Michael Robinson in Dallas Costume Shoppe. Photography by Lauren Allen.
Michael Robinson has been involved in theater his whole life. Literally. His first on-stage performance was as the youngest son in the Royal Family in a production of The King And I. Robinson was only a year and a half old when he was draped in royal garb. But knowing him, he probably stole the show.
Throughout grade school, Robinson couldn’t get off the stage. For a moment, it looked like his life would be spent on the stage, but a revelation led him to move behind it.
“When I was younger, I realized the way to make money is to work in the technical side of theater,” he says. “If you’re good at tech work, you’re always going to have a job.”
Robinson turned to the blue collar side of theater, becoming a sought-after stage and set designer through the 1980s. Near the end of the decade, he had the opportunity to tour A Christmas Carol with a cast and production team. While on the road, disaster struck.
He was traveling in a van with a tech crew, that hit a guard rail and went up into the underside of a bridge before crashing to the ground. Everybody survived, but Robinson’s right arm was shattered.
“I’d been performing and designing sets, and thought, ‘I’m not gonna perform for a while, I can’t build sets anymore, what can I do?”
In 1989, he received an offer to teach theater at Brookhaven College. From then, and the next 35 years that followed, he traded soliloquies for lectures, and syllabuses became his prop. He’s taught multiple generations of theater students and continues to do so today.
It’s a fulfilling job, but Robinson wasn’t close enough to the action.
“I’ll do costumes,” he remembers thinking. “That’ll be easy.”
Michael Robinson sewing at Dallas Costume Shoppe. Photography by Lauren Allen.
Throughout his journey in the industry, Robinson frequented the same location for all his garment needs. Dallas Costume Shoppe was the industry’s singular institution, located in the heart of Dallas just off of Main Street since the early ‘70s. The storefront contained a vast variety of elaborate costumes for all different types of styles, eras or productions; as well as a team of tailors that could create just about anything a customer would want.
When owner Fortunato Mata was ready to retire in 1997, he gave Robinson an offer he couldn’t refuse. Mata sold him the business and the building that housed it all at once. Robinson has maintained the business ever since, both its inventory and as a designer of new costumes.
These days, Robinson says he designs for about three-to-four shows a month, with some productions requiring as many as 300 costumes. He’s currently working on A Doll’s House for Main Stage Irving and a new original show called Noises Off with Pegasus Theater.
“Tailoring is kind of a dying art,” Robinson says. “There’s not a lot of young men or women saying, ‘I want to be a tailor.’”
As such, it’s become a priority for Robinson to try and foster a community for the young tailors and designers. Earlier this year he made the shocking decision to sell the building, with his ownership coming to a close at the end of September, meaning that for the first time in 40 years, Dallas Costume Shoppe would have a new home.
His new location will be located at 2404 Arbuckle Court, just north of 635 and Preston Hollow. It will have more room for tailoring and a workspace for rent, set aside for designers in need of a temporary place to sew.
“Young designers don’t have space,” Robinson says. “You can only work in your bedroom or your basement, that’s not a lot. I want to have a space open where they can rent to work in and have access to the machines, and if they want to pull some stuff from the stock they can do that.”
This update is a welcome surprise for the theater community, who assumed that he’d be shuttering a nearly centuries-old business for good.
“People thought I was going to close when I sold the building,” Robinson says. “I could’ve, but enough people were not happy that I was closing my doors.”
When news broke, Robinson was flooded with requests for “one more show” from countless theater productions. With this new location, he’ll wear the costume of Dallas’ go-to designer for just a bit longer.
“I’ll do two more years,” he says. “We’ll start with two more.”
