Thelma May Afford (née Thomas) (1 December 1907 – 21 August 1996) was an Australian costume designer, theatre performer, and fashion journalist who worked in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney. Biography Early years Afford was born Thelma Thomas in Broken Hill, New South Wales to William James Thomas and Ethel (née Henderson) in 1907. Her parents moved to Adelaide, where she attended the Presbyterian Girls' College, Glen Osmond. There she studied drawing and design, and became an art teacher at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. She acted between 1932 and 1934, then moved to Melbourne in 1934 to further study at Technical College. Marriage to Max Afford Max Afford and Thelma met when she was designing the costumes for his play Colonel Light: The Founder at the Tivoli, Adelaide. The play won awards in competitions run by the Australian Broadcasting Commission which in 1937 employed him in Sydney as a writer, and the following year Thelma was also called to Sydney, to design the costumes for that city's sesqui-centenary pageant. They married on 16 April 1938 at St Michael's church, Vaucluse, Sydney, and lived most of their married life in a flat near Balmoral beach. They had no children. Leslie Rees, a close friend of the Affords, described their marriage: "Between husband and wife, there was the deepest and most tender affinity in all matters and on all levels." Professional life Actress In the early 1930s, Thelma Thomas was an actress in Adelaide, collaborating notably with the Ab-Intra Studio Theatre for Woman Song, The Robe of Yama, The Stained-Glass Window, and The Aspen Tree in 1932. In 1935, Thelma joined the Ab-Intra for their last show Archway Motif before the theatre closed indefinitely. Designer Thelma started designing theatre costumes in the early 1930s at the Ab-Intra Studio Theatre founded during the Depression by Alan Harkness and Kester Baruch, and also at the Adelaide Repertory Theatre, where she worked with Agnes Dobson and Robert Helpmann. In 1934, she was commissioned to design for the Melbourne centenary pageant. Only one of her costumes for the Pageant of Nations is known to survive and is the embodiment of the State of Victoria, worn by Jessie Deakin Brookes, (a social worker and grand daughter of Alfred Deakin, second Prime Minister of Australia), who donated it to the State Library Victoria in 1998. It featured three iconic Melbourne buildings, Government House, the town