Maggie Marilyn (Q3251)
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Maggie Marilyn is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Maggie Marilyn |
Maggie Marilyn is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
For Maggie Marilyn’s Maggie Hewitt, the last few years have been about resets and new beginnings. She’s in the middle of the changes begun during Covid, and she recently gave birth to her first child. “The first years of Maggie Marilyn we had such rapid growth; Net-a-Porter was one of our first stockists, we got shortlisted for the LVMH Prize, then we quickly picked up a lot of international retailers,” she explains, seated at a table inside her bright Sydney showroom. “Everything felt like it was spinning so fast, and it wasn’t sustainable at all, not for the environment sure, but also for me, for my team, and for longevity and building something that was really going to be around for a long time.”And so each collection is now carefully considered, picking up where the last one left off. A striped cotton shirt gets paired with a bubble skirt in the same fabric—a style which she introduced last season, while tweedy “business separates” get youthful updates; like a tailored vest and bolero-combo that’s actually one jacket (this one from the resort 2022 collection). An easy butter yellow crepe dress with a built-in matching belt at the hip is heavy enough to hide underwear lines while remaining light enough to wear on a hot summer day. (Both Hewitt and another employee were accidentally wearing it on the day I happened to visit.)Hewitt has also recently begun producing a line of sportswear pieces like windbreaker jackets and pullover fleeces emblazoned with a “Marilyn” logo that’s clearly inspired by all the icons of ’90s American sportswear. It’s funny to see such a traditionally masculine thing—think TOMMY or POLO or CALVIN—thrown on its head a bit. (It helps, of course, that Marilyn just so happens to be such an emblematically feminine name.) “I think there’s this thrill for me, designing with nostalgia in mind—thinking about the old fishing jackets my dad would wear, or the fleeces my mom would wear when she was in the veggie garden,” she added. Now her dad and her partner wear the pieces bearing her name instead.
19 June 2024
Presented around the corrugated iron clubhouse of the Royal Australian Navy Sailing Association in Rushcutters Bay, this show opened to Van Morrison. Guests noshed hot and salty fish and chips washed down with reportedly potent gimlets. Behind us the sun sank in a lazy golden ooze behind the Sydney Harbor Bridge: dreamy.The first model wore a white sailing blouson that featured an ersatz America’s Cup–esque house sailing club logo over a red striped shirt and cricket-ish sweater. Later, a transparent parka shot through with what looked like fishing line was cut, designer Maggie Hewitt said, from an upcycled sail. It rustled as its wearer propelled it under the sun umbrellas.Maggie Marylin is a fully traceable, sustainably-focused brand expressed in an argot of sportily wholesome antipodean prep meets prom. Riding boots were worn with puff skirts. Men’s bengal striped shirting and cummerbunds were remixed into tan flashing mini-separates. There was a series of handsomely fashioned tops, some with cutesy heart cut-outs at the spine, worn over rough-hemmed washed boyfriend jeans and ballet pumps. Loose tailoring in faded navy or white came with sash detailing, a red check work shirt was worn over shirting stripe bikini separates, and a few silk dresses, a puffer, and shirts in a faded porcelain tea-set floral were also in the mix.In a quiet post-show backstage corner (the clubhouse dinghy room) Hewitt said: “It’s really exciting to be able to constantly innovate and work with partners to be able to create a product that’s conscious and positive for the planet, and which also gives our customers something new, exciting, and playful.” The positive newness she pointed out here was a near-to-end vest top in pearlescent brown paillettes. As Qantas flights cut across the fading blue above and the harbor’s dusk illuminations began haphazardly to ignite, it was tempting to lose yourself to the mise-en-scène. Hewitt’s lineup looked just as enticing to inhabit.
