How did you start the Marrisa Wilson NY brand?
Marrisa Wilson NY began around 2016 just after I finished at Marist College; I majored in fashion design with a double minor in fashion merchandising and product development. Through school I’d interned at a variety of companies large and small, so I worked at places like J. Mendel, Oscar de la Renta, Global Brands Group and Maggie London. Through my time in school, from high school through college, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my own brand one day, so that was always the plan for me. When establishing my own aesthetic, I studied abroad in Paris, and that really helped me to sort through what I wanted the look, tone and feel of my brand to be. All of those influences, as well as me being first generation Guyanese-American and coming from an entrepreneurial family, mixed together, and by the time I finished school at 22, I started my own line.
And as far as developing the look of the brand, I always start with really bold prints and color stories. Establishing what I wanted the brand to look like and establishing what I wanted to be known for, it was really about digging into bold prints, graphics and artwork and developing them myself either by hand, digitally or a combination of the two. All of that together fed into putting together Marrisa Wilson NY.
Where do you find inspiration?
Pulling inspiration from my heritage and my Caribbean roots definitely influences the really bold and exciting colors that I use season after season — digging into my Guyanese roots and spices and that kind of Caribbean feel that I always grew up around and interpreting that in my own way through my own aesthetic that I’ve built along the way. Also, when I develop every collection I start with a playlist, so music actually really helps me with world-building each collection. I love 90s R&B, and that’s kind of my go-to. As I’m developing concepts early on, music is a way for me to set the tone and feel of what the collection is going to be, and that [inspiration] comes to life in the video campaigns or the runway show. Using all of those elements — not just the clothes but then the sound and everything — really helps to build out the vibe.
Tell us about your recent collection, Somewhere North of Earth and its debut at New York Fashion Week.
My Fall 2022 collection, Somewhere North of Earth, was my debut runway show and it was inspired by this convergence of digital and physical identities. I’m sure you’ve heard of everything that’s going on with the metaverse and NFTs and all those things like that. What Marrisa Wilson NY has always been about is celebrating multicultural women, and making sure that there’s space for us to explore, participate and express ourselves in the fashion industry. [So] finding out there’s this entire other world that felt really out there and was new, kind of crazy and kind of “north of Earth” (which is where the name came from), [I felt] like there’s this entire digital world that I didn’t understand. [As a Black woman, I was] feeling like, “if I’m trying to find my way in this physical world, what is that going to look like for me in this digital world?” I thought it was important for me to start to learn and understand these spaces that we are going to be living in and interacting with eventually. It’s really about how you show up in physical spaces as well as showing up in digital spaces.
[The runway show] took on this sort of futurism aesthetic, so really looking toward developing prints that kind of lend themselves to appear really bold and vibrant in digital spaces. This season, I digitally rendered all of the prints to kind of give off that vibe. I also leaned into graphics that lent themselves more to that techy vibe. And with that collection, blurring the digital and the physical, I did my first NFT release on the runway. I still love to hand paint and render all of my collections by hand, so for the runway show, we minted those NFTs and projected them onto the runway. Even working with the hair and makeup team to replicate those hair and makeup looks from those fashion illustrations onto the physical girls, you can see that blending of the two. Working with the Orbe team and the Kevyn Aucoin team to build out those stories was how we built out that ethos.
Any plans for future collections you would like to share?
Building out this idea of what Marrisa Wilson NY can do with NFTs from a utility standpoint, because that’s one of the major things: as a holder, what does that look like? So, understanding the community in these NFT spaces and how [we can] add value there, and then also delving into our community on other platforms and finding out how we can add value by becoming an NFT holder and what [that looks] like for our consumer. That’s one big piece, and then looking out towards September and figuring out how we can show up [at New York Fashion Week] again.
