I am lucky enough to take a class with Kambrea Lagrosa, the new and amazing costume professor. Lagrosa makes class fun and something I look forward to, even at 8:30 a.m. She has immense respect for everyone and makes sure her students are comfortable in every way. I’ll never forget the first day of class when she said, “You can call me Kammy, or you can call me Professor Lagrosa, but I’ll think I’m in trouble.” She has secured her spot as one of my favorite professors. If you’ve had the fortune of taking a class with her, you’ll understand.
One of my favorite things about Lagrosa is her history in cosplay. “I was rooted in cosplay in my late teens and early twenties,” Lagrosa explained. “I had always known how to sew since a young age — my grandma taught me and sent me to a sewing camp.” Though Lagrosa said her favorite cosplay was Flame Princess from Adventure Time, from personal testimony, I think her Jigsaw cosplay was pretty incredible as well.
Lagrosa attended Portland State University for her undergraduate studies and was recruited by the university to continue her studies there for her master’s. She recently finished her PhD coursework at the University of Buffalo. “My undergrad is in Arts and Letters,” she said, “so the art that I was focusing on was textile manipulation and fabric sculptures. I wasn’t doing anything with costume design. The theater department came and was like, ‘Do you want to design this show?’ and I was like, ‘Sure.’ I didn’t know anything about what I was doing, and it came out all right.” The show was Endgame by Sam Beckett. “And then right when I was about to graduate, my advisor was like, ‘So you’re going to grad school,’ and I was like, ‘What?”
Of course, I had to ask her: how did she end up at Beloit? “I was interviewing at a bunch of places,” Lagrosa said. “When I came for the in-person interview, I really liked Alicia [Bailey]. She was really nice, and they were really open about classes in the curriculum that I could add that focused on my specialties, which I thought would be cool. I felt like I was going to be given a real opportunity to grow people’s interests in costumes.”
Speaking of courses focused on her specialties, Lagrosa is offering two new courses next semester with no prerequisites: The Aesthetics of Horror and a craft course. “My dissertation and my research focus a lot on horror films. Specifically in terms of Latina versus white actors and the roles they’re getting in horror.” The craft course, said Lagrosa, is “basically everything else but sewing. So the other parts of hands-on making. There’ll be armor making, mask making, and even wigs.” Both classes sound like a blast and are offered around 10 a.m.
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