Ashley Bellet
- Assistant Professor, Costume Design // Theatre // Rueff School
- Assistant Professor, Costume Design // SIS
- Assistant Professor / Theatre / Costume Design // Rueff School of Design, Art, and Performance
Office and Contact
Courses
Costume Design
Advanced Costume Design
Costume Crafts
Theatrical Rendering
Costume Construction
Defining Ugly
The Genes of Jeans
Period Styles for Theatre
Wearable Art
Advanced Costume Design
Costume Crafts
Theatrical Rendering
Costume Construction
Defining Ugly
The Genes of Jeans
Period Styles for Theatre
Wearable Art
Specialization
Costume Design
About
BAs, Theatre Design and English, The University of the South at Sewanee
MFA, Theatre Design, The University of Memphis
PhD, Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, The University of Wisconsin at Madison
Dr. Ashley Bellet is a professional costume designer and crafts artisan, and has worked for The Santa Fe Opera, American Lives Theatre, The Houston Shakespeare Festival, American Players Theatre, Playhouse on the Square, Theatre Memphis, and Oklahoma Repertory Theatre, among others. Her designs and craft work span from opera to drama, musical theatre to children’s theatre, and from commercial to traditional craftwork. She previously taught and designed at The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma City University, and Millikin University.
As a designer and craftsperson, Ashley’s research leans heavily on practice-based methodologies. Combining material culture studies, aesthetic theory, and object theory, she sees costume as a liminal experience that both creates and binds space and movement. Experimentation with material agency, space, and the orbit beyond the traditional form is imperative to Ashley’s pedagogical approach for theatre designers.
Ashley is also dedicated to mentorship and the study of theatre pedagogy. Her work with USITT and KCACTF highlights this, focusing on integrating hands-on experiences with a deeper level of aesthetic research constructed outside of the production process.
She is President-Elect for the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) and presents regularly for ATHE, USITT, PSi, IFTR, CSA, and ASTR. Ashley previously served as the Associate Editor for Education for the journal Theatre Design and Technology (TD&T) and as the Secretary for the USITT Board of Directors.
Publications
Bellet, Ashley. “Judy Adamson, Costume Draper and Mentor.” Theatre Artisans and Their Craft: The Allied Arts. Routledge, 2020.
Bellet, Ashley. Editor. Re-Fashioning Pedagogies: New Approaches to Decolonizing Fashion History and Period Styles. Routledge, 2023
Hough, Tyler, et al. “Balancing Act: Integrating Broad and Narrow Constructs of Experiential Learning in Higher Education”. Experiential Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 7, no. 2. July 2024, doi:10.46787/elthe.v7i2.4012.
Bellet, Ashley. "The Costumes of Sonia Biacchi: Exploring the Object+Body+Dynamic." Theatre Symposium, vol. 32, 2025, p. 92-110. Project MUSE, https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/tsy.2025.a966896.