Shep continued his education, first at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London (1955–56), then at the American Institute of Foreign Trade, now Thunderbird School of Global Management, in Glendale, Arizona.
[3] Between 1983 and 2004, Shep made several trips to Bhutan and Northeastern India; collecting and studying Bhutanese and Northeastern Indian Naga textiles.He particularly studied from the Maram Naga people, exploring design themes that remain consistent, persisting in the work even as traditions change over time.
[5][6] On his return to the United States, Shep devoted two issues of The Textile Booklist to Bhutan (Winter 1984 and Spring 1984) which included illustrated articles.
[3] Other past professional affiliations include the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, the Seattle Textile and Rug Society, Pacific Textile Arts, the Costume Society of Ontario, The Costume Society of Great Britain, and the Australian Forum for Textile Art, Ltd..[3] In addition to writing Cleaning and Repairing Books, R. L. Shep published books on textile arts, dress, and manners, which archived information from the late 18th century through the early 20th century, in the United States and Great Britain, as resources for theatre.
According to Shep, his interest in reprinting technical textile books from the 19th century started with the discovery of a copy of Louis Devere's "The Handbook of Practical Cutting on the Centre Point System" and was encouraged by his mentor, New York costumer and clothing pattern archivist Betty Vickery Williams.
The first symposium, Dress as Transformation: Creating Experience in Theater and Masquerade, was held in April 1999.
[27] The third symposium, 17th Century Textiles & Dress, was held on 9 April 2005 in association with the exhibit Images of Fashion from the Court of Louis XIV.
[38] Since 2003, the R. L. Shep Endowment at the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History has supported exhibitions, and publication of the related catalogs.
For example, in 2006, the Fowler used Shep Endowment funding for the exhibition Material Choices: Refashioning Bast and Leaf Fibers in Asia and the Pacific[39] and its catalog,[40] which also received the R.L.
[41] The third project supported by the Shep Endowment in 2010 was the publication of a book, Nini Towok's Spinning Wheel: Cloth and the Cycle of Life in Kerek, Java by Rens Heringa, and the concurrent presentation of an exhibit of the same name.