16 May 2023
“They say a smooth sea never makes a great sailor,” the designer Maggie Marilyn Hewitt tells me during our Zoom appointment. She’s referring to the ways in which she has adapted her business in the last few years — she serendipitously went direct-to-consumer in early 2020 — but also about trying to survive the notoriously treacherous environment that the fashion industry can be for a small brand. “I started Maggie Marilyn when I was 21 and now I’m 28 and just seeing how much has changed in the last couple of years…” she trails off. “I think that’s what inspires me above everything, [that] after all the highs and lows of trying to build a brand over the last six years, I still really believe in the power of clothing, and how that can [change] how the wearer feels.”That optimism and hopefulness were evident in the lookbook images, which featured fourteen “friends of the brand” self-styled in the collection’s new offerings and photographed as they seemingly went about their daily lives. A maxi dress with a shirred bodice and a drop waist made of organic cotton shows up in three separate occasions, and the way each woman has chosen to wear it imbues it with a different energy. The version in white, for example, is worn loose so the gathered fabric becomes more of a texture rather than a body-con detail, and is paired with a chunky black boot that turns it into the perfect throw-it-on-and-go dress; while the black version is paired with a slim-fitting black top and black sandals and it’s suddenly an elegant option. Similarly, a pair of slate straight-leg wool trousers with a slit at the back, had the ease of a pair of well-loved jeans when paired with a baggy jacket and a white shirt tied around the hips; when worn under a midi dress in the same fabric, it becomes a luxurious way to add a tomboy-ish edge to the clean lines of the dress. The coolest piece in the collection is a two-in-one sleeveless vest with matching bolero, in butter yellow and worn with a kicky plaid skirt and thigh-high boots, it’s hip and youthful in a Cher Horowitz-kind of way; but later when it appeared gain, this time in the slate, and worn with a slouchy black pant, it captures a certain vision of modernity and cool for actual grown-up women that want to look like grown-up women. Maybe it’s the insouciant charm of the extra-long sleeves.“It sits well on your shoulders,” Hewitt added.
At first, I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the weight of the wool crepe used throughout the collection, or the knowledge that the wool is fully traceable. What a luxury to not have to choose.
19 August 2022
Travel regulations have finally eased in New Zealand, where Maggie Marilyn Hewitt spent the entirety of 2020 and 2021. The first place the designer went when the borders opened? The world’s first carbon-positive cotton farm, located in Moree, Australia. There, she enlisted photographer Dan Roberts to shoot her new collection at Good Earth Cotton, which supplied Hewitt with many of the materials in this collection.Beside bales of cotton and springs of greenery, models pose in Hewitt’s new bicolor trench, much-loved suiting (now in hot pink and red), and new ruched jersey dresses that would look as lovely at a wedding as on a farm trip. Hewitt’s signature knot detailing appears on the poufs of rose-colored blouses and a city-slick black dress, though she spotlights a shacket in pink plaids as a favorite this season. Her design ethos is uncomplicated—she makes the clothing that she, her team, and her customers want to wear.In silhouette and shape, Hewitt is not reinventing the wheel. But when we speak over Zoom, it becomes obvious she is reinventing something far more difficult: the culture of desire. By cutting out wholesale accounts and shifting to a direct-to-consumer model, Hewitt has to stoke the flames of passion in her clientele—and she has to do it with only 13 items each season, the result of her staunch commitment to sustainable production. Her clothing can’t only be cute or covetable; it has to speak to the essential desire to feel uncomplicatedly beautiful. The pictures in her collection imagery of Shanina Shaik colored by dusk light certainly help, but to really understand the purpose of her garments, you have to see them in motion, alive. She promises that next season she’ll be back in New York to prove her mettle—and to prove that eco-fashion can be more than just pretty; it can be purposeful too.
