When Susana Monreal was five, she watched her mother make quinceañera dresses in Plainview, TX, eventually learning to sew by gathering the left-over scraps of fabric and creating dress patterns for her Barbies. By the time she graduated high school, sewing was second nature, and a career was blossoming.

She left home to earn an associate degree in fashion from an institution in the Dallas Apparel Mart. Susana wasn't sure that returning to school was the next step in her journey, but with encouragement from her brother, she applied to the University of Texas in Austin and ultimately became a first-generation graduate.

While in Austin, Susana thought fashion was her future until she entered a costume shop with a friend who was being fitted. The shop needed help sewing zippers into burnt velvet silk dresses, a task Susana completed with ease, and they hired her immediately in a part-time position. Assisting tailors, drapers and the shop manager, Susana created costumes, learned about herself as an artist, and reevaluated what she truly wanted to achieve.

From the moment she stepped into the costume shop, she was transfixed by a new world and excited to explore fashion history. Forming relationships with her co-workers, she realized that her personality thrived in the collaborative atmosphere of professional theatre more than in the competitive fashion arena.

Her years in Austin laid a foundation--education, quality work, and networking--that took her all over the countryand into the studios of many notable performing arts and costume companies including the Los Angeles Opera and Elizabeth Courtney Costumes.

In 2022, after living in Italy with her two sons and near her husband's family, she accepted the position as Assistant Professor of Practice in Costume Technology at Texas Tech. Living only fifty miles from where it all started sounded like a welcome change.

When Susana arrived at Texas Tech, construction on the theatre and dance complex was underway but the new costume studio was not yet complete. From wearing a hard hat and seeing the plans for the studio, to packing boxes with students and moving in, Susana has seen the new space truly come to life. And for the first time in her professional career, she had the opportunity to assemble a new JUKI industrial sewing machine.

Every shop usually has one of these machines, although they are ten to fifteen years old and well used. In her new position in the School of Theatre & Dance, she works with this and other new equipment like a textile printer, a 3Dprinter, a glowforge, and a dye vat that's “to-die-for”—all of which exponentially enhances the design education of our students.

But Susana is not just educating design students in the studio. She actively cultivates community relationships with schools in the Lubbock Independent School District and shares her affection for the new costume studio to localtheatre educators, all the while, creating opportunities to involve her design students. Last spring, when high schoolstudents visited the studio to view recently created costume pieces, her students led a workshop on the design process and guided them in a hands-on sewing activity.

“I think it's very important that it's not something that I'm taking on,” says Monreal, “but it is something that the students take on as well. What we do is a passion, and we want to share it with everyone.”

With the new Theatre & Dance Complex complete, the new costume studio is buzzing. Susana has created an accessible and enriching space, not only for design students but any student who would like to learn more about costume design and technology.