Costume Sketches and Dresses from the “Speakeasy Collection”

Mark Hughes

Mark began sewing at the age of 9, making clothes for his Barbie dolls. He hasn’t stopped sewing, and is still an avid collector of vintage Barbies. He spent 25 years as a costume designer in Regional Theatre, based in his native Little Rock. He left the theatre life in 1997 and moved to Northwest Arkansas, earning a living making reenactment costumes for the Arkansas State Parks System.

In 2000 he launched “Regalia Handmade Clothing” on the Fayetteville square, his line of comfortable, natural-fiber clothing for women (regaliahandmadeclothing.com) He moved his home and business to Eureka Springs in 2006, where he lives and works now.

He also has a side line of retro clothing called “Bing Bang Boomerang” (bingbangboomerang.com) and can sometimes be coerced back into the costume world, as in these 1920’s-inspired outfits created for a Mardi Gras presentation called the “Speakeasy Collection”.

Mark also volunteers at Eureka’s Clear Spring School, where he has set up a sewing classroom and teaches sewing to students in grades 1 to 12. He does this not only for the fun of seeing kids learn to sew, but because he believes a dying art is only dying when it is not passed on.