Jeni Halliday

Jeni Halliday is a costume and production designer.

Biography

After training as a home economics teacher, a working holiday in London introduced her to costume design for stage and movies, in which she was involved for two decades. Initially she was a costume designer for PACT, acted as wardrobe mistress at the Little Theatre and then began working on a freelance basis. Her work for the stage included Total Eclipse (1979), directed by Fiona Ramsay and presented at the Grahamstown Festival, Chinchilla (1980), staged by Richard Grant at the People's Space and Summit Conference, staged by Grant at the Baxter Theatre. For film she worked on Sell a Million (wardrobe) (Ian Hamilton/1975), Six Feet of the Country (short) (styling & makeup) (Lynton Stephenson/1977) and The Guest: an Episode in the Life of Eugène Marais (costume design & set dresser) (Ross Devenish/1977). Her television work included Dokter Con Viljee se Overberg (TV series) (Manie van Rensburg/1980), Die Perdesmous (TV movie) (Manie van Rensburg/1981) and Honeytown (TV series) (Ian Roberts/1994).

In 1984 it was announced that she would be opening her own shop in downtown Johannesburg and later she joined Threads & Crafts magazine where she worked for several years as assistant editor. A book entitled Turn Your Hobby Into a Business was published in 2005.