To most people in Tippecanoe County, Linda Phillips is Clerk Phillips. In her second term as the County Clerk she spends her days issuing marriage licenses, handling election matters and keeping track of the nearly 35,000 new cases filed each year in the county’s seven courts of record. Few people realize Clerk Phillips is also known by the moniker “Sequin Queen!”
“It is true, in some circles I am known as the Sequin Queen,” said Phillips who explained how the nickname came to pass. The one-time fashion student is an accomplished seamstress. Phillips acquired the skills as an undergraduate at the Fashion Institute of Technology at the State University of New York. She loved the work, but explained, “I quickly realized I was more attracted to the business end than the design end.” She moved back to Indiana to get a master’s degree in business from Purdue University. The lure of the fashion industry soon took a backseat to her business and public service career.
Through the years, Phillips continued sewing, making many of her own clothes and some spectacular Halloween costumes for her children who over the years were dragons, Zorro and her personal favorite – the Energizer Bunny. Her runway world expertise has proved a valuable tool for a long-time family friend, Nicole Pollard, Miss Indiana 2009. Phillips and her husband have been longtime friends with Pollard’s parents. The Sequin Queen first met the future beauty queen when Nicole was four years-old. “Over the years that Nicole has competed in pageants, I have done her alterations, re-designed dresses, and sewn on more beads than I can count,” she recalled with a smile.
Phillips decided the one-thousand beads on the dress Nicole wore for the Miss Indiana pageant didn’t have enough sparkle. Linda said “I realized that it would be vastly more distinctive if it had more beads, so I sewed on about 10,000 more beads, crystals and sequins.” The work is labor intensive because beading changes the size of the fabric panel. “Beading draws up the fabric slightly, so I also had to insert bead covered lycra panels into the bodice so Nicole could draw enough breath to sing,” she noted. Nicole sparkled for the competition and took home the crown of Miss Indiana. The win catapulted her pageant career to the national stage and her seamstress was by her side.
In February 2010 Nicole represented Indiana in the 2010 Miss America Pageant. Phillips traveled to Las Vegas, Nevada to watch the competition and tend to last minute dress details, and reflected on her experience. “It was a little crazy. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is never alter a dress until the last possible minute. Diets and workouts can cause the contestants to change size dramatically in a short time.” So while most of the Hoosier state was watching the Colts play-offs, “I was frantically re-beading a dress that was about four inches too big!”
Nicole’s dress for the talent portion of the Miss America pageant was a beaded lace overlay on two layers of silk taffeta. The strapless dress had about 5,000 beads and crystals, weighing about five pounds. “In order to hold it up, I built a waistline stay into the dress, removed a bunch of beads, altered each layer and then re-attached the beads” explained Phillips. “The dress was on stage for about 90 seconds and it took about 11 hours of work to alter!”
While Pollard didn’t take home the crown, Phillips said, “Nicole did a wonderful job representing Indiana. She looked stunning, her talent and interviews were excellent, and her clothes fit perfectly!”