we're laughing."

Thiemeyer is sharing her story - and her astonishing photo album - in honour of her friend, and to properly tell the tale of how her own star rose in tandem with Newton-John's - but behind the scenes.

Newton-John was Thiemeyer's fashion muse, the superstar who turbocharged her nascent fashion career and helped forge a remarkable rise as designer for an eye-popping Rolodex of music legends.

Even more remarkably, she got there with almost no one knowing who she was, even in her native Australia. "I didn't really want it," says Thiemeyer of the fame that might have accompanied her rise. "I never had a manager. I never had an agent."

What she did have was a reservoir of nerve and determination forged growing up in postwar Melbourne. A tomboy who preferred surfing and athletics, she stumbled into the burgeoning Australian music scene of the late 1960s, moved to London and then Los Angeles with her pop star boyfriend, and fell into the world of Hollywood fashion design.

You could put her name at the centre of a wheel whose spokes reach out to include local pop pioneers such as Zoot and The Easybeats, through her big break dressing ONJ from 1973 onwards, and then Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler, Fleetwood Mac, Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, KISS, Motley Crue, Pat Benatar, KC and the Sunshine Band, Dusty Springfield and more.

She put ONJ in that iconic Physical leotard and headband; Rod Stewart in Spandex pants; she made Minnelli dazzle in her legendary Liza with a Z show; and it was Thiemeyer who Midler called on to dress her for a career-flipping Beast Of Burden video with Mick Jagger in 1984.

How did it all happen It's tempting to use a word like "fairytale", but Fleur Thiemeyer is too down-to-earth for that. She recalls her life matter-of-factly and with many a wry laugh.

"I'm growing up in the '50s. I'm probably the only child whose mother isn't home at lunchtime, so there's an independence that you get. Always a rebel. I think if you could be expelled at eight years old, I would have been."

She was no shrinking violet, but there were no signs early on that she would one day make her mark as a master of the frills and fads of the fashion world. She was athletic (she remembers racing future Olympian Raelene Boyle's behind around the track) and took a shine to surfing: "You're out there with 20 guys and you're the only girl. I preferred always to be hanging out with guys just for the fun of it. And from there it extended to going out to clubs, and the only people I really related to were the people on stage."

Thiemeyer was present at the creation of dozens of celebrated music careers. She was going to clubs in her mid-teens, and her first big-name friendship was with The Easybeats, Australia's answer to The Beatles. Indeed, it is her unusual first name that graces their 1966 song Sorry:

Had a date at seven

With a girl named Fleur

Then I just remembered, had a date with her

At a club she met singer Lynne Randell, resulting in an unlikely shift in focus: Thiemeyer started to dabble in modelling.

Her elder sister was dating Phillip Frazer, founder of the iconic pop magazine Go-Set; her sister was also friends with a young music nut named Ian Meldrum, trying his hand at music writing. Thiemeyer found herself in the pages of Go-Set as a model. She met Zoot, a band that included Darryl Cotton and Rick Springfield. She met a young Bon Scott, then in a band called The Valentines. Roger Davies was around, about to hit the big time managing a band named Sherbet. "It's all six degrees of separation," says Thiemeyer.

Fast-forward to 1973. Thiemeyer and her partner Darryl Cotton, who she had dressed along with his Zoot bandmates in all-pink in her first foray into high-impact design, had moved to London for a time. Then they joined the burgeoning Australian presence trying to crack the US market. She enrolled in a fashion course, more as a way of getting a visa than from any larger ambition.

Several of what would later become known as "the Gumleaf Mafia" lived in the same block: "The apartments overlooked the swimming pool and over to Sunset Boulevard and Tower Records."

Where better to launch a storied Hollywood career

One day, a musician from Moonee Ponds - John Farrar, of The Strangers - came over to the apartments to visit Steve Kipner, a young musician from Brisbane who lived upstairs. Farrar brought with him a friend from his Melbourne TV days on programs like Bandstand - Olivia Newton-John, a close friend and singing partner of his wife, Pat.

Farrar and Kipner later wrote some of Newton-John's biggest hits. But in 1973, she had just cracked the US market with her first country songs and was about to embark on a first Vegas stint. One of the Gumleaf brigade said to her: "You're going to need dresses. Fleur does dresses. You should meet Fleur."

The rest is music and fashion history.

Thiemeyer and Newton-John forged an instant bond. They were the same age, from the same town, with the same sense of humour, and - at the same height and with blonde hair - they even looked alike. Vegas shows and foreign tours followed as Newton-John became one of the planet's biggest stars.

