“My deep love is to bring life to a story through garments. By visual telling the tale the performer feel the character they are stepping into. Clothing can tell a story all by itself before words are ever sang or spoken. I want to see my art alive on stage for as long as I have breath in me.”
About The Designer:
Marina has worked in professional design for over a decade.
She started off learning to sew at an early age under her mothers foot in Tukwila Washington. Her passion for costumes began first with a love of drawing. Moving from Seattle to Harrison Arkansas was a bit of a culture shock. Living in the country with no creative outlets. Her father encouraged her to pursue art just the same. She continued drawing focused on a career in comics or animation. Marina wanted her costumes on her drawings to be real tangible things. She quickly realized that the only way the things on the page would be real was if she made them herself. She took off into amateur sewing as a teenager and wanted to do more. She drew characters and would try to figure out how those garments could be made.
She began her family early as many women find out her career of design and costuming had to wait it’s turn. All the while she continued to create when she found time from a 9-5 and raising 2 kids.
She decided to take a moment and start online college to learn fashion design since no school near her taught costuming. But she felt fashion was a very universal degree. Her father passed during school and she took it very hard but now there was no reason to stay in Arkansas. She relocated to Texas to join her now husband of 13 years and finish her last 2 years in person at IADT. Her third child arrived 10 years after the first.
The wheels were in motion and her career didn’t want to wait any longer. After Graduating with a Bachelors in Fashion design and merchandising, she soon found a job working at a fabric store and progressing into managing their education department. From there she dropped a resume at a local theme park hoping to take on working under someone to develop her sewing skills further.
Due to her management experience and college training she was hired on as the Costume Production Supervisor a few months later. Marina’s job entailed designing shows, running wardrobe, and creating costumes for haunted attractions. Her designs are still used today and many can be seen in Six Flags Fiesta Texas theme park. Some being the iconic Loony Tunes overdress at their Mardi Gras parades.
Marina, feeling she still needed to learn more, moved onto costume production for ballet with SRO Associates. After that contract ended she did a short tour with the Moscow Ballet.
Once she was off the road she wanted to take a moment to be at home and focus a little on the fashion side of her degree going to work for an Airforce tailoring shop. There she focused her skills at faster alterations for uniform dress. A deeper love of men’s suiting grew. All the while she continued building costumes on commission after work. Still finding her first love in costuming and a new passion for men’s suiting. Never giving up on her goal to also be a published artist she spent 2020 relearning digital art developing her own tarot deck in a short 6 months 78card designs plus box and back with an essential worker position full time.
Marina took another leap in her career in 2023. She began remote work with Cynthia Nordstrom and Matthew Solomon building costumes for live tours. She finally found her success in graphic design selling art pieces to Global Merchandise Services for the Swedish metal band Ghost.
Today she works for the San Antonio Ballet designing and running their wardrobe during the performance season. Marina continues to do contract for Cynthia Nordstrom, and she is still create graphic designs for Global Merchandise Services.