10 March 2022
Resort collections in New York and Europe are typically a bipolar mix of wintry staples and takeaway clothes: lofty turtlenecks and coats to wear now alongside bikinis and caftans to pack for a tropical holiday. Meanwhile in New Zealand, where Maggie Marilyn Hewitt has spent the whole of the pandemic, Kiwis are preparing for summer. The citrus-hued scarf tops, cut-out dresses, and striped shirting in her new collection aren’t “escapist” in the least; this is what Hewitt and her community will be wearing in just a few weeks’ time.It gives the “in-season” collection launch more relevance, though plenty of New York and European labels have waited until now to show resort. Where Hewitt is going against convention is by re-cutting best sellers and, perhaps even more surprisingly, styling past-season looks with her new pieces. The puffed-sleeve dress in crinkled peony and emerald viscose, known as the “You Win Again” dress to MM fans, has featured in several collections, and her line of recyclable Somewhere basics are making repeat appearances.It isn’t just that Hewitt knows those items are going to sell; she also hopes to make a subtle statement about longevity and timelessness. Surely her team appreciates the reduced pressure to reinvent the wheel every season. Similarly, Hewitt made a point to style her new silk scarf a dozen different ways: as a top, a skirt, a bag, a headband, and even as a full dress, with multiple squares tied together. The looks capture the summer feeling Hewitt is craving, particularly after another intense lockdown in NZ: warm, relaxed, and unrestrained.
22 November 2021
Can a designer’s sustainability efforts ever be enough? Is there a point where there’s just nothing left to do, no further improvements to make? It’s tempting to think so—and plenty of designers will have you believe they’ve gotten there. In reality, it’s not yet possible to be 100% sustainable, to check every box on materials, packaging, shipping, labor, traceability, emissions, and so on. That’s one reason Maggie Hewitt (and many of her peers) has lately avoided describing her brand as sustainable at all; instead, she says, she’s “using fashion to create a better world.” Hewitt doesn’t sugarcoat her progress or suggest her business doesn’t make an impact; it’s all a work in progress.Still, she’s certainly ahead of the pack. One of the pleasures of Hewitt’s collections is that sustainability is such a given, you can just focus on the clothes. It’s no longer a novelty that she uses organic cotton, FSC-certified viscose, and regenerative wool, nor that she shares the journey of how her garments are made. Flipping through her new-arrivals section, you don’t have to double-check if a silky butterscotch mini is secretly polyester; not only is it 100% silk, it was sourced from a deadstock supplier. Ditto a chocolate poplin gown, which stands out for its dramatic yet dressed-down feeling, not the fact that it’s made from organic cotton.That means the real takeaway of Hewitt’s pre-fall collection, which debuted today as part of Australian Fashion Week, was simply its sense of exuberance. Several dresses came in a surprising sparkly gold gingham (organic cotton flecked with Lurex, for the record), alongside more familiar puffed-sleeve numbers in butterscotch and cerulean silk. Last season’s move toward narrower, sexier silhouettes continued here with a few curve-hugging ruched dresses and silk bralettes, but Hewitt is predicting a return to distinctive tailoring too. A lemon suit and an ivory vest-and-trouser combo looked destined for a dinner party, not the office.In lieu of a runway show, Hewitt filmed a happy, flower-filled dinner party in a Byron Bay forest with a cast of models and friends dressed in the new collection. The concept was inspired by a photo she found last year depicting a dinner party in a lush vineyard; from the setting to the sunset colors to the mere act of gathering with friends, it was aspirational in more ways than one.The film opens with a model running through an endless forest, arms out, her peony pink coat flapping behind her.
The sense of unbridled freedom will move you first, then the lively coat will. Hewitt pointed out that it’s made of strong wool, not New Zealand’s more famous (but less abundant) merino, to support local herders. Demand for the fiber has dipped as synthetics rise in popularity, but Hewitt grew up with the stuff; her dad’s strong-wool barn jackets are decades old and provided the inspiration for pre-fall’s oversized versions. In addition to being New Zealand’s main export, strong-wool sheep play a huge role in keeping the country’s land and soil healthy, and Hewitt hopes to educate her customers (and her peers) about its importance. All that said, she was just as excited about the coat’s bright, joy-sparking hue; in New Zealand, Australia, and the rest of the Southern Hemisphere, post-pandemic reemergence is coinciding with the onset of winter, and a mood-lifting coat feels undeniably right.
