Name: Marina Testino
Age: 24
Early life: Marina has lived and studied in Barcelona, Paris, London, Boston and New York.
Education: Graduated from The New School’s Parsons School of Design with a degree in Fashion Marketing
She is the founder of her brand Point Off View, featuring a series of limited quantity capsule collections designed by different artists. She has worked with international fashion and beauty houses such as Chanel, POLO Ralph Lauren, Rag & Bone and Free People. Her work has been featured in Vanity Fair, WWD, Vogue and CR Fashion Book.
Skills: Fluent in Spanish, English, French and Catalan.
Why we should care: You might not know her yet, but you definitely know her last name. The niece of famous photographer Mario, Marina Testino is ready to encourage as many people as she can with several projects all supporting sustainable fashion. She has realized that repeating outfits is overpowering the will to do something about it. This is why she hopes her projects inspire others to shop consciously and to let go of the notion that following trends for the sake of social acceptance is not necessary.
Projects:
#OneDressToImpress
After getting tired of having the pressure to look different everywhere she went, she thought “why wear something new every day when you can wear the same thing every time?” This is what inspired her to wear the same outfit for two months. She wanted an outfit suitable for different occasions, weather changes, and something that was comfortable – all which she found in a suit. On top of that, she picked the color red because she wanted a color that stood out and attracted attention. Besides that, she agrees that the color embodies power and confidence and that is part of the message she wanted to get across to people.
The response that she received with her project was amazing. Her goal all along was to bring awareness of how important it is that we all try to be more conscious consumers. She has realized that the problem of overconsumption is something that people are very much aware of, but nothing is being done about it; so, having so much media covering her story so that this project and its message gets out is truly amazing. As of now, there have been so many people following her lead and doing their own #OneDressToImpress.
#CarryOnSummer
After a successful first project on fashion sustainability, Testino started a new project this past July, #CarryOnSummer, as a continuation for #OneDressToImpress. For this project, she traveled around Europe with only one carry-on and only items that fit in it. It is similar to #OneDressToImpress in the sense that she showed people how they can be creative with their outfits with a limited number of items and from that, she wanted to inspire people to shop more consciously. She also showed people how nice it is to travel light and how you only need a few summer essentials and still have a fashionable European vacation.
#YellowLikeALemon
Her current fashion challenge started on Feb. 25, reaching for another trendy color – that is everything but discreet – yellow. Of course, the easy thing would have been to do it wearing a neutral color; however, by now we know Testino likes to push herself to the limits by picking attention-grabbing colors to make her stand out. In this project, she has been publishing different looks with this color with the hashtag #YellowLikeALemon. She wears clothes in the ways that sustainable fashion dictates: simple, shared, and manufactured in a sustainable way. On top of those premises, she added: it has to be yellow. In this way, she has recycled clothes, combined them in different ways, and if she had to buy something, she bought it from small sustainable brands that work to improve the environment and take the world to a more knowledgeable place.
For more, be sure to check her out on Instagram @marinatestino!
All images courtesy of Marina Testino. Collages created by Valeria Rivadeneira.