An Indian-origin make-up artist has designed a light emitting diode (LED) and fibre-optic bodysuit that could set Miss Universe Australia Monika Radulovic apart on the world stage, a media report said on Friday.
Melbourne-based Jyoti Chandra, 28, designed the suit with a rendition of Sydney Harbour's New Year's Eve fireworks as a part of a national costume competition to deck out Australia's representative at the Miss Universe international final at the end of the year, The Canberra Times reported on Friday.
"What I wanted to encompass through my costume was to show people how free-spirited Australians are [and] remind people how fun and exciting we can be and that we can put on a really great show in Australia," Chandra said.
"I wanted it to be quite flamboyant because South America came out with massive feathers [for their national costume] and Canada came out with hockey sticks and I wanted to make something that was really cool and that people would remember," the former Canberra Institute of Technology student added.
But her battery-powered creative costume has been hampered by some unexpectedly practical considerations.
"Trying to get the battery through security at the airport was hard; because it's a corrosive it was classified as a dangerous good," Chandra said.
"We couldn't go with lithium batteries because then it wouldn't have gotten through security at all. But because [the battery] was so small they were like, it's fine, and I was like thank goodness."
Chandra's bodysuit is competing with three other designs. The public voting to decide the best designed dress closed on Friday morning.