My sojourn into costume design and fabrication started in 1976 making an Egyptian royalty costume for Halloween out of anything I could find around the house. The next year, I started the Barbarian/Amazon outfits for myself and my girlfriend. I was a metal sculptor at the time, so the outfits started with metal body jewelry and a simple bikini pattern.    A few years later, I made the full-on metal outfit for my new girlfriend.    The pictures came about after I worked with David Chan of Playboy for a summer. I was also an art director for a modeling agency, putting on live performance in nightclubs. David saw one of these shows with the dozen costumed girls, we became friends and he hired me to help with his summer pictorial.    Varga (the famous watercolor pin-up artist known as Vargas) was very sick at the time. Playboy was looking for something to fill the void in the magazine. I decided to shoot my costumes in wild and crazy ways. Although, I am a photographer, I didn’t have any equipment at the time, so for every shot, I used a different photographer. This way, I could show that the concept, styles and art direction were mine.    When the pictures were done, I sent them to David and a few weeks later, Playboy invited me to Chicago for an interview. Of course, I had a fun week hanging with the folks at Playboy, and they loved my work, made all kinds of promises, but alas, nothing ever materialized.    The next year, 1983, New York photographer, Lucille Kornak, discovered my costumes in one of my model’s portfolios and called me to be in her book of the top 100 fashion designers worldwide (Fashion: 2001). So, you see, fame can really be just a phone call away. The limelight was great fun. It lasted all the way through the publishing party at Studio 54. ALL IMAGES AND ITEMS COPYRIGHT  Stuart Land  1972-2009