After WOWing us for 30 years, Fifi Colston is clearing her creative calendar

On 19 September, Fifi Colston will farewell the WOW Awards with a big, ocean-inspired bang.

The next day, the Wellington creative will head to Europe for the first time in over 20 years, although she won't "put up a million photos on Facebook".

"I'm going to draw and sketch every day and move away from digital, and then I'll just see what comes out of that… something will come up for me," Colston tells Saturday Morning.

In the lead-up to the WOW Awards on 19 September, a lot of people assume Colston will be very busy, but she says the entrants completed and submitted their creations back in April.

For WOW designers, seeing the costumes they've painstakingly crafted in cramped studios, lounges, and garages is a very emotional moment.

"You put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into peace, and you have times where it hasn't worked, and you've got to rip it all apart and try all over again."

The "amazing" models - a lot of whom are dancers - really know how to move in the pieces in a way that brings them to life, Colston says.

"When you're trying it on yourself in your bedroom, it's not quite the same," she laughs.

For someone who makes a living designing costumes and illustrating for other people, the World of Wearable Art Awards has been an opportunity for 65-year-old Colston to create her own creative brief.

She's loved drawing since childhood, and was always a "maker".

"I was that kid who was going, Oh, I've got a bag of felt. I'm going to make something out of that."

Rather than being an "organic" artist who starts a project without a plan or concept, Colston's process for WOW is very design-driven, although a lot of that design goes on first in her head.

"I'll go for a walk or a swim, and my head is a riot of pictures."

Colston then starts sketching her design and gathering materials before dressing up her "little piece de resistance" - a $2 shop Barbie doll.

Before kicking off with the making, Colston then runs her wearable art concept through a reverse Google Image search to ensure it's "not something I actually saw on Pinterest that is stuck in my head".

This year's WOW entry - a homage to the oceanic illustrations of a 19th-century anthropologist who she can't yet name - was put on hold last year in favour of Sgàthach the Singed, which won the Sustainability Award.

Now, without another WOW project on the go, Colston is looking forward to creating costumes for a kids' theatre show, sketching and writing.

She'll also assist her Wellington friends with their future WOW entries, just as Jenny Sutton (designer of last year's entry Fish) stepped in to sew buttons on Sgàthach the Singed last year when Colston's broken elbow was in a sling.

"I've said to them, 'I'll be your stitch bitch"