1 June 2021
Maggie Marilyn Hewitt has checked nearly every box in the “sustainable brand” criteria. She only uses organic, recycled, or sustainable materials; she avoids fur and leather; she visits New Zealand sheep farms to confirm the wool is sheared from happy, non-mulesed sheep; she ships her clothes in dissolvable bags made of cassava root; she holds her manufacturing partners to strict labor codes; and she’s aligned her strategy with 12 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. This year, she’s even rolling out a take-back program for her organic basics line,Somewhere, so worn-out garments can be collected and upcycled into new ones.It all coalesces under her brand’s mission statement: to use fashion to create a better world. But for all of that dreamy idealism—and Hewitt often describes herself as a dreamer—she’s also a hardcore realist. Much of fashion’s impact comes down to the less-romantic stuff that happens behind the scenes, like textile production, factory emissions, and shipping. She’s the first to say we aren’t going to save the planet with recycled polyester; in fact, what she’s most excited about now isn’t a buzzy new fabric or technique, but simply changing the way she does business.Since her launch in 2016, Hewitt’s biggest challenge was reconciling her forward-thinking ambitions with an industry that’s in many ways stuck in the past. The disconnect was particularly jarring in her wholesale relationships, with stores asking for more and more product, much of it put on sale or never sold, inevitably leading to waste and inefficiencies. So in 2020, she took her business direct-to-consumer, exiting high-profile retailers like Net-a-Porter, Nordstrom, and Saks Fifth Avenue. At the time, when I asked if the wholesale model itself was inhibiting sustainability—not just for Hewitt, but for all designers—her response was a blunt “absolutely.”Spring 2021 marks her first ready-to-wear collection since, and the shift has proved invigorating. “I fell in love with designing product again,” she said, “and designing real products for real women—not designing collections for companies.” She opened her first store in Auckland, New Zealand, where she’s able to connect directly with her local clients and understand what they want, rather than dictate what they need. Hewitt is also passionate about retooling the transactional brand-customer relationship, and views those customers more as “citizens and stakeholders” than consumers.
Through events and panels she’s hosted in the store, she’s been encouraged to see her customers forge real friendships and build that fabled “community” designers are always hoping for. “The brand has become a conduit for like-minded individuals,” she adds, inspiring conversations and changes beyond the clothing itself.Of course, it’s the clothes that count. With her Somewhere line of organic tanks, button-downs, jeans, and leggings as her foundation, Hewitt’s ready-to-wear collections now function as capsules for bolder statement pieces. That might sound more radical than what Hewitt showed here; many of the looks were still quite minimal, and Hewitt is generally feeling a more streamlined look. She understands the long-term benefit of creating clothes women will keep for years, not just a few seasons. (To wit, she refers to these as “Forever Capsules,” not seasonal flavors.) Bright shades of cayenne, daffodil, and lime lent a touch of novelty, while a checkerboard motif tweaked with hearts brought Hewitt’s signature whimsy.One checkered tank dress had a row of covered buttons from the neck to the hem, so you could unhook them into a subtle (or not-so-subtle) slit or all the way up to the waist, the better to wear trousers underneath. The opening number, a sheer black organza gown with puffed sleeves and shirring through the bust, was less wearable for every day, but could become the party dress you reach for once we reemerge.
2 March 2021
Back in November, Maggie Marilyn launched anew capsuleof 100% organic, traceable cotton and merino wool basics. It was an exercise in “true” sustainability: Marilyn is outlining the journey of each tank top, turtleneck, and trouser on her website, from the raw materials to spinning and dyeing to sewing, and eventually she’ll take back those pieces and recycle them into new ones. With prices starting at $65, they’re also a democratic option for women who can’t spend $1,400 on a ruffled blazer from Marilyn’s main line. “Sustainability shouldn’t be a luxury—it should be something everyone can buy into,” she explained at the time.Environmental and commercial ambitions aside, Marilyn had also been craving simpler, more anonymous pieces to pair back to her bolder stuff or just to throw on when she wants a cleaner look. That shift toward a quieter sensibility carried over to her fall 2020 collection: Free of the big ruffles and outsize proportions of seasons past, it wasn’t quite minimal, but will likely find a wider audience. Marilyn’s clothes are produced sustainably using high-quality materials, which makes them an investment; in 2020, there are certainly women who will shell out for a bubblegum suit, but the truth is many of us would consider the black version more “worth it.”Marilyn’s new M.O. is to create relatively sleek, easy-to-wear items with her usual touch of romance and play—women searching for dresses to wear to next summer’s weddings will find lots of pretty, unfussy options. (Fall collections often ship in June or July at the height of wedding season.) A strapless LBD came with a knit bodice and full bubble hem, and there was a series of bias-cut slips and halter dresses in pistachio, lemon, and blush. Marilyn herself was more excited by the vaguely tomboyish pieces, like an oversized plaid camp shirt, and introduced her first “shearling” in a snuggly recycled polyester. If the offering lacked the drama of seasons’ past, there was a sense of maturity and confidence in its place. Marilyn is growing up—she started her line at 23—and managing to keep up in a rapidly changing industry. Not only that, but she’s also holding her brand to higher environmental standards. Few of her peers—or even the bigger, more established houses—can say the same.
