AN ESSENTIAL

Finding a clothing brand that you truly connect with can be a tall order these days. The fashion industry is a sea of patterns and prints all shouting about identity, price tags and greenwashed production processes.

MARA, however, are a brand overflowing with integrity and promise, with a mission to produce sustainable clothing that sends a message. Allow us to introduce you two...

Can you briefly introduce us to the brand and how it came about?

MARA is a unisex sustainable brand focused on ethical and transparent production methods, with production and design based in Glasgow. We focus on versatile, high quality clothing made to last, with a focus on storytelling around waste in fashion. The brand serves as an ever evolving research project into what’s possible as an independent sustainable brand.

Where did the name MARA come from?

MARA was a name that we totally stumbled across while in a wikipedia rabbit hole looking for inspiration. We ended up, somehow, reading about the story of the Buddha, and about how a demon, Mara, took things which were very mundane, and made them appear alluring in order to distract him on the path to enlightenment. We thought this reflected what we were trying to do pretty accurately, and once we realised it was also a Spanish word for a collective or a gang of people who are

WORDS & INTERVIEW EVIE FRIAR

Imagery Courtesy Of Mara

centred around a common cause or belief, it was the clear winner in the name game.

Graphics are always a huge part of any brand. Who creates your graphics and where do you get the inspiration for them from?

The graphics are a bit of an amalgamation of everyone really, we don’t have a dedicated graphics person or anything per se. The graphics always come from our own tastes and interests, and reflect what we’re trying to say or how we feel at the time. From there we’ll figure out who the best person is to refine our idea and go from there. We like to keep it all in the family. A good example of a story behind a graphic might be our “Tired of Reality” shirt. The graphic comes from a Salvador Dali film from 1929. When I was young, maybe 9 or 10, my parents took me to see a Salvador Dali museum and that image stuck in mind ever since. It was just marinating in there, waiting for the right time to present itself as inspiration.

MARA has been built with sustainability in mind. Can you tell us more about your Altered Futures initiative and why you feel strongly about creating products in this way?

The Altered Futures collection is something that’s part of our story. It’s something that’s grown organically from within the brand rather than being purposely built into it. It tells the story of what waste is created during the fashion manufacturing process. It shines light on something you don’t usually see, and as well as rendering our whole production process zero waste, it acts as a platform to have a discussion around waste in fashion and fashion's overall contribution to climate change. Creating products through more sustainable methods takes a certain level of ingenuity. Did your team have a background in fashion design and manufacturing before starting the brand?

Neither of us have a background in fashion. I personally left school at 15/16 with absolutely zero education after that. It’s been a steep learning curve, but - we know what we like. We think that goes a long way. We also know our shortcomings and where the gaps in our knowledge are, so we’ve assembled a great team who have various expertise in garment production to help us cover all the bases. It’s important to us to keep it in house and hire people locally. Team work makes the dream work as the saying goes.

MARA's releases not only covers environmental issues, but societal issues as well. Why do you think clothing is such a strong platform for spreading the word or taking a stand on a certain topic?

We think it’s because clothing is a universal language. Everyone wears clothes. It’s something that everyone on earth has to interact with, in some way, regardless of where they are or what language they speak. It transcends those barriers. We find that fashion is almost identical to music in that way. It’s a language that anyone, anywhere, can understand, and therefore makes it the perfect platform for discussing ideas.

Last year, you partnered with Nike and ran an up-cycling workshop in their Glasgow store. What was that experience like?

It was a really affirming experience. It felt so validating to work with Nike on that project in Scotland for a number of reasons. Since the brands inception, people have been desperate to tell me to move to London. London's where it’s happening. You want to be in fashion? Go to London. So to do something like this, in Scotland, without having to make that compromise, felt great. We’ve always wanted to shout about the fact that there’s stuff going on outside of maragang.com

London, exciting stuff, and we intend to continue pushing that fact.

What's next for MARA? Are there any future collaborations planned that you can talk about?

Really we just plan to be better every day, to make little improvements in sustainability, working with innovative materials and pushing the boundaries for what’s possible for an independent brand. We love collaborating with like-minded people in all industries and hope to have some work coming up that merges fashion with music and art. Basically working with friends who do cool stuff to do cool stuff together. There may also be more work coming with the swoosh, you never know.

Watch this space.

@maragang