Marcie De Santos is still basking in the glory of being awarded the Shabeau Magazine ‘new and upcoming designer’ award at the recent Guyana Fashion Weekend (GFW) and she hopes it is a springboard to bigger and better things.
The young designer is all smiles as she sits down with The Scene even though she admits that the run-up to the mega fashion event, was so stressful that she was on the verge of quitting more than a few times. Her endurance paid off and she is happy that she had the opportunity to be “recognised and be exposed as a fashion designer.
“The Guyana Fashion Week was the best avenue through which I could have expressed myself as a designer.”
And she has bigger things on her mind as she already has her heart set on seeing her pieces modelled on an international stage. The award has given her the opportunity to have her clothing showcased in Shabeau, said to be one of the more popular fashion magazines in the Caribbean, and she hopes that other things would flow from this.
Her clothing line presented at the GFW was called ‘Contours’ and she chose that name because her pieces accentuate the curves of women. “In fact, I like doing clothes for women with curves. I don’t like skinny women. I like women with curves because my clothes are all about accentuating the curves.”
‘Jump up and scream’
Days after winning the award, Marcie can still vividly remember her first reaction when she was told she had won.
She had long left the Georgetown Cricket Club ground that night when she found out. “I went home. I was tired and my husband had to get to work early; and we had to pick up our six-month-old daughter,” Marcie reveals.
So after her 14 pieces, which were elegant dresses and cocktail dresses, were paraded down the catwalk, Marcie and her family drove away from the venue. But she did not have to wait long to hear the news; it was just after midnight when a friend telephoned her and informed her that she had won.
“I start to jump up and scream and I say ‘I won! I won!’ My husband was talking to his mother, who is overseas, and he shouted, ‘Mom she won!’ And then my mother ran out of the room with my baby and start to jump up and scream too,” Marcie recalls with much mirth.
She cannot think of a better repayment for the sacrifices she made during her preparation for the big weekend. “Sometimes I would draw things and then I was just not getting it and I would scrap it and throw it away, I did a lot of that and with a young baby it was not easy,” the young designer says. “I invested a lot of money and time and it is good pay back.”
Former teacher
Before becoming a design diva, Marcie taught for six years at L’Aventure Secondary School, on the West Bank Demerara. However, she did not give up teaching to design.
Marcie was forced to leave because she was having a difficult pregnancy and could no longer do the long drive from Mocha, East Bank Demerara to school every day.
“Actually it was my husband who told me to leave the job because it was so difficult for me to drive to and from work,” Marcie says.
It was during her time at home that Marcie started designing and found that things were meshing quite nicely.
She recalls that as a child she was “always artistic” as she drew and she designed doll clothes. While growing up, she says, she always admired people wearing locally designed clothing. “I really liked cotton and linen with fabric painting to enhance the piece, that is what I liked most, that is my thing,” she says.
But she never moved in the direction of designing until she got fed-up of being disappointed by seamstresses. “I would go to seamstresses and they would never make the clothes the way I wanted them. So I said to myself, why don’t I just design my own clothes?” And she did. She became a self-advertisement, wearing her own designs, and friends and relatives began to approach her to make pieces for them.
Soon she was getting orders from others and she developed a nice little clientele.
GFW
Marcie tells us that she had really wanted to be part of last year’s GFW but could not because she was pregnant with her daughter, Gabrielle.
This year, she took matters into her own hands and placed a call to the woman behind the GFW, Sonia Noel, who told her to take two her pieces for her to see. ”I took them and she was very impressed. She told me I must be a part of Guyana Fashion Weekend because she saw that I have great potential.”
Hopefully, with her recent success, Marcie can establish herself in Georgetown, as she does not see her Mocha location as a prime spot for business.
What she does know is that she is in the fashion business to stay. “I am in it forever, I found my niche and I am staying.”
Marcie is a Seventh Day Adventist and while some may see her choice of career as being in conflict with her religion, she does not see it that way. “For me it is a gift, a creative ability given to me by God and I will use it.”
‘Sweetest thing’
Throughout the Marcie, spoke constantly about her husband, Lee-Van. She says without him, she would not have been where she is today. “He has been so supportive and he was the one who pushed me and told me don’t let my talent go to waste.”
Marcie says her husband is “the sweetest thing that has ever happened to me. He has been there for me in every way and I could not have done it without him.” (samantha_alleyne2000@yahoo.com)