13 February 2020
Sustainability is the most pressing issue designers have to tackle for Spring 2020 (and every season from here on out), and plenty of established names are scrambling to catch up. When you’ve had certain production and manufacturing practices in place for years (or even decades), you can’t just flip a switch and “become sustainable” overnight: Many of those changes are expensive and time-consuming. Maggie Marilyn is utterly chill about it, though, because she’s been part of this movement since day one. (Though she wasn’t always as vocal about it; when she launched back in 2016, her brand’s buzzwords wereaffordableandromanticbecause the industry had yet to equate sustainability with vision or luxury.) Now in her third year, she’s established her brand’s visual language and is getting more ambitious about its environmental impact. Her North Star goal is for Maggie Marilyn to one day be a completely circular business, meaning customers can return clothes they’re no longer wearing to be resold or repurposed into something else.Of course, nothing Marilyn has produced is particularly old or worn out yet; Spring 2020 is her ninth collection. As always, there were innovative materials like recycled polyester, organic cotton, and drapey Tencel, and she introduced linen for the very first time. “It always felt a little too earthy in the past,” she said, pointing out her best-selling ruffled blazer in beige linen. But here, it lent some soft contrast to her more familiar bright pinks and periwinkles. Speaking of color, it was almost jarring to see so much black in her showroom: A twist-sleeve midi-dress from a prior collection reappeared in black satin, and a few looks were worthy of a red carpet, like a full strapless gown and a flared bustier over trousers. It’s tempting to interpret a sense of doom and gloom in that shade, but Marilyn is an optimist; she was thinking more about how surprising and strong an all-black look feels in the springtime. (She probably has red carpets on the brain, too.)The other news for Spring was the utilitarian feel of a wide-leg khaki pant and the removable utility belts on miniskirts and button-downs. Marilyn says they’ve afforded her the luxury of leaving home without a purse; she simply puts her phone, keys, and credit cards in her pocket. That kind of functionality is a selling point for busy women on the go, particularly here in New York.
On that note, they’ll be happy to know that Marilyn’s newest blazer can be worn three ways: as a vest, a bolero, or together as the complete jacket. It’s a three-in-one deal practically made for limited closet space.
