Lily Steiner’s life has taken many twists and turns throughout the years, but time and time again, it would turn out she was exactly where she needed to be.

For Steiner, costuming is storytelling, and it is something she is passionate about. Her career has taken her many places, but before it carried her across the country and into film, an important chapter in Steiner’s story began in Vandalia.

The Texas native was raised for most of her life in Arkansas. She graduated from Benton High School in 1975 before moving to Missouri to attend William Woods University. At first, she was on the pre-law track.

While in college, Steiner had to find a work study job, and she was pretty bad at typing, but she could sew.

“So they put me in the costume shop, and I just fell in love with it,” she said.

Steiner had been sewing all her life — she learned to sew before she could write. Her mother was a seamstress, “a good Southern woman,” as Steiner describes her, who insisted that she learn. 

“After a while in the costume shop, I told my sainted mother that I had decided to not pursue law and to go into theater instead, and she didn’t disown me,” Steiner said with a small chuckle. “She said, ‘Whatever makes you happy.’”

So she pivoted and studied costume design, but as fate would have it, Steiner’s life was, once again, heading in a different direction.

While in college, she met her husband William, a Vandalia native who was attending Westminster College. His family owned the Vandalia Leader. The pair married after college and moved to Vandalia shortly after so William could take on the paper with his mother, Lora Steiner, after William’s father, Weldon “Pete” Steiner, died.

Steiner built a life for herself in Vandalia. She raised her two sons there and even got involved in the newspaper. Early on in her marriage, she realized that if she wanted to see her husband on Friday nights, she would have to go with him to cover high school football.

“For 25 years I walked the sidelines taking stats,” Steiner said. “That was my contribution.” 

Steiner never wrote for the paper, but she did end up taking the odd photo assignment when everyone else was busy. Her children grew up working in the darkroom and setting type.

All the while, Steiner never lost that passion for sewing. 

“Since there was not a lot of theater to be had in Vandalia, obviously, I did a lot of other things,” she explained. 

Steiner worked at a Vandalia-based garment factory called Leggoons, which specialized in sportswear. There she did some designing and quality control.

“Going into the garment industry and learning about production was a really good thing, as it turns out, in costuming,” she said.

Learning how to get materials in and managing production schedules is something that would end up helping her in her career as a shop manager later down the road.

The Steiners owned the newspaper for approximately 50 years and after her husband’s death, Lora was at the helm as publisher until she was 83 years old. By the time the family sold the paper in 2003, Steiner’s children were grown and had moved out, so William encouraged her to pursue costuming full time.

“When they left home, my husband was like, ‘You waited all this time to do this — go for it,’” she said.

She started in St. Louis and designed costumes for Missouri Baptist University before taking contracts a little further afield. It started with a 6-week summer contract with a renaissance fair in Pennsylvania.

“I ended up coming back every year until, finally, in 2013, they offered me a full-time position as the costume designer and shop manager,” Steiner said.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, at a time when Steiner said film was coming back more quickly than live theater, she accepted an offer to work for a film produced by Sight & Sound, “I Heard the Bells.”

“I did that as a stitcher, and I really enjoyed it because I specialized in historical costuming,” she said. 

After the first film, Steiner went on to work in Sight & Sound’s theater department and eventually, she retired.

But for Steiner, retirement wasn’t what it was “cracked up to be,” and roughly five months later, she accepted an offer from Sight & Sound to do costume design for its film, “A Great Awakening,” which premiered in theaters April 3. 

Steiner hit her stride in historical costuming for the film industry. She just finished a stint with an upcoming Bo Brinkman film, “Gettysburg 1863,” which is set to debut in November, and she is currently working on another Sight & Sound film as both the costume designer and shop manager. 

“I can wax poetic about theater and costuming forever,” Steiner said. “It’s my passion; it’s what I love to do. I’m just very fortunate that at this point in my life to still be able to do films that mean a lot. It’s a great blessing.”