As a child, Margaret Riggs’ first designs looked like the sketches of most kids: two-dimensional dresses with blocky sleeves, colored in crayon. A far cry from her latest masterpieces, which earned the graduating fashion merchandising student a nomination from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival this year.
Riggs was drawn to the fashion merchandising program at Georgia Southern University after running out of an audition for a high school play. Acting in “Shrek the Musical” was not her cup of tea, she decided, but making and mending costumes for her classmates suited her hobby of sewing clothes. One show led to costuming most of the shows at her high school, including “Bring It On,” for which Riggs received an honorable mention at the 2022 Shuler Awards.
“I realized I could just keep doing this; I didn’t have to stop,” she said, reflecting on her decision to continue the career she started in high school. “I love designing, but I also love creating the costumes and going from designs to patterns, to sewing them together, to the finishing touches – I love the whole process.”
Of all the programs in the state, the Georgia native picked Georgia Southern’s Bachelor of Science in Fashion Merchandising and Apparel Design program because it offered an emphasis in design and instruction on operating relevant software. With her education from Georgia Southern, Riggs has been able to master garment construction, patterns, drafting and more while being mentored by her professors and participating in more musical theater shows like “Peter and the Starcatcher,” which was nominated for an award at the regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival.
Challenging her typical “neat and clean” aesthetic, “Peter and the Starcatcher” called for bold patterns to dress pirates, rough-and-tumble orphans, a colorful nanny and mermaids that looked as though they had been conjured from pieces of the ocean floor. Riggs wove wooden sea creatures into wigs, stretched netting over tails and used bright sequins and stripes to keep the motley crew looking appropriately chaotic.
“Getting out of your comfort zone is where the most creativity is,” she reflected. “The show pushed me to think outside of the box and not do things based on my gut reaction, but on how everything incorporates together and what the designs communicate. Being uncomfortable made the designs unique and visually appealing.”
With nothing but a tassel between her and graduation, she is looking forward to the next step in her career: a summer internship as a stitcher in the costume shop at the Tony-award winning Utah Shakespeare Festival. After her internship, she is considering continuing in theater or expanding her skills by exploring different branches of fashion, such as merchandising and film, and earning a master’s degree. Wherever Riggs’ artistic journey takes her, she’s eager to face the challenges ahead and continue to push herself.
“College has definitely been about learning to take risks and try new things,” she said. “Looking back today and seeing all the ways I’ve changed gives me a lot of hope. I’m not the person I was when I started college, and that’s a good thing.”