10 September 2019
In fashion’s quest to become a less-harmful industry, it’s ironic that it always comes down to making more clothes. Brands have to start somewhere, though; you can’t just flip a switch and “be sustainable” overnight. Maybe you add organic cotton one season, expand to 50% recycled materials the next, and gradually bump up those numbers and credentials with each collection. Still, as long as you’re producing anything, you’re having an impact, and it gives naysayers an easy opening: If youreallywant to be green, then why make anything at all?It’s a lazy oversimplification, because we’re always going to need clothes, and—more importantly—fashion is an entry point for consumers to embrace sustainability in every aspect of their lives. It’s a way to educate them about plastic pollution, toxic chemicals, even regenerative agriculture. But the constant churn of new collections and deliveries still felt incongruous to Maggie Marilyn, who is committed to traceability and to using natural or recycled fibers in her collections. Even with the best materials, she felt designing six new pants a season was excessive, and when retailers asked her to tweak a skirt’s color or length to make it exclusive—only to put it on sale or send it back—it just felt like a waste. Maybe that skirt didn’t need to exist in that color, or at all.In an era of 100-look runway shows, doing less is typically perceived as a concession. But Marilyn was proud to say her resort collection includes just one pant, a lean black flare. Most of her lookbook was styled with ivory jeans fromSomewhere, the capsule of organic, seasonless, traceable basics she launched back in November. Marilyn designed the jeans to be a foundation piece you can wear again and again, so by reshooting them in this lookbook, she’s practicing what she preaches. Design-wise, she also created Somewhere’s jeans, T-shirts, and leggings to ground the more fanciful stuff in her seasonal collections, like the ivory ruffled blouse and knotted crimson tee seen here.Those items speak to Marilyn’s broader mission for resort, which was to design pieces, not “looks.” She’s thinking about how her customer actually shops—for a couple new things a season, not full looks—and she’s no longer interested in creating extra stuff to fill up a linesheet or accommodate every retailer’s request. She wants to create pieces she truly believes in, and that she believes will actually be worn.
Her customers are a helpful gauge for that; in the #BeforeTimes, Marilyn traveled every month, but she’s been home in New Zealand since March and has had time to reconnect with them and ask what they want from her. Some fell in love with past-season items, like a diagonal-striped silk dress, which Marilyn reinterpreted here in graphic black and white. Other past hits got a second life, too, including a ruffled-edge blazer and an emerald silk midi dress.As for her sustainability credentials, Marilyn cut several pieces in post-consumer recycled cotton, and a handful of easy black dresses came in soft jersey. She’s thinking beyond the “organic” or “recycled” tags: Earlier this summer, she visited a Merino station that uses regenerative practices and saw firsthand how the farmers care for their sheep. Marilyn reported the sheep even have cushions to sit on while they wait to be (safely, painlessly) sheared. She hopes to collaborate with the farm on materials in the future, and said she’s recently shifted her shipping to a greener option. It’s those kinds of efforts—the ones a customer may never even see—that actually move the needle and demonstrate a designer’s true commitment.
26 August 2020
Maggie Marilyn presented her Resort collection on a Bowery Hotel terrace. Though the Manhattan skies were gray, it was a fitting spot for the young Kiwi designer. Marilyn takes a pioneering approach to sustainability issues. Her latest effort is the addition of an open source platform to her website, which posts, among other things, the names of her suppliers. More transparency means more accountability. Get Marilyn talking and she’s a real fount of knowledge on the subject, too. “Fifty percent of fashion’s damage to the environment happens after purchase,” she said, explaining that the sun is a “natural detergent.” To deodorize, just hang your garments from a clothesline, no dry cleaning or washing machine required.The news of the collection started with a hand-loomed organic cotton denim that she used for a lilac jumpsuit and a pinstriped pink suit. “I want to get back to the humanness of production,” she said. One of her bestsellers, the suit jacket comes with a pair of godets; unbuttoned they create a flared, feminine silhouette, buttoned they produce a cleaner, more streamlined look. To keep up with all the competition on the tailoring front—it’s selling well across the board—Marilyn should keep refining her fit. As for dresses, the story was the soft pastel palette, and her first-ever embroideries. They’d look very pretty hanging from a clothesline.
