Maria Medrano

My mom always told me that when I was a child, I would wear one outfit in the morning and by the afternoon, I had already changed my outfit. I always made clothes for my dolls with my grandmother, so I think I have always had that vocation for fashion.

When I started to study design, I was so excited because it's a very creative and cool world. Two or three years into the degree, I started to have doubts if fashion design was truly what I liked. In university, we had to design and make the clothes. It’s not only the drafts, the moodboards, and the fun creative parts; it’s also countless amounts of sewing and all those nights without sleep.

So now, I am finding myself. I’ve become conscious that maybe my vocation is not strictly fashion design, and that's why I chose to pursue Marketing Communications within the fashion world.

The expectations in the degree are very high. People sometimes think it's only about drawing clothes or making drafts, but there is a creative idea inside of each collection or outfit. I didn't exactly change my mind about pursuing fashion design, but rather I discovered a whole new world within it.

In the fashion world, there are a lot of different jobs. For example, I wasn’t a vendor before, so I thought being a vendor was easy. I thought you only had to say, “Hi, this is my stand,” and then people buy some things.

Now, I really appreciate the vendor's work because it is so hard to sell something. You have to know the product very well, you have to investigate the brand, and you have to make sure you are saying the right things to the customer.

It is a very difficult job. I don't know if vendors and customers in all countries are the same, but in New York, people usually say, “Okay, I will come back later,” and then they don’t come back. In Spain, we call it “quedada” - it means they say exactly what you wanted to hear, but they never actually return.

Fashion design in Spain is not as common as it is here in New York. I think in New York, they are more creative. In Spain, they focus more on the practice - how to sew, how to draw, and how to work with textiles. Here, they are more focused on the creative part, on investigating and knowing the history of a style or a specific designer.

I think learning the techniques is important, but I think in fashion design, the creativity is more important than the practice. We have people who study how to produce clothes or textile production, but now more and more companies are focused on the creative part of fashion design.

I’m not sure about what is going to happen in the future, but if I have to choose my path for these next few years, I hope to learn more about the fashion industry in marketing and communications. Maybe in the future I would create a new brand and agency for brand marketing.

But nowadays, people wear fashion more because of the brand than what the fashion actually means for them. People are more focused on the physical side and not the meaning of the collection or investigating the designer. They are not conscious about why they are buying those things or why they are buying that specific brand.

It's a very competitive world in the fashion industry. You have to be mentally strong, smart, and nice - it can open a lot of doors for you. Meet people. Don’t close your mind to meeting people who are different from you or who have different styles or views on life. You have to be mentally tough and surround yourself with people who support you.

If I have to give advice, I would say: mix. You have to mix everything. Try things, because you are going to change. We are growing up, and maybe the things that we wear today, we will not wear tomorrow. Don’t think about what people are going to say about you — not only in fashion or style, but in all aspects of your life.

Instead of worrying about what others think, ask: "What do you want your future self to think of who you were?"