When she was 11 years old, Meghan Lancaster designed and constructed her first costume—an Easter Bunny—from a bed-sheet (much to her mother’s dismay). She began theater studies when she was 13, culminating with an Equity apprenticeship at the Woodstock Summer Playhouse. While studying for a BFA in film, she began working with museum textile and costume collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and later at The Metropolitan Museum (NY), MOHAI and the Nordic Heritage Museum (Seattle), and The Design Museum at UC Davis, where she earned an MFA in surface design from the Textile Arts and Costume Design program. Her historical expertise is in Western embellished textiles from the Middle Ages to the present.

Meghan first became involved in fandom while living in Los Angeles, where she worked in video and music production for 11 years. She has competed in several single pattern contests and four masquerades, including at Dublin 2019 (Worldcon 77) where she won Best Presentation in the Novice Division. During that trip, she was able to fulfill a nearly 45-year goal to visit the Musée de Tissues in Lyon. Definitely worth the wait.

Meghan has studied a number of craft technologies in more or less formal settings, including embroidery, lace-making, sculpture, silver-smithing, lapidary, bookbinding, and pottery. She currently considers herself a “maker” and loves to collect odd bits of flotsam for masks, headpieces, dolls, props, jewelry, what-have-you. The best fashion advice she ever received was from her MFA professor, Dolph Gotelli, who always asked: “Can you wear it as a hat?”