Marcia Santiago, of Barnegat Township, has a makeshift workspace in her house she uses to design her own line of clothes.
Aston Ragsdale, 19, of Pleasantville, will walk the runway at New York Fashion Week in September for Marcia Santiago’s Kloset Slayer brand.
Marcia Santiago, center, designer and founder of Kloset Slayer, poses with brand ambassadors Elona Hope, Sani Nicole and Aisha McMillion.
The road to becoming a fashion designer wasn’talways clear to Marcia Santiago. As a new mom on maternity leave from her job as surgical tech in 2014, she was “looking for something to do.”
What started as a maternity-leave hobby turned into a brand that will be featured in a show at the prestigious New York Fashion Week next month.
“I thought about making clothes, designing a couple of prom dresses or wedding dresses for my friends. I didn’t know it would turn into a whole company,” said Santiago. “It was supposed to be little and simple, and it just kept growing and growing.”
The South Jersey resident isn’t a stranger to New York Fashion Week. Her brand, Kloset Slayer, was first featured in 2017 and has appeared there every year since.
“I started off with Atlantic City Fashion Week; that was my first fashion week that I ever did. I realized then I wanted to do something bigger,” Santiago said while sitting on a couch in her home in Barnegat Township. “New York Fashion Week offers better opportunities for people as far as buyers and things like that. Around here, you’re not going to get that kind of exposure.”
According to the Council of Fashion Designers of America, New York City’s semi-annual fashion week generates $887 million in total economic impact annually. It has a greater economic impact than competitor fashion weeks in Milan, Paris and London, according to a report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee Democrats.