6 June 2019
Climate change is the great issue of our time—not least of all because the president of the United States continues to cast official doubt on the topic from the Oval Office. Trump aside, the problems associated with global warming are so large scale, and the prognostications so dire, it can seem an insurmountable challenge to address.Maggie Marilyn, the New Zealand designer committed to transparency in production, admits she’s had moments of existential crisis in the last year. “I’ve asked myself what the point is,” she said at a Pre-Fall appointment, rattling off troubling subjects like brand equity-damaging seasonal 70 percent–off sales, the mountains of plastic required for shipping, and the sheer fact of the pollution that clothing manufacturing produces.But don’t count her out. Marilyn is doubling down on her sustainable practices in 2019. The wool she’s using for her new tailoring is grown, dyed, spun, woven, and made into garments in her native NZ; and for certain pieces, she’s using rose petal silk, a plant-based alternative to traditional silk, the production of which kills the silkworms that make it. Not only that, she’s begun researching the circular economy and hopes to eventually establish some sort of send-back policy, in which label cast-offs would be shredded and rewoven into new materials for future Maggie Marilyn designs. When she replaced traditional plastic packaging with compostable cassava root–based packaging last year, designers from all over the world and across the price spectrum reached out for her supplier’s information, which she happily gave. That’s a sort of circular economy in its own way, she pointed out.Clothing-wise, Marilyn is pushing herself, too. She’s swapped the bright stripes and plentiful ruffles of former collections for a pretty palette of pastel solids with hits of navy and red, and knotting details that added interesting volumes to shoulders and sleeves. #OldCeline is an obvious reference point, but it’s not overly literal. The collection feels like it’s growing up. Marilyn herself is about to have a birthday; she’s turning 24.
9 January 2019
Maggie Marilyn has been dedicated to sustainability since she launched her brand in 2016, but a lot of women might not know that. They might buy her clothes because they’re bold, unapologetically fun, and photograph well, too—not because they’re ethically made. But the ruffled, Crayola-striped dresses that reappear in most collections are actually made from ethically produced silk, and her oversize shirting is done with certified natural dyes that require less water. She’s also mindful of the social impact of her clothes, so she works with local factories in her native New Zealand, where she’s reinvigorated the clothing manufacturing industry, and sources her silks from a family-run mill in China that supports its entire village.A lot of designers hesitate to get into the nitty-gritty of all that, because they worry it will make their brand seem preachy, or will somehow create an impression that they don’t prioritize great design. Six seasons in, Marilyn is feeling more confident about her ethics and her aesthetics than ever, so she hosted her first presentation on the terrace of the Gramercy Park Hotel. Over a quiet morning of coffee and canapés, she explained the composition of her textiles, where they came from, and—just as important—who made them. A condensed version: The full, pleated skirt was made from 100 percent recycled plastic bottles, an effort to cut down on traditional polyester and address our massive plastic waste problem; she used tons of linen, because it’s one of the lowest-impact, naturally renewable fibers on the planet; and her plaid trousers were made from organic, water-repellent New Zealand wool, which is grown without pesticides or herbicides.As for the designs, she started her mini show with an elegant, long-sleeved gown in raspberry, pink, and white stripes; it reappeared later in navy and fuchsia, and both ankle-length versions came with clever, removable ruffled sashes. Elsewhere, hemlines got a lot shorter, but she balanced the ultra-mini length of a plaid linen blazer with full, puffed-up sleeves. Feminine pieces in oversize, slightly streetwise proportions are Marilyn’s calling card, but she reined in her silhouettes a little this season: The trousers and organic-cotton jeans were wide, but not baggy, and while her suits were still generously cut, they had a softer, ’80s-ish curve to them.
All in all, it was a reliably happy, vibrant collection from Marilyn—and everyone left with a much deeper knowledge of just how much care goes into making it.
8 June 2018
Maggie Marilyn runs a model millennial brand. At 23, the designer is a card-carrying member of the generation, but her qualifications extend beyond age factor. For one, she’s entrepreneurial, disrupting the traditional fashion system with her policy of presenting only during the preseasons. For another, she’s globally aware, putting an emphasis on her burgeoning brand’s sustainable and ethical bona fides. Clothing-wise, too, the millennial label more than fits. Marilyn is serving a trend-conscious demographic, and as such, she’s mixing sport and finery—read: sweatshirts and silk ruffles—in ways that seem odd to older eyes, but have nonetheless come to define the look of the young in the late 2010s.The New Zealander says she’s designing for her peers. Come next June, when this collection arrives in stores and online, her fellow 20-somethings will be teaming shirtdresses with track pants, wearing kilts over trousers, and donning individual pieces that create an of-the-moment layered look—see her smocked two-in-one top and a skirt designed to look like a button-down tied around the hips. Naturally, Marilyn has a slogan T-shirt. Paired with a mannish suit cut in the style of Demna Gvasalia’s Balenciaga, it spells out a favorite saying of her dad’s:We’ve got this.Yep, she does.
