Background
Gardiner, Lizzy was born on October 24, 1966 in Dubbo, Australia. Came to the United States, 1995. Daughter of Anthony Robert and Marilyn (Brown) Gardiner.
Gardiner, Lizzy was born on October 24, 1966 in Dubbo, Australia. Came to the United States, 1995. Daughter of Anthony Robert and Marilyn (Brown) Gardiner.
She left Australia after finishing high school and moved to Italy, where she studied fashion and costume design for three years at the Accademia di Italiana in Florence.
Her highest profile film was Mission: Impossible II in 2000 for which she designed the costumes. After graduating she returned to Australia and began working in the Australian film and television industry, working on the soap opera East Street. Whilst working on East Street in 1993, she began working with Tim Chappel.
Together they designed outlandish costumes for Stephan Elliott"s Australian LGBT comedy film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Amongst the bizarre costumes they designed for the film was a dress consisting of many pairs of pink flip flops. She studied Australian drag queens and their clothes and commented, "I love the fact that you can do things without much budget."
The Motion Picture Guide 1995 Annual, covering the films of 1994, said, "The Oscar-winning costumes by Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel are wildly inspired and range from the bizarre to the simply indescribable."
She gained worldwide attention at the Academy Awards in 1995 when she picked up her award wearing an unusual dress consisting of 254 expired American Express Gold cards.
The dress had originally been made for that film but was unauthorized by American Express. However, after the dress was worn by Gardiner herself, American Express saw its marketing potential and was keen to showcase it throughout its travel offices in the United States.
The dress was auctioned off for charity in March 1999 for $12,650, with the proceeds going to the American Foundation for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome research.
lieutenant has been cited as amongst the worst Oscar gowns of all time. Subsequent films which Gardiner worked on include Bound (1996), Welcome to Woop Woop (1997), Gone Fishin" (1997), Woundings (1998), Theory of the Trojans (1999), Eye of the Beholder (1999), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Effie: Just Quietly television series (2001), Stealth (2005), The Great Raid (2005), Ghost Rider (2007), The Ruins (2008) and Burning Manitoba (2011). In answer to queries about her working on the gay film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the lesbian thriller Bound, starring Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon, back-to-back (Gardiner identifies as straight) she said, "lieutenant just never occurred to me that sexuality is an issue.
Australia has grown up dramatically in the past five years.
Besides, we"re a nation of convicts. So we"re all sort of rogues."
Gardiner has a biographical entry in the book 1001 Australians You Should Know.
She was selected as one of the entrants to the Who"s Who in Australia 2012 edition