On the road, it could feel like a prison of endless shows and little escape from Newton-John's celebrity, but they would find ways to break the grind. In Japan, they once slipped out without security but had to flee to the hotel when Newton-John was recognised. In Vegas, they'd make surreptitious late-night visits to a drug store and try on makeup and laugh at the silliness of it all.

"I look at a photo of us now and it's just two Aussie girls, and that was the great part of always being with her."

In the second half of the 1970s, Thiemeyer dressed her friend for tours and multiple US TV specials, which Newton-John did yearly with big-name guests such as ABBA, Elton John and Tina Turner. Then in 1978, Newton-John's star shot into the stratosphere with Grease. And while it wasn't Thiemeyer who put her in those famous black leather pants, this was a fashion theme she applied more broadly to Newton-John's videos and performances that drove a pop music trend. Her distinct style, and Newton-John's effortless natural flair in wearing it, had Hollywood taking notice.

The phone started ringing.

It might be: "Liza Minnelli would like to meet with you, would you be available tomorrow morning She's at the Beverly Hills Hotel."

Or: "Can you meet with Dolly Parton"

Thiemeyer recalls that meeting: "We went to her closet and went through her stuff and Dolly said, 'You can do anything you want with me except for this or this or this', like her trademarks, the long fingernails and so on."

She embarked on long working relationships with Rod Stewart and Pat Benatar. Then there was an unlikely detour when she started dressing the big-hair, big-noise, big-everything bands of the 1980s. She is friends to this day with those heavy rockers - Motley Crue in particular - a sharp design departure from her most famous early client.

Now 73, and living in Melbourne where she has raised her son for the last 20 years, those ties are often the cause of sadness. Celebrity deaths these days form a melancholy path through her own life and career. A few days after our interview she gets the news that Raquel Welch, a client for decades, has died. A few weeks earlier, it was Jeff Beck. In November, it was Christine McVie, the Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter who Thiemeyer dressed for Bill Clinton's first inauguration concert in 1992.

"I can call up pictures now and I'm the only person still alive."

And then there was the early morning barrage of text messages and phone calls that announced the passing of Newton-John on August 9.

Thiemeyer had last seen her in Australia in February 2020, the star's last visit home for the bushfire relief concert, and the two reunited for a photograph for the National Gallery of Victoria. The NGV was one of the buyers when Newton-John auctioned off many of her career mementos in 2019. The auction raised $US2.4 million, with some of Thiemeyer's designs and sketches bringing eye-watering sums. "They're paying $3500 for a sketch."

One pair of jeans the singer wore on US television in the 1970s fetched $US50,000. Thiemeyer recalls walking into Julien's Auctions on the day of the big sale and seeing the glory days of her career on display before they went under the hammer: "There were all my clothes and I burst into tears."

Memories will do that to you, and Thiemeyer has so many of them. She is nothing but thankful for the good fortune her Hollywood adventures brought her. And she reckons her tomboy youth, some of it atop a surfboard off Sandringham, stood her in good stead for all that followed.

"When you get knocked on the head five times in the water, you've swallowed enough water, you probably should get out. But you just keep going. You build an internal strength."

Those words could, of course, equally describe her courageous friend Newton-John. And as she remembers her today, most of her memories will stay just that: her memories, no one else's.

"They're the things that are ours," she says. "They're nobody else's and they won't be. Especially now."

Fleur's famous looks

Fleur Thiemeyer laughs at her part in music fashion in the 1980s, the early days of MTV: "Probably 80 per cent of the bad taste is from me!"

Hot Legs: Thiemeyer put Rod Stewart in very tight Spandex pants in his Do Ya Think I'm Sexy era. She met him through Newton-John. "He said on the phone: 'This is Rod Stewart.' I said: 'Sure it is.' And he said: 'Are you always this rude' And that sort of sealed the deal." They forged a long and lasting friendship.

Let's get Physical: One of the most iconic fashion moments of the era: ONJ in leotard and headband. The outfit was built in real time, with Thiemeyer dyeing a white leotard pink. "Bad taste is timeless," she laughs. "We put the white T-shirt on and cut the neck out. The neckband of the shirt became the hairband because her hair wouldn't stay right. And the turquoise I put on as a wrap-around because I didn't like the overall shape. And then there were the leggings."

Beast of Burden: "Bette [Midler] was open to anything. I go to her house and Bette gets up and she's like 'I can't believe it, I've looked up everything you've done!' [On set] Mick comes in to say hello, and he's just chatting and carrying on. I've still got the piece of paper they signed."

