Frankfurt Fashion Week: Designer Maurice Martinez has one of the few real fashion shows

Maurice Martinez grew up in modest circumstances in the Dominican Republic. Now he is presenting his elegant, colorful women's collection at the Frankfurt Fashion Lounge. It is one of the few real events around the second Frankfurt Fashion Week.

The silk tulle gown, which has colorful fabric flowers and fabric butterflies sewn onto it, looks like something Carrie Bradshaw would wear to walk the New York night in Sex and The City. However, the dress does not hang in a fancy New York boutique, but on a tailor's dummy by the Frankfurt designer Maurice Martinez. In his studio, which is also his home not far from Merianplatz, the 39-year-old designs and sews everything himself. His fashion label is called Maumar. His women's fashion is sometimes Caribbean colourful, sometimes white, but always cheerful and elegant.

His new collection can be seen on Wednesday at his show at the Hotel Sofitel not far from the Alte Oper. “Until now I have mainly designed evening dresses. But in my new collection, for the first time, I also designed skirts, blouses, trousers, blazers and coats. In other words, clothes that women can also wear in everyday life in the city.”

Martinez' show is part of the Frankfurt Fashion Lounge: one of the few real events around the second Frankfurt Fashion Week, which opens this Monday amidst the Omicron wave. As the opening act, dancer Viktoria Nowak will present a dress from Martinez's new collection on the catwalk.

"Working as a designer makes me very happy," emphasizes Martinez. That's not an empty phrase. Because the chances of Martinez ending up in the fashion world were slim. Martinez was born and raised in the Dominican Republic in the city of La Romana. His father, a singer, left the family when Martinez was three years old. He grew up with his mother, grandfather and three siblings. “My mother was a hairdresser. She fought hard to give us the best she could.” His mother is a role model and made him a feminist.

He drew clothes from an early age. "My best friends always said: You have to design my wedding dress for me." But he didn't have the money to study fashion design in his home country. "There was a design school in La Romana, but they wanted dollars, not pesos."

His mother allowed him to attend a theater group at the age of ten, although she was very religious. He gets a scholarship and as a teenager goes to the capital Santo Domingo with the theater group. “I attended dance and drama courses there and also had a lot of performances.” At 18 he also met Germans through the theater group, who befriended him and invited him to Germany. "It was my door to Europe." Martinez attends a language school in Frankfurt and decides to stay.

Maumar dates and shows

Customers can arrange personal appointments for tailor-made fashion by designer Maurice Martinez with his Maumar label at https://maumar.de.

The tickets for his show at the Frankfurt Fashion Lounge in the Sofitel at the Alte Oper are already sold out.

Martinez will be in the hotel's showroom with his collection on January 19, 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Admission is free, but here too you have to register in advance due to the pandemic. 2G-Plus and FFP2 mask apply: https://frankfurtfashionlounge.de

In 2005 he graduated from the technical school for fashion and clothing. “This was linked to an internship in a costume rental. The training was more theoretical back then.” During his first years in Germany, he took on many mini-jobs: “I worked as a waiter, served breakfast in hotels, but also cleaned toilets. Anything to support my family in the Dominican Republic.”

But even during this time he continued to draw clothes. In 2008, his friends told him: "You have to use your talent to try and study fashion design." He applied to the private design school "Best-Sabel" in Berlin. His portfolio is convincing and he gets a scholarship. But during the training he experienced a lot of unpleasant things: "There were not only sayings because I just looked different, but also because I was already 28 years old. Most of my classmates were only 18. They said, 'What are you doing here at your age?'” People would ask him at parties. "You can speak German? How funny.” That hurt him almost more than the xenophobic slogans. "As if they didn't trust me."

Three months after graduating, he returns to Frankfurt in the summer of 2011. “Berlin has never made me feel at home. Frankfurt always came first.” When he returns, he continues to work: “I had a bad conscience because I couldn’t send any money to my mother during my apprenticeship.” He finally founded the company in 2015, four years after graduating his own fashion label Maumar.

His favorite fabrics are merino wool, pure wool, silk and tulle. Everything is tailor-made, the customers come by personally for advice, the models are individually adapted. "I look to see what color and what length of the dress suits the woman." It is important to him that his fashion is sustainable.

Just like the red and white checked wool coat in his new collection. "The fabric is from an interior design store downtown, it was leftovers that would otherwise probably have ended up in the landfill." Martinez's very first collection was fast fashion at first, he says. But he couldn't reconcile that with his conscience. When he was a child, his neighbors would have worked in the factories in his hometown of La Romana, where fast fashion was mostly produced for the US market. “My mother took care of the children. The parents worked seven days a week from dawn until night for starvation wages. I cannot support such a human mess.”

Martinez' blouses cost between 175 and 250 euros, office dresses between 300 and 400 euros. The silk tulle dress with the corset and the colorful appliqués costs 1,800 euros if a woman can have it made for her.

A few weeks ago, dancer Viktoria Nowak tried on the pink sequined dress, which now hangs on a hanger in the studio, for photos. "She's not going to wear that to the show, though. Your outfit should be a surprise,” says Martinez and laughs.