The wardrobe mistress of the world's best-known circus loves coming home to Queenstown. She talks to Kate Mead ahead of an exuberant leap on to Auckland's stage.

A clown is eating a muffin backstage. Someone with dazzling pink eye makeup is working on his laptop. It's half an hour before Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco show in Sydney and the performers prepare themselves for a night of fizzing acrobatics.

But what really makes Saltimbanco spring to life is the costumes.

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Walking into the wardrobe department is like opening the ultimate dress-up box. To the left are the necessities: drawers of fabric swatches, buttons, sequins and cotton spools. To the right, racks of shoes that get repainted before every show, and long ribbons of shoelaces. Straight ahead are the costumes themselves, all in rows, the colours like a candy shop. There's a pair of tights in Gummy-Bear green, a one-piece suit in lollipop pink and pants brighter than a lemon drop.

This is Tanya Jacobs' wonderland.

The head of wardrobe for Saltimbanco, who calls Queenstown home in her off-season, is the ringmistress of nearly 3000 costume items. "People think it's very glamorous," says South African-born Jacobs. "Then you start to explain that really when it comes down to it, it's a lot of laundry and a lot of travel – which also sounds glamorous, but if you've lived out of a suitcase as a backpacker you know that it takes its toll."

Wear and tear: The knees and toes are the first parts of costumes to go. Below, the harlequins create human kaleidescopes.

Saltimbanco, Cirque du Soleil's signature show, premiered in 1992. Jacobs has been on board for the past four years, jetting round the world while on tour and retreating to Queenstown during her time off. "Often we are in places that are not very close to Queenstown, so you'll do the 20 to 25-hour flight and finally you'll get out," she says. "You've got the mountains, the lake ... it's a really nice place to come home to."

A typical performance day for Jacobs starts at 2.30pm and she works until after the show ends at 11pm. The wardrobe team goes through the costumes checking for repairs needed from the previous night and spend a few hours preparing them for the next show. Her team consists of three staff, plus three locals hired for each new venue. There is someone who looks after the shoes and headpieces, someone who ensures costumes are pressed and steamed in dressing rooms, and someone who assists with alterations. They travel with five washing machines and five dryers, and they do 12 loads of washing each day.

The costumes are designed by Dominique Lemieux in Montreal, Cirque's headquarters. Each performer wears about three different costumes and has at least two sets of each.

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With 51 artists hurling themselves around the stage, Jacobs is faced with common problems after each show. "We get lots of holes. Mystery holes – they just appear," she says. "They go onstage, they're fine, they come offstage, they have holes in them." Most occur in the knees and toes, and there are repeated repairs needed for the same acts, such as the Chinese Poles performance, where artists in one-piece suits haul themselves up poles before hanging off them and performing stunts. These Lycra costumes are replaced about every three months.

Saltimbanco has so much vivacity and lustre on display but Jacobs doesn't hesitate to share her pick of the bunch. "The Baroque characters are my favourite costumes and they really need to be seen as a whole because they're all so contrasted," she says. "They express the personality of each person really, they're so different, that to see them all together you kind of get the sense of a party." The outfits are explosive, with lively stripes and bold block colours – envisage a human kaleidoscope.

Artists apply their own makeup, which takes around 90 minutes depending on the required detail (the artistic bicycle performer has to spray paint his whole head). They start by applying makeup cream, then baby powder, before sweeping off excess powder and finally drawing on designs with pencil. They've all been trained on this process and have step-by-step guide books.

It's this attention to detail that helps make Saltimbanco sensational on stage. And while we can marvel at the magic, Jacobs – who has seen the show "more than 10 times" – is always watching the costumes with a critical eye, unable to completely relax and enjoy it. "I'm always looking at the costumes. You get trained to see if things are missing, so if you're looking at the scene on the stage and you see something where the colour's not quite right, you'll just be drawn to that point," she says. "And if you go to the opera or the ballet you do the same thing, you look at the costume and go `that doesn't look right, is that supposed to be there?' You get judgemental."

One of the best things about the job for Jacobs is the diverse cultures she comes across. "We work with so many international people ... learning the cultures and the different etiquettes and how to relate to all these different people is part of the job, it's a never-ending learning curve."

Spending so much time at such close quarters means Saltimbanco staff are a tight bunch. Even the washing machines are like family – two of them have been named ("Zeus is not very well behaved. Chuckles is all right").

Jacobs says the biggest issue on tour is the spaces where they work. "Last week we were in the backstage area – so where it's all dark. We had to sew so we had lamps. Sometimes our space for wardrobe is [a tiny] space so we have to figure out how it's all going to work."

Yet nothing is quite as brilliant as seeing the result of her labour onstage. "What we contribute to with the costumes is they end up on stage with this bright, colourful emotional performance," she says. "To know that you're part of that is very satisfying."

Saltimbanco, Vector Arena, Auckland, August 25-September 4. Tickets: www.ticketmaster.co.nz