Fleur Thiemeyer Book

Costume designer to the stars Fleur Thiemeyer opens up about extraordinary life in new book
Fiona Byrne | heraldsun.com.au
March 28, 2025

She put Rod Stewart into Spandex, got 'Physical' with Olivia Newton-John and turned Motley Crue into Mad Max inspired rock warriors.

Now costume designer to the stars Fleur Thiemeyer is recounting her extraordinary life in a new book.

From starting out as a surf crazy kid in bayside Melbourne, Fleur Thiemeyer went on to define the look of a generation of global music superstars.

As one of the go-to custom costume designers at the top echelon of Hollywood rock, pop and celebrity in the '70s and '80s through to the Noughties, Thiemeyer's influence was everywhere, from red carpets, award shows, music videos, album covers, TV appearances and tour costumes.

She put Rod Stewart into Spandex, introduced Olivia Newton-John to diaphanous frocks over bodysuits and then famously put her into body-con workout gear and an iconic headband for her chart topping 'Physical' era, worked with KISS during their 'unmasked', no make up phase, made Motley Crue into Mad Max inspired rock warriors for their breakthrough album Shout At The Devil, worked with Heart when the world fell back in love with the Wilson sisters, and took Ozzy Osbourne glam.

"For 30 years people have told me I should write a book," she said.

"I have not lived an ordinary life. With my career nothing was planned, it was cause and effect. I never had an agent or manager, it all just came. My sensibility and singularness had a lot to do with it. I was not in it for the parties, I was not in it for the notoriety.

"The things (outfits) I wanted to do did not exist in shops."

Her road to dressing superstars for some of their most iconic moments began in Melbourne's western suburbs.

Thiemeyer was born in Sunshine in 1949 and grew up in St Albans.

After her mother got a teaching position at Highett High, the family moved bayside and Thiemeyer spent her teen years doing athletics, playing softball and basketball, swimming and surfing.

"I was running for the Sandringham Athletic Club and guess who my training partner was Raelene Boyle," she said.

"I only ever saw her back because I could never get past her on the track."

Seeing The Beatles at Festival Hall in 1964 opened her mind to the intoxicating world of music.

After finishing high school, Thiemeyer's mother sent her to The Bambi Smith Modelling College in 1968 where she met singer Lynne Randell.

"We hit it off straight away and she asked me to a party hosted by Carol West where I met The Who and The Small Faces," Thiemeyer said.

"She single-handedly changed my life."

Randell introduced her to the likes of Jeff Joseph, Michael Gudinski and Garry Spry and she came to know the burgeoning Melbourne music scene including Roger Davies, Russell Morris, John Farnham, Rick Springfield, The Masters Apprentices and Molly Meldrum.

Already customising her own clothes, she soon found herself making pieces for local bands.

"It was not my intention to become a clothing designer, I was not this teenage girl who sat around drawing pictures of dresses," Thiemeyer said.

"That was never in my mind at all, it was the beach, the surf, athletics."

She made flouncing frilly shirts for Bon Scott during his early days in The Valentines.

She created attention-grabbing pink suits for Zoot while dating band member Darryl Cotton. The Easybeats namechecked her in their hit 'Sorry.'

She and Cotton moved to London in 1972 and then LA in 1973.

Through Cotton she met Newton-John and the pair started working together almost immediately with Thiemeyer adding her spirited and rebellious style to Newton-John's stage and red carpet looks.

"She had shows in Vegas coming up and said 'will you work with me," Thiemeyer said.

In 1973 she studied at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, where her mentors included design and costume legends Bill Whitten, Bob Mackie and Nolan Miller.

"They told me what beaders to go to, what metal shops to go to, who to go to get the boots and shoes made by," she said.

"I was already working with Olivia and Dick Clark at the time, but I realised this was exactly what I wanted to do."

She won the Bob Mackie Award for outstanding design student in 1974 and voraciously consumed art history, English literature and old movies for inspiration.

Through Newton-John, a friendship that lasted almost 50 years, Thiemeyer became music's clothing and costume designer for an era of stars.

In 1977, via Newton-John, she met Rod Stewart, who remains a close friend.

She designed for him for 25 years, including creating the Spandex one shoulder bodysuits, skin tight leggings, billowing shirts, leopard print tops, and wide hip hugging belts which defined Stewart's 'Do Ya Think I'm Sexy' era.

"We were at the pool at Olivia's house in LA and her friend Susan George called and said 'can we come and visit'," Thiemeyer said.

