Masked Singer costumes made in Portslade go on show at Brighton Museum

Costumes from ITV’s The Masked Singer UK go on show at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery from 24 October. They were made by Plunge Creations, a studio in Portslade village. Making the Masked Singer runs until 6 June 2027.

The exhibition has 24 complete costumes and seven character heads from the show’s seven seasons. They include Hedgehog, worn by Jason Manford; Fox, worn by Denise van Outen; Badger, worn by Ne-Yo; Pigeon, worn by Katherine Ryan; and Dressed Crab, worn by Gregory Porter. Moth, Conkers and Giant Joel come from the more recent series. Unicorn, Snow Leopard and Maypole are among the heads.

The museum says this is the first time the costumes have been shown together. The exhibition also explains how Plunge makes them, which involves sculpture, engineering, prop-making and specialist fabrication. Each costume has to hide the celebrity inside while letting them perform under studio lights, and each takes hundreds of hours of sculpting and sewing.

Tim Simpson founded Plunge in 2000, and it has made the costumes for every season of the UK show. The studio also made the caricature heads for the 2019 revival of Spitting Image, and has designed and built the St Pancras Christmas trees since 2015.

Emma Norris, a senior project manager at Plunge, said: “You start with an idea and have to work out how to turn it into something spectacular that a performer can actually wear, move in and perform in, while keeping their identity completely secret.”

Hedley Swain, chief executive of Brighton & Hove Museums^1,2, called the costumes “works of art in their own right”.

Entry to the exhibition is free with Brighton Museum admission, and members get in free.