Madeline Taylor

Madeline Taylor is both a maker and researcher of costume. She was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Aalto University in 2025, where her research investigated technological innovations in costume practice, funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. Her research draws on 20 years’ experience costuming theatre, dance and opera in Australia and the UK. Having worked on over 90 productions across theatre, dance, opera, circus and film, she brings extensive professional practice to her academic work.

She received her PhD from University of Melbourne, with a thesis focusing on interpersonal dynamics of collaboration in costume practice. This is the basis for her recent monograph Costumers at Work: Collaborative Creativity, Emotional Labour and Technical Skill in Costume Making published by Routledge. A fashion Lecturer at Queensland University of Technology and co-director of The Stitchery Collective, other research interests include sustainability practices enabled by digital gift economies and alternative modes of engaging with, consuming, and displaying, fashion and clothing. In Australia, she lives and works on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera lands.

Her postdoctoral project at Aalto University, Technological Innovations in Costume Practice (TICP) was a research justice project that used theories about sociotechnical change to investigate the integration of technological innovations, specifically digital patternmaking and 3D printing, in the work of costume professionals. It aimed is to develop theoretical models and practical tools to facilitate the technology adoption. The overarching question guiding the research project was: What factors influence how costume practitioners engage with new manufacturing technologies, and what tools and resources would facilitate wider adoption?