FAIRBANKS — Leah Clemmons Madonna would like to know where the award-winning gown she designed and fashioned for Kathy Hartman, Miss Alaska-Universe 1971, is stowed.

She’s hopeful it’s safely hanging in someone’s closet — somewhere.

Forty years ago, Madonna put her design and needlework skills to work and produced the imaginative, stylized “Raven Totem” gown, replete with light-catching sequins and embellished with crystal and glass beadwork.

The Alaska-themed gown was a year in the making, Madonna said.

Hartman modeled the official state costume at the 1971 Miss Universe pageant in Miami Beach, Fla. The dramatic gown obviously wowed the pageant judges for the costume was selected No. 1 from among 49 other state costumes worn by the other contestants.

The gown is designed with animal motifs in the style of Southeast totem poles.

Madonna, 77, said the inspiration for the design grew from the artistically crafted totem poles she saw as she drove through Canada and at stops in Southeast while moving to Alaska in the late 1940s.

Madonna first made the gown pattern in cotton muslin for a fitting on Hartman before cutting it out in an off-white peau de soie.

Once it was sewn together, she painted on the totem designs of a bear and salmon with acrylic paints and a bit of oil paint before hand-sewing both glass and crystal beads throughout to emphasize the various motifs.

Navy blue sequined material was used for the gown’s sleeves, which were fashioned like raven wings and extended across the upper back of the costume.

Madonna shaped the eye-catching raven headdress using a mesh-like sculpting material, then covered it in the sequin material and embellished it with more beadwork.

Madonna trained in fashion design through a correspondence course she took from the Newark School of Fashion Design. In high school, she sketched fashion designs for the Birmingham News and later did design work for different companies.

In Fairbanks, Madonna started her own company, Alaska Golddigger Designs, and sold handpainted parkas out of a shop of the same name at Alaskaland.

“Each one had a totem design on it,” Madonna said. “I could make one size fit three different body sizes because of the shoulder slope.”

Madonna was involved in another first place gown at the 1972 Miss Universe pageant. She worked with Jane Greise and drafted the pattern for a long, white sequined gown trimmed with white fox pelts around the hood and floor-length hemline, worn by the 1972 Miss Alaska-Universe, Pat Lane.

If the totem pole dress is located, Madonna plans to donate it for display at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center to honor Alaska Natives.

“They didn’t design the costume, but they designed the original totems and I was just trying in my little way to honor them,” Madonna said.

Any information on the whereabouts of the missing gown, last seen almost four decades ago, can contact Madonna’s daughter, Niki Etcheverry at 590-8473 or her cousin, Nancy Castle at 488-4582.

Contact staff writer Mary Beth Smetzer at 459-7546.