Who What Wear with Hillary Kerr: Mara Hoffman on the Evolution of Her Brand and Using Discomfort as a Catalyst for Change

Second Life

Clique Media, Female Founder, Entrepreneurship, Career Change, Career Pivot, Fashion & Beauty, Hillary Kerr, Personal Journals, Who What Wear, Clique, Career, Arts, Business, Careers, Second Life, Career Advice, Self-made, Entrepreneur, Mydomaine, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Mara Hoffman began her eponymous brand in 2000 by designing and selling one-of-a-kind, handmade garments out of her New York apartment. Twenty-three years later, she's still known for making gorgeous statement pieces with bold colors and prints, but she continues to evolve her approach toward sustainable design and manufacturing. Hoffman recently partnered with textile-to-textile recycling company Circ to release a groundbreaking dress made from 50% recycled textile waste, and she is this year's CFDA Environmental Sustainability Award honoree. This week, Editor in Chief Kat Collings sat down with Hoffman to discuss designing from a place of honesty, the "change or die" mentality, and where they hope fashion is headed.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Who what wear with Hillary Kerr, your direct line to the designers stylists, beauty
0:15.8	experts, editors, and tastemakers who are shaping the ever-evolving world of fashion.
0:22.0	I'm your host Hillary Kerr and today who what wears editor-in-chief
0:26.4	cat Collings had the pleasure of sitting down with acclaimed women's wear designer
0:31.3	Mara Hoffman.
0:33.0	Mara started her eponymous bran in 2000
0:37.0	and quickly garnered attention
0:39.0	for her trademark use of colors, prints, and bold shapes. But in 2015, Mara dramatically shifted her approach
0:47.0	toward more sustainable design and manufacturing, and over time, she found a way to create pieces that delivered on style and aligned with her values like her coveted popcorn dress.
1:00.0	Mara recently partnered with CERC, a textile to textile recycling company, to create a
1:06.0	groundbreaking dress that is 50% made from recycled textile waste.
1:11.6	And just last week, she was honored with the CFDA Sustainability Award.
1:17.0	She's here to share how she continues to evolve her approach to fashion by allowing
1:22.3	discomfort to push her in the right direction. It's all
1:25.9	coming up on who what wear. Mara, hi, welcome to the show. We are such big fans of you, so this is a huge, huge treat for us.
1:42.0	Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here and it's always such an honor to be able to share my story especially at this particular point.
1:51.1	You've had some pretty major career moments in the past month or so that I really want to hear about.
1:56.7	But first, I'd love to dive into the history of your brand a bit because you truly have evolved the brand at the time over and over.
2:04.8	After graduating from Parsons you launched your first line, Circle by Mara Hoffman in
2:09.7	year 2000. Can you tell me what that first iteration looked like and what your design ethos
2:15.2	was at that starting point? Definitely, so I'm not, but my brand is 23 years old and I think that that's been such an interesting thing that I've been holding a lot lately is
2:28.1	Raising something, you know raising anything for 23 years and what that looks like and how much it changes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Second Life, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Second Life and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.