West Ashley designer Gina Marie reps her brand in New York for Fashion Week
by Elise Lusk | Contributing Writer
Thirteen years ago, Gina Marie was working in battery manufacturing, a job she despised. Her son was on the brink of graduating from high school, and she felt it was time she discovered what she wanted to be when she grew up. Thankfully, she worked in the same industrial park as Kohl’s corporate and one day wandered into their job fair where she encountered designer jobs. Always a creative person, the career immediately piqued her interest. She recalled thinking, “Ooo, designer. What’s that?”
From there Marie started taking online art courses through her local community college in Wisconsin and then later with the Academy of the Arts in San Francisco. She quickly realized she didn’t want to work for anyone. She wanted to be her own designer, but she knew Wisconsin wasn’t a suitable place to grow her business. After looking at a few different places, she decided to fly to Charleston for Charleston Fashion Week.
“I fell in love as soon as I got off the plane,” she said. “It was like, ‘Oh, this is where I need to be,’” said Marie, who then briefly attended the Art Institute of Charleston before deciding to call it quits and put her money into her own brand, Brooke Wilder Atelier.
“Brooke is my inner wild child. She is my idea of a free woman. A woman who is unrestricted and just living in all of her natural, dramatic, romantic flair. Think Carrie Bradshaw from Sex in the City,” Marie said.
Wilder derives from an old English name that means one who is unafraid to adventure, and Atelier in French means studio. When brainstorming the name Marie was deeply inspired by Tommy Bahama and how the creators made a character and then built the brand around that character, as well as artists such as Sasha Fierce, Beyonce, and Chappel Roan who opt to use stage names rather than their own.
“I don’t want anything tied to my name,” Marie said. “I don’t want to be a brand. I want to be me, and I want to be free to be me. Brooke allows me to do that.”
Marie described the Brooke Wilder Atelier aesthetic as bohemian, but not in the way we typically think of the word today.
“Bohemian is more European, it is more referential to art and creativity and design. It’s not necessarily hippy, it’s more like the Bohemians in the ’20s and ’30s who sat around at cafes and talked art and music, and they had on all of their different garbs and things like that, said Marie. “That is very much my style. I like to mix and match worldly kinds of things. I grew up with the idea of a melting pot. So I’ve always seen British culture and Asian culture, and worldly cultures and been inspired by them all.”
One of the brand’s defining elements is that it’s environmentally friendly and sustainable. This is something that comes naturally to Marie as she grew up very poor with frugal parents who found inventive ways to use what they had. Her couture pieces are one of a kind, and one and done. She doesn’t remake anything. All of her ready-to-wear collections are small-batch, limited production. This year Marie also started doing bridal fashion, but even that will be done ethically.
“We use pieces that are reusable, functional, and if we make the piece in one of our natural fibers, we can dye it,” Marie explained. So the bride could wear an all-white look, and then after the wedding, we could dye it for her to use another way.”
Marie only acquires eco-dyes and eco-friendly fabrics. She doesn’t use polyesters or even recycled polyesters because they don’t decompose. She even often makes her own non-toxic botanical dyes in house in her West Ashley studio. It’s this kind of meticulous environmental care that contributes to Brooke Wilder Atelier’s reputation as a standout, successful brand.
On Thursday, Sept. 5, Marie is headed to the Big Apple for the legendary New York Fashion Week. It’s her second year attending the event, and this time Brooke Wilder Atelier will represent the South Carolina Red Cross in Elysian’s Furbaby Catwalk competition. This show is a benefit event that raises money for animal rescues across the country. Marie’s design is inspired by the history of the women in the Red Cross and Wonder Woman because, to her, they are the true Wonder Women.
“It’s an amazing event. It’s the first event of fashion week,” Marie said. “Last year my look was the first look on the runway. It was amazing.”
Marie’s design was also used as the movie poster for Elysian’s documentary about the show which won Best Fashion Documentary at the New York Film Festival.
This year Belle Scott, a Charleston School of Law graduate and Marie’s model, will don the runway look and walk Fiona, a rescue dog from New York, down the runway. Voting will take place after the event.
