Seeded and nurtured in childhood by privileged access to sources of inspiration too numerous to list here and the invaluable, generous support and encouragement of friends, teachers and family members, Phoenix Thomas’s passion for costume developed in adolescence into a fascination for the subcultural, anti-fashion and the avant-garde. Keen to develop the skills required to manifest a subversively creative vision for themselves, Phoenix completed Foundation Studies in Art and Design at UCA Epsom (University for the Creative Arts) before graduating with a BA(Hons) in Costume for Performance at London College of Fashion. It was here that Phoenix’s love of costume design and making really came into itself, and here that they discovered a voracious curiosity for the why and how costume does what it does – culturally, historically and politically, most specifically in relation to gender and sexuality.
After a year of postgraduate studies in Gender and Media at the University of Sussex, and numerous professional engagements in their capacity as a costumier, Phoenix was accepted into the practice-based Research Degree (PhD) programme at Central School of Speech and Drama. Over the course of their research, they completed various practical works which responded to and progressed the theoretical/conceptual development of a written thesis, through which Phoenix presented a practical conceptual toolkit facilitating a critically informed queer costume practice.
After graduation, Phoenix was delighted to be employed in a short-term Postdoctoral Researcher position within the Costume Methodologies research project at Aalto University. Unfortunately, by this time, they were already suffering from prodromal schizophrenia and their manuscript on Costume and the Society of the Spectacle remains incomplete.