Broadway Costume Designer Carrie Robbins Has Died at 81

Costume designer Carrie F. Robbins, whose 30-plus productions on Broadway ran the gamut from the poodle skirts of Grease (1972) to the shimmering gowns of Irving Berlin’s White Christmas (2009) to the nuns’ habits in Agnes of God (1983), died on April 12 at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan at the age of 81. According to her friend Daniel Neiden, she died following a brief illness with Covid.

Robbins’ Broadway career began with Leda and the Little Swan by Amber Gascoigne, a play that closed on Broadway before its scheduled opening at the Cort Theatre in 1968.

Robbins rebounded with a Broadway revival of You Can’t Take It With You the following year, and The Good Woman of Setzuan in 1970, and Grease, which ran eight years. Other Broadway credits include The Plough and the Stars, The Iceman Cometh, The Beggar’s Opera, The Crucible, Macbeth, An Enemy of the People, The Time of Your Life, Bertolt Brecht’s Happy End, which introduced a young Meryl Streep, Yentl, The First, The Octette Bridge Club, Raggedy Ann, The Boys of Winter, A Class Act, and The Shadow Box.

In London’s West End, she designed costumes for Sweet Bird of Youth starring Lauren Bacall. Robbins was nominated for two Tony Awards, for Grease and Over Here!, and received four Drama Desk Awards. She also received the Irene Sharaf Award for Sustained Excellence in 2012 from the Theatre Development Fund and the Ruth Morley Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women.

Born in Baltimore on February 7, 1943, Carrie Fishbein Robbins was the daughter of Sidney W. Fishbein and Betty A. (Berman) Fishbein. In 1969, she married surgeon Richard D. Robbins. She did her undergraduate studies at Penn State University, and she was a graduate of Yale School of Drama. She was a Master Teacher of Costume Design at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she taught from 1972-2004. A book of her designs, The Designs of Carrie Robbins, has been published by Samuel French.

She designed the costumes for one season of Saturday Night Live in the 1980s, once tried her hand at designing dental equipment, and turned to playwriting and puppet making in recent years.

Services will be held May 13 at 10:30am at Brotherhood Synagogue in Gramercy Park.