"A red Lamborghini pulled up and Susan got out with Rod."

The quartet headed out to dinner that evening at a club.

"I wore a black spandex skin tight suit that looked like a swimsuit with legs and Rod looked at me and said 'what the hell have you got on'," she recalled.

"He called the next day and we started working together.

"He was interested in doing costumes like Nijinsky and the Russian ballet and I knew how to make Spandex work like he wanted.

"I probably presented him 15 different sketches and straight away he picked eight or nine. I got them all done and he went out on tour with them."

Her already stacked roster of star clients was turbo charged with the launch of MTV in 1981.

"MTV changed everything," Thiemeyer said.

"It was an era where images became so massive. The sound of the voice became the look of the clothes.

"I became the go-to girl because I had dealt with sets, lights and cameras because of all the TV specials I had done with Olivia and Liza (Minnelli) and Raquel (Welch) and the managers and record companies knew me. After MTV started, those next 10 years were crazy for me. I could be working with up to 40 people a day."

Powerful artist manager Doc McGhee asked her to dress hair metal rockers Motley Crue in 1982 for their breakthrough album Shout At The Devil.

"Nikki (Sixx) was thinking of something like Escape From New York meets Mad Max so I gave him books on medieval armoury and said 'tell me what you like'," she said.

"They came back to me with ideas and I probably did 15 drawings and they picked four.

"They had been a band playing around LA since '81 when I met them in '82. There was no pre-conditioning, they weren't Hollywood brats wanting to be rock stars. They were hungry."

When Thiemeyer's longtime friend Sharon Osbourne rang and said she wanted her husband Ozzy Osbourne to go glam for his Shot in the Dark era in the mid-'80s, she was straight on the plane to London.

"Sharon said 'I want it glam, I want it loud, I want it to move', so hence I did the beaded gowns," Thiemeyer said.

"His coat was like something Diana Ross would have worn. It was a great song and working on that video was just amazing. Ozzy was up for everything. I worked with him from '86 - '92."

She worked with Heart to create the cover look and tour and video costumes for their massive self-titled 1985 album which included the hits Never, Alone, These Dreams and What About Love.

Patching a leather jacket as a favour led to Thiemeyer teaming up with Pat Benatar during a period where she had hits including We Belong and All Fired Up.

"Someone gave me a leather jacket and asked if I would repair it," Thiemeyer said.

"When they told me it was Pat's jacket, I put a note in the pocket saying who I was and that I would love to work with her.

"She literally called me later that day and I was at her house the next day and we started working together straight away.

"I remember doing the 'We Belong' video. She was pregnant, so it had to be shot in such a way to hide that fact. I did an oversized white jacket for her with bright green earrings and bright green gloves.

"It was all done as a distraction and all anybody thought was how great she looked."

Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie became a client and friend.

"I loved working with her. She was a brilliant talent and lovely person," Thiemeyer said.

"She wanted a bit more of an English feel (to her look) and that is where I came up with the coats and velvet jackets and beaded pieces. She wore one of those jackets when they played at Bill Clinton's (1992) inauguration.

"Then I started working with Mick Fleetwood and did a lot of stuff with him. At some point Mick decided he was going to open a restaurant called Fleetwoods and he brought me in to design all the staff uniforms and I helped him with the look of the club and so on.

"When Lindsey Buckingham went solo I did his (outfits) for his Go Insane album cover and videos."

In the early 2000s Thiemeyer moved back to Australia with her son and worked for Jeanne Pratt at The Production Company before hanging up her measuring tape.

She started writing her book charting her life at the heart of Hollywood rock and pop superstardom in Covid in 2020.

"I picked it up again in December 2022 and finally finished it a couple of weeks ago," she said.

"I hope it will be released by the end of year."

Thiemeyer put her success down to hard work, trust, creativity, understanding the personality of those she worked with and knowing how to get along with people.

"I was dependable, I had integrity, I had respect, I was damn good at my job," she said.

"I worked hard at my art, I did not take it for granted. They used to say 'ring Fleur, she will take care of it'."

Her teen years looking for waves on the Victorian coast were also a key foundation for her international success.

"Being out in the water with a bunch of guys when you are 13, you learn how guys think and how to get along with them," she said.

"It stood me in good stead for what was to come."

After a lifetime jetting from New York to LA to London creating looks that help build legends and images that stand the test of time, she has one piece of sage advice for anyone chasing their impossible dream: "Don't take sh*t from anyone."

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