Miss Pin-up Australia is coming to Tweed as part of the Cooly Rocks On Festival and no one could be happier than reigning Miss Va Va Voom, Charne Louise.
Adopting the stage-name Miss Lolita Star, the Gold Coast local was almost born to be part of the glamorous event.
Charne usually divides her time between her major loves: music – working as Music Director for Draculars on the Gold Coast and teaching music – and fashion, doing shifts at That Shop in Coolangatta.
Add her dad’s love of classic cars and you could say the trumpet-playing, big-band performer was always destined to be part of the competition.
“My dad always had a passion for classic cars – he owned a few before I was born,” she said.
“And being a trumpet player as well I was always around swing bands, always around that scene.”
Reading about the inaugural competition, Charne was tempted but it wasn’t until one of her closest friends threatened to enter her that she finally made the decision to enter. “I had been doing photographic shoots around the place for friends. For most people, music is their hobby but when it’s your job, you have to look for other hobbies,” she laughed.
But still she was shocked when she made the finals and even more shocked and delighted when she won the title earlier this year.
“I’m not an emotional person, I like a laugh and a joke,” she said.
“But I was pretty close to tears when I won.”
If you haven’t heard about it before, Miss Pin-up Australia (which was launched last year), is a national event which reveres the pin-up styles of the 1940s and ’50s and is not merely catnip for svelte young glamour gals who love to dress up. It has titles on offer for the over 30s (Miss Classic Pin-up) and the voluptuously sized (Miss Va Va Voom Pin-up), as well as for ladies with tattoos – (Miss Illustrated Pin-up).
“This is a competition like no one has ever seen before,” says event organiser Pixie Roberts. “It is the only pin-up competition in the world that caters to women of all shapes and sizes – everyday women in love with vintage glamour. “
And men get a look in too, with a new category open to all those aspiring Jimmy Deans, Marlon Brandos, Humphrey Bogarts, Cary Grants and Elvis Presleys who are soon to be spotted trawling malls and main streets for two-tone shoes, pork pies, boaters and fedora hats, Oxford bags and hair oil.
This year the competition will hold it’s very own Live heat at Seagulls as part of the Cooly Rocks On Festival from 7.30pm to midnight on Friday, June 10.
Normally entrants are judged on their photographic entries before cracking places in state finals, so this special one-off live heat is, says Pixie, “a golden ticket which will see a winner and runner-up in each category leap-frog straight to the Grand Final.”
Plus she says entrants will gain advantage from on-stage experience – invaluable come Grand Final time. “This isn’t a simple fashion parade,” says Pixie, “the contestants have to perform pin-up poses on stage in four different vintage clothing categories including evening wear – it’s quite a challenge on several levels.”
WHERE: Seagulls
WHEN: Cooly Rocks On Festival from 7.30pm to midnight on Friday, June 10.
TICKETS: $30
Entries are currently open – see
www.misspinupaustralia.com.au
