I really need to overhaul my personal website, PhoebeRoberts.com. I slapped it together years ago so that it would exist in case anybody wanted to look up me or my work, telling myself I'd improve it later when I had a minute. But I never really got around to it, and as it is, it doesn't look very slick. I'd like to make it look a little more ( Read more... )

I've been wanting to create a drag look for myself for a while now, and I finally got around to doing a little experimenting this weekend. At the moment I'm calling my male persona "Alexander Brandy"-- because Alexander is my favorite male name, and I like drag names that are puns ( Read more... )

At the end of this week, all my enormous commitments for the last several months will be fulfilled. I am going to have a very light summer, which I am incredibly glad and excited for, that even begins with basically a three-week break even from my day job in the gap between spring and summer trimesters. So I practically have a summer vacation, like ( Read more... )

A new gallery of images is available on Mrshawking.com!

Vivat Regina at Arisia 2016, Act I

Photography by John Benfield
Costume design by Jennifer Giorno
Makeup design by Jessicalee Skary
Set design by Bernie Gabin
Production design by Phoebe Roberts


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New post on Mrshawking.com!

"The color of Vivat Regina"

I’ve always loved the potential for storytelling in the choices one makes in costume design. In Mrs. Hawking, we used a series of oppositional color pairings to make statements about the characters and their circumstances. In Vivat Regina at Arisia 2016, with the help of costume designer ( Read more... )

I was thinking this week how much I would enjoy teaching a class about how to design costumes. Not a building or construction sort of class, but one where the focus was on the theory of how to come up with costuming that supports the narrative of whatever medium it is part of ( Read more... )

No, this isn't me making good on my threat to rhapsodize over each of Chris Evans's individual attractive features in turn. Okay, there's a little of that in here, but I swear I have more of a point. This is about costume design ( Read more... )

In my hero's boast, I laid out everything that I have to do from now until the end of the year. It's a long list, a fairly overwhelming prospect, but I am determined to conquer it ( Read more... )

I was Betty Draper for Halloween this year, and I was pretty pleased how my costume turned out.


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So I did what I was threatening to do, changed my hair color for the first time in my life. Because I wanted to be Betty Draper for Halloween but don’t have the right coloring for it, the idea occurred that maybe I could use the costume as an excuse to change it. The idea, once pondered, of a change seemed nice, not just for the costume but to try ( Read more... )