It all began at school when Maggie would pour over fashion magazines like Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle Glamour “That was how my love affair with fashion and luxury fashion houses started. I decided I wanted to have my own label and Whitecliffe has helped turn that into a reality.”
Maggie graduated from Whitecliffe at the end of 2015, and by the following year had officially launched her label Maggie Marilyn. Her career trajectory from that time has been nothing less than stellar. Maggie sold her first collection at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Australia in May 2016 and by September the collection had been picked up by American Vogue and also by Net-A-Porter. Being represented on Net-A-Porter makes Maggie Marylin the first New Zealand label to be selected by the high-end online retail company and the first world-wide to be selected straight out of fashion school.
After showing at Paris Fashion Week in just her second season, the Maggie Marilyn collection was bought by several new stores and she now has stockists world-wide. In 2017 she was again invited to show at Paris Fashion Week and additionally, was one of twenty one young designers shortlisted from 3,000 applications from around the world for the prestigious Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessey (LVMH) Prize, the only New Zealand finalist in the history of the prize.
Reflecting on her time studying to become a Fashion Designer Maggie says “Whitecliffe was hugely valuable in journeying me through my dreams to real life dreams. What I once saw in magazine pages has now become a reality. To be a global brand straight away is surreal.” Maggie comments that her time at Whitecliffe really honed her vision, giving her exposure to the fashion community which helped her work out what she did and didn’t want for her own designs and label. “Whitecliffe challenged my design thinking and taught me practical skills that enabled me to make my designs become a reality.”
“I definitely wouldn’t be the designer I am today without the knowledge I gained in sustainability and responsibility at Whitecliffe. I appreciated the rigorous value that was placed on the theoretical thinking, we were taught to create clothing with intention and with a story not just product for products sake.
I wouldn’t bother starting a fashion brand if you don’t know what your purpose is. I found my purpose at Whitecliffe – “using fashion to create a better world.” That is my northern star that drives me forward every single day.”