From time to time, certain designers seem to dominate Broadway, and without a doubt the queen costumer of the past few years has been Catherine Zuber. During the 2005-06 season, her handwork — for man and beast, past and present, heaven and earth — enjoyed the spotlight on six separate Broadway stages.

She dressed beasts in the Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” a four-character drama populated by two humans and two large lizards. Ms. Zuber’s green, elastic outfits for the coldblooded couple were the production’s most noted characteristic. She took on heaven in “In My Life,” the exuberantly peculiar flop musical by jingle writer Joe Brooks, giving a fey guardian angel named Winston a wardrobe to pique the jealousy of the Sun King.And as for the past, she evoked yesteryear in John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” (set in the Bronx of 1964), Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’s musical “The Light in the Piazza” (1953 Florence) and the LCT revival of Clifford Odet’s “Awake and Sing!” (also the Bronx, but in 1933).

Her achievements have not gone unnoticed. In June, Ms. Zuber won a 2006 Tony Award for “Awake and Sing!” — a nice complement to the 2005 Tony she received for “Piazza.” And earlier this month, Ms. Zuber enjoyed even more accolades, in the form of four nominations for the American Theater Wing’s 2006 Henry Hewes Design Awards, which will be presented this fall.

Now, with upcoming assignments like LCT’s fall production of Tom Stoppard’s mammoth, three-part play “The Coast of Utopia” and a 2007-08 revival of “South Pacific,” also at Lincoln Center (an LCT official joked that she is their “house designer”), this would seem to be Catherine Zuber’s moment. As “The Light in the Piazza” director Bartlett Sher puts it bluntly: “In my experience, everybody in the field knows Cathy’s the best.”

But the flame-haired, 55-year-old designer is more skittish in assessing her current career. “I feel it is a special time,” she said, talking in the wellstocked library of her office on West 38th Street. “I have great work with great people. I feel very excited about everything’s that happening at the moment. But I know life has its ups and downs, and I’m very cautious about resting on my laurels.”

Though her most recent work seems nothing if not lavished with praise, Ms. Zuber knows firsthand the perils of experiencing a professional rough patch. In 2000, she was dismissed from the doomed “Seussical” musical. After the show experienced out-of-town troubles in Boston, she was replaced by William Ivey Long. And while the production went on to bad reviews and a short run on Broadway, the memory of her discharge still stings.

“There was a time when I just felt at a loss in my career, after I worked on ‘Seussical,'” she said. “That was quite destabilizing. It more than depressed me. I started questioning my judgment, my trust in fellow collaborators. It was difficult. I lost jobs after that, which was quite painful.” Still, Ms. Zuber retains a sense of humor about the situation. “I know that anyone who went to see ‘Seussical’ could see that it wasn’t the clothes that were the problem,”she said.

She regained her footing by working with people with whom she had longstanding relationships, including directors Doug Hughes and Mr. Sher. Luckily for Ms. Zuber, both men have become much in demand in recent years, and she has reaped the benefits. Mr. Hughes hired her for “Doubt” and “Frozen”; Bartlett used her on “The Light in the Piazza”and “Awake and Sing!”and will work with her again on “South Pacific.”

Still, Ms. Zuber is not overconfident about her Broadway designs: “You need to feel you could do something wrong and that’s what keeps you always questioning and probing and investigating.”

Evidence of her endless investigations can be found around her work area. Recently, a colleague who dropped something off at her office called her afterward. “‘Do you realize that your desk is filled with these weird erasure shavings?'” Ms. Zuber recalled the friend asking.”As if something happened when I wasn’t there. I thought about it and thought: Yeah, I do that all the time. I’m constantly sketching and erasing, very quickly. There’s this one character I’m doing right now — whenever I put a collar on her, it looks wrong. She’s tougher than that. She just can’t have that collar.”

The character in question is from her current project, Mr. Stoppard’s heady “The Coast of Utopia,” which, according to Ms. Zuber “trucks in the intellectual and philosophical debates of prerevolutionary Russia.” Since the play is composed of three separate evenings of theater, and ranges in time from the 1830s through the 1860s, it requires many costumes. How many? Ms. Zuber won’t say. She won’t even tally the outfits in the lush wardrobe at “The Light in the Piazza,” a show that opened long ago. “I never count!” she said. “I get nervous if I count.” When asked how many sketches she’s made for “Utopia” so far, she replies, “Quite a few.” (Okay, Okay: No counting.)

“The Coast of Utopia” would seem to ask for the same gorgeous period realism that marked “The Light in the Piazza” and “Awake and Sing!”Yes, says Ms. Zuber, but it’s not that simple.”The challenge for ‘The Coast of Utopia’ is that there needs to be a realism, because the sets are very sparse and stunning. They want the clothes to be realistic, but if they become too real, it becomes such a different vocabulary. So you try to strike the right balance of realism without it being cloying. ‘Light in the Piazza’ had that same challenge. The clothes are real but not real.They adhere to period silhouettes, but there’s something in the choice of colors — there’s just a little edge or kick to them.”

Mr. Sher elaborated on the essence of that “edge.” “She connects character and metaphor and detail in clothes,” the “Piazza” director said. “It’s not just a great dress. It’s always connected to the character.In a detail of clothing, she sees character and psychology. The clothes have so much information in them.”

Ms. Zuber loved working on the trans-Atlantic “Piazza,”and no wonder.Born in London, she had a childhood filled with crossings on ocean liners. On these vessels, she witnessed firsthand the steamer trunks full of finery from world travelers. She grew up in love with the fashion of the 1940s: “It was the stuff I used to wear when I was in my 20s.”When she attended the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston, before moving on to the Yale University School of Drama, Ms. Zuber couldn’t adjust to the disco-era styles of the time, though she appreciates them now. “I always feel that when you’re in a time period, you can’t see it.You have to get out of it.”In fact, the 1980s — that era of parachute pants, shoulder pads, and fingerless gloves — is the only decade she still finds difficult to love.

“Maybe in a few years I can get excited about it,” she said with a shrug.