Íria Marina, Fashion Designer

“I’m a feminist. But I’m not an extremist”

Íria Marina is the type of young person who overflows with joy and is constantly thinking up something. Born in Maputo, she has taken on various artistic disciplines. She was passionate about music, but ended up not pursuing it because of her sinusitis. She has poems in her drawer, has taken a course in documentary production and wants to release films and organise film festivals. She has produced natural hair care products. She graduated in Architecture, in South Africa. Halfway through, she discovered herself in photography and uses her lens to capture what’s in her soul.

With the outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic, Íria sewed masks for free distribution.

In 2019, she founded the company Íria Marina Design, headquartered in the Sommershield neighborhood, Maputo, and which already has five workers.

Marina grew up with the gift of (re)inventing clothes, recycling clothes with capulana. She buys them used and then, with her hand on the sewing machine, adds the capulana as a condiment and transforms the piece into something extraordinary. It’s like using the right amount of salt in your food. And she does it so well that she has already participated in the Green is the New Black contest – a competition for sustainable fashion. She came in third place. “Teaching is good, but learning is more exciting. I am a woman of challenges.”

Íria Marina Designer has a bright future ahead of it. It has already conquered the international market, but there are difficulties. “Paying 110 percent of the product’s value to export it. It’s terrible, ridiculous and embarrassing. It scares customers away and we cry because business is difficult to undertake in our country.”

With the Covid-19 pandemic came the crisis. She used the saved earnings to pay the workers. The funds ran out and she turned to her personal account. It reached a stage of unsustainability and she had to decide: either shutdown or shutdown. But she found an alternative. “I told my staff that things weren’t working out. We decided to continue, but each one get paid according to their work. Basically, you even earn more than that monthly salary. But the difficult thing is when customers disappear.”

Humanist and sentimental, she doesn’t avoid social responsibility. With the outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic, Íria sewed masks for free distribution. “I’m a feminist, yes. But I’m not an extremist. I fight for equality, for the achievement of women’s rights…”

Issue 69 Sept/Oct | Download.