29 November 2017
Maggie Marilyn designed her new collection in February, at the tail end of New Zealand’s summer. She spent it at her parents’ beach house in the Bay of Islands, “a little place at the bottom of the world.” As remote as that sounds, Marilyn definitely has a global perspective. With its ruffled shirting, track pants, and slip dresses, this outing is as trend-conscious as her previous efforts. The difference is in its unbridled use of color: sunshine yellow, electric pink, fuchsia, a deep forest green.Marilyn’s twin dedications to versatility and practicality are what distinguish her label from its trendy competitors. A silk slip dress in a repp-tie stripe is sold with a ruffled sash: Sashless, it’s sleek and streamlined; with sash, it’s prime material for the street style photographers. Tailored blazers and shirts, meanwhile, are trimmed with rouleau buttons which march down hips or around shoulder seams. Unbuttoned, they create peplum flares and expose sexy flashes of skin. Another jacket comes with a removable pleated hem. Even more interesting from a practical standpoint are her experiments with ruffled silk habotai and denim, which she combined in a strapless dress and a zip-front jacket, both of which, believe it or not, are entirely machine washable. Marilyn is of the firm belief that the silk actually looks better the more you wash it—soft and frayed.Adaptability is an asset, perhaps especially among millennials who are spending less on fashion than they are on gadgets and tech, but Marilyn shouldn’t ignore the virtues of effortless simplicity. The best pieces here might’ve been the most straightforward: striped silk shirtdresses with pouf sleeves in sunshine yellow or cherry red.
21 June 2017
Less than two years out of university, New Zealander Maggie Marilyn has a contemporary label stocked at Net-a-Porter and a spot on the 2017 LVMH Prize shortlist. At a showroom appointment today, she described her style as laid back. “But also ambitious,” a PR rep corrected her. Savvy, too. Marilyn produces her collection entirely in New Zealand to manage costs, and she’s using local materials like shearling, which has a remarkably lofty hand on the raw denim jacket it trims in her new collection.Marilyn’s aesthetic is aligned with her fellow antipodean, Kym Ellery. They share an abiding affection for ruffles and deeply flared pants. Marilyn is also a big proponent of the statement sleeve; she said that Jane Austen inspired the pouf shoulders and smocking you’ll find in this collection. (Fun fact: The 200th anniversary of Austen’s death is this July. That's staying power!) Those frills intermingled with sportier elements, like sweaters and dresses with ribbed athletic cuffs and track suits. She may live half a world away from the New York–Paris fashion nexus, but Marilyn has a keen sense of what’s trending. Now she needs to continue the hard work of refining her unique point of view. Her cool, hip-slung striped jeans would be a smart starting point.
4 March 2017
With the launch of her consciously produced and contemporary priced eponymous label just a few short weeks ago, 23-year-old Kiwi designerMaggie Marilynmanaged something few can claim: She was stocked, from the start, by Net-a-Porter. “It’s a bit of a strange feeling being based in New Zealand but all of a sudden having a global reach,” said Marilyn in Paris this morning.Her second round, Spring, unfurls from where Resort left off—think: separates with plenty of ruffling, raw-edged treatments, and volume play—but is three times larger in quantity. And, like all new collections, Marilyn isn’t without room for improvement. Some of those frayed hems felt messy as opposed to artful, and sheer blouson tops, many embroidered with golden beads, came across as forced when viewed alongside the rest of her lineup.But the youngster hit a lot of right notes, too. White jeans had tiny little ankle skirts—ruffles that circled the cuffs, resulting in something both trendy and pleasingly strange. A navy tee with curtain sleeves over straight-leg trousers did the trick, as did an olive-hued silk bomber with ruffles down the arms and royal blue bands at the hems. Case in point: When Marilyn errs on the sporty and easy side, she’s best.
3 October 2016