B. Marie® is an advanced contemporary handbag and accessory brand that fuses fashion forward chic with an eternal youthful edge. Behind the successful brand is Briana Marie, a thoughtful spirit who has a keen eye on changing the world, one design at a time. The NYC-based designer sat down with The Ask to give us a peek behind the curtain, and into the intoxicating world of design.
In your opinion what makes an individual a designer?
A lot of people think that a designer consists of putting a logo on a tee with a screen printing company, and that makes you a designer. Really, it comes down to your education and do you know production, because anybody can just slap a logo but everybody can’t produce a logo.
What do you feel is the most important aspect of becoming a designer?
Nowadays everything is so quick. You take a picture of something and put it out there and now you’re an expert. Anybody can go buy some clothes and put them together, but that doesn’t make you a style expert or designer. It’s more than that. It’s understanding how fabrics are woven; how garments are constructed; what the seeming is; what machines are used to make those, and how many machines you need to make more of those to be able to put it in the same stores with Ralph Lauren. That’s why the education is the most important part of designing.
What was the biggest sacrifice you had to make to pursue your dream of becoming a designer?
I left my family. I came here [New York] with no one to be able to build a life for myself here.
What advice would you give to someone that wants to pursue a career in fashion?
Real fashion is not glamorous. Real fashion is working until 3am getting up at 9. Having a bunch of meetings, sitting in a million market and sales meetings. You don’t sleep for five weeks. It’s a grind. All that fabulous stuff is meant for the cameras and coming down the runway. That’s not meant for people that actually do fashion. It’s not pretty.
If you could ask the community to do one thing, what would you ask?
To invest in yourself!