This is one of many costumes designed by the London-based designer Stephen Adnitt for dresses worn by Barry Humphries as Dame Edna Everage. The Australian actor, satirist, author and comedian Barry Humphries, born in 1934 in Australia as John Barry Humphries, has become a much-loved and celebrated figure on stage and television in Great Britain as his alter-ego character Dame Edna Everage whom he originally created in the 1960s as a drab housewife from the Melbourne suburb Moonee Ponds. As Edna metamorphosed from a dowdy housewife with hat and handbag to a glamorously spectacled gladioli-obsessed 'gigastar', 'squillionairess' and Dame, Humphries ensured that her outfits were as eye-catching and flamboyant as she had become. He regularly worked with the designer Stephen Adnitt to create his witty and ingenious costumes, after they met at London Television in the late 1980s when Adnitt was working on the programme The Dame Edna Experience .

With its design based on a gingham tablecloth and plate of cooked breakfast complete with cutlery, the Breakfast Dress is an excellent example of a witty costume thoughtfully created to relate meaningfully to his audience - in this case the staff at the Heinz baked beans' factory near Wigan that Edna was visiting for one episode of the BBC television programme Dame Edna's Work Experience, aired in 1997 and produced by DLT Entertainment UK.