Christopher Essex was an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n costumer and designer whose client list included Tina Turner

Tina Turner

Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years. She has won numerous awards and her achievements in the rock music genre have led many to call her the "Queen of Rock 'n' Roll".Turner started out her music career with husband Ike Turner as a member of the...

, Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Diller

Phyllis Diller is an American actress and comedian. She created a stage persona of a wild-haired, eccentrically dressed housewife who makes jokes about a husband named "Fang" while pretending to smoke from a long cigarette holder...

 and Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick

Dionne Warwick is an American singer, actress and TV show host, who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, and a United States Ambassador of Health....

.

Essex was born in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 but grew up in Australia. He began his career by designing displays at Mark Foys

Mark Foys

Mark Foys was a department store in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, founded by Francis Foy and his brother Mark Foy and named after their father Mark Foy ....

, Sydney's leading department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

 at that time.

In the 1960s he opened his first salon, "Camille", in Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...

. Camille's customers included Nancy Kwan

Nancy Kwan

Nancy "Ka Shen" Kwan is a Eurasian-American actress, who played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent in major Hollywood film roles...

 and Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee was a Chinese American, Hong Kong actor, martial arts instructor, philosopher, film director, film producer, screenwriter, and founder of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts movement...

.

An initial bout with cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 prompted Essex to return to Australia. His successful recovery prompted him to re-establish his career, designing costumes for stage productions such as Get Happy, Private Lives

Private Lives

Private Lives is a 1930 comedy of manners in three acts by Noël Coward. It focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in neighbouring rooms at the same hotel. Despite a perpetually stormy relationship, they realise that they still have feelings for...

, Hot Shoe Shuffle and Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors (musical)

Little Shop of Horrors is a rock musical, by composer Alan Menken and writer Howard Ashman, about a hapless florist shop worker who raises a plant that feeds on human blood. The musical is based on the low-budget 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Roger Corman...

and the film Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom

Strictly Ballroom is a 1992 Australian romantic comedy film directed and co-written by Baz Luhrmann and produced by M&A Productions. The film is the first installment in The Red Curtain Trilogy, Luhrmann's trilogy of theatre-motif-related films; the follow-ups were Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!...

.

Essex succumbed to a second bout of cancer at age 61. He died at Westmead Private Hospital

Westmead Hospital

Westmead Hospital is a major 975 bed tertiary hospital in Sydney, Australia, opened on 10 November 1978 by the then Premier, Neville Wran, and guest of honour was former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam...

in Sydney.