The aerial performer Becky Truman wore this body suit and headress in Chameleon, the acrobatic show produced by her company Skinning The Cat Circus of the Skyand performed on tour in the UK and abroad, 1990-1995. The costume includes a mask, made in 2014, to replicate the make-up originally worn with the costume.

The company was founded in 1989 and grew out of the aerial extravaganza Snakes and Ladders featuring four trapeze artists and the costumes and sculptures Becky Truman created for her degree show at Bradford College in 1988. In its earliest days the show was concerned with shape, colour, movement and sky-dancing, with double trapeze, double web and cloud-swing performances. Named after the fundamental gymnastic sequence of movements known as Skinning the Cat, the company was a forerunner of contemporary circus, and inspired several new companies. It was the first outdoor aerial company in the UK and the first to tour on an aerial rig. Within a year the company was touring in Europe and witnessing the extraordinary new circus movement that was held in high estreem on the continent. The company went from strength to strength throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Becky was asked to create a special show for the Millenium Dome, and was artistic director for the 2002 Commonwealth Games' opening and closing ceremonies.

The performances were devised by the whole company but the overall vison, design and construction of the costumes was Becky's. Her original inspiration taken fom a fairground soon developed into a mixture of weird reptilian, bird-like, non-human shapes infuenced by Chinese and Balinese art and style.