Carrie Fishbein Robbins ’64 A&A wanted to be a theater set designer when she was accepted to Yale graduate school after Penn State. But Yale instructors encouraged her to explore costume design instead—a more common area of expertise for females in the theater industry at the time. “In retrospect it was the costume world’s gain, as Carrie was a genius and a consummate costume designer,” says friend and colleague Richard St. Clair ’80 A&A, Penn State’s head of costume design.

Robbins spent more than 30 years as a costume designer on Broadway, where she was known for her creative, meticulously researched wardrobes. Her star rose with her iconic costumes on hit productions, including the trademark pink poodle skirts in the original Grease and the nuns’ habits in Agnes of God. Robbins designed costumes for Meryl Streep, Anthony Hopkins, Lauren Bacall, and countless others. In 1985, she spent a season as staff costume designer for Saturday Night Live.

Twice nominated for the Tony Award, she won four Drama Desk Awards and the Ruth Morley Design Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women. A master teacher at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts for 32 years, Robbins regularly attended the portfolio review in New York City and always made a point to speak to any Penn State designers who were displaying their work. She was “a force of nature,” St. Clair says. “Everything she did was with 3,000 percent passion.” A talented illustrator who’d spend hours on a single costume sketch, Robbins also wrote plays in her later years.

She died April 12, 2024, in Manhattan, at age 81. She was predeceased by her husband, Richard, and leaves no immediate survivors. —Meri-Jo Borzilleri