Rachel E. Pollock is the resident Costume Crafts Artisan at Playmakers Repertory Company, as well as a Lecturer in the Costume Production MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has worked as a professional costume craftsperson for theatre, opera, ballet, television, and film since 1994.

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After freelancing in Knoxville (TN), Chicago, and Boston, she accepted a staff position as resident Costume Crafts Artisan and Dyer for the internationally-acclaimed American Repertory Theatre at Harvard University in Cambridge, where she served for four award-winning seasons. She subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to work in film and television costuming, as well as a stint on the crafts team of the LA Opera, before relocating to Chapel Hill. She has served as a crafts artisan, dyer, and milliner for such designers as Catherine Zuber, Ann Hould-Ward, Ilona Somogyi, David Zinn, Constance Hoffman, and Julie Taymor, and worked for Parsons-Meares, Ltd. on Tim Hatley's Tony Award-winning costume designs for Shrek: The Musical.

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Ms. Pollock is the author of Sticks In Petticoats, the only extant text on parasol history and construction for the stage, as well as various articles for trade publications such as the Costume Research Journal. She maintains the seminal costume crafts artisanship blog, La Bricoleuse. At UNC, she conducts a series of graduate seminars on costume craftwork—millinery, dyeing and distressing, masks, armor, and related topics.