Dana at the Gofta Awards in 1987 A Wellington legend will be missed for her glamour as much as her wonderfully brutal honesty. Dana DePaul died on Sunday at Mary Potter Hospice after a long illness. Dana's cousin Kym Strathdee has paid tribute from Australia: Dana had an unbelievable inner strength and willpower. She was bold, innovative and always turned heads for the best of reasons. Her creativity and passion for costuming and design was exceptionally outstanding and anyone who experienced Dana live on stage was treated to at least the Grace Jones of the South Pacific. She was phenomenally talented and much loved! To be a kid from Papakura in the 1970s who wanted to be unique or was compelled to unique was very hard for Dana, so she very much cut her own path. I guess what we wroteon her tribute page, which really sums it up is: "To know your journey for so long is to have experienced originality, talent, conflict, outrageous behaviour, a deep love and trust for puppy dogs (maybe that was easier than humans eh?), tenacity, audacity, eccentricity and lots of clothes that you could just 'accidently' pop out of." That captures the originality and conflict she had. As she was conflicted, but that's not a negative thing I think. Both my partner Mary and I found the most important essence of Dana was her honesty. It could be brutal at times, but it was always, always honest. She had a wicked sense of honesty but it often represented the parts of us we were too scared to say. Her sustenance as a person over the years definitely can be credited to loyalty – I think that Georgie Beyer was more her family than anyone in her immediate family anyway. We're probably the only blood relatives that were in touch with Dana. Georgie's loyalty and devotion to Dana was just Dana's saving grace so many times. We're all just a bit lost at the moment. I'm glad she's at peace. Strathdee has put together a gorgeous gallery of photos from Dana's lifewhich can be found on Facebook. A celebration of De Paul's life will be held at 11am at Wilson Funeral Home, 375 Adelaide Rd, Newtown on Thursday, followed by remembrance drinks at S GayNZ.com - 18th August 2010