Holly Marbeck loved to make earrings for herself by using clay and making molds with different mediums. The more she experimented the more things started evolve organically. People kept commenting on her new creations and says that Mars was created by accident. Straight out of high school she decided she wanted to be in fashion, but thought she should get some business knowledge first. She quickly enrolled in a business course but decided it wasn’t for her after one semester. Currently she is in her final year at AUT, Marbeck is now majoring in Fashion and minoring in Creative Entrepreneurship. Last year she started interning at Georgia Alice and is now working there twice a week in between her studies.
She remembers falling in love with a baby pink outfit that was from Urban Angel when she was very young. “I thought it was the coolest most amazing outfit, I was wrong,” explains Marbeck. Her grandmother was a seamstress, but it was her mother that taught her to sew and helped her make a mint green pair of shorts that she then decided to paint pictures of neon crayons onto. “I was so proud of them… and also clearly delusional,” she said jokingly.
Now down the track with the creation of her new brand’s earrings, the making inherently informs the design and believes that one cannot exist without the other. One of Marbeck’s favourite parts of the process is the organic nature of them and that no two are ever the same. “It can be frustrating because I’ll make one amazing pair and then as soon as you try to recreate that it will go horribly wrong,” she said, “I think that is kind of the magic of them though, that there will always be an element of surprise in how they turn out.” Mars is stocked in Blackbox Boutique and is currently in the works of setting up an online store. Marbeck says she is always looking for amazing things that excite her and trying new styles.
