What do you remember from when you were 3? I have some pretty vivid memories of my life as a toddler.
When I was 3, I lived in Korea, where I was born. My family survived by pickpocketing. I remember roaming the streets unsupervised, stealing from people way bigger than me.
I remember my mother's funeral. When it came time to bury her, I rode in the van carrying my mother's body. I was sitting on top of her coffin, which was just a wooden box, nothing fancy.
After that, my father couldn't take care of us anymore, so the four of us kids — my two sisters, brother, and I — ended up in an orphanage. I remember beating up the other children to protect my siblings. I was a tough little girl. I was always taking care of myself from a young age.
The thing I don't remember is ever being scared, except once. My siblings and I had been told that we were going to get on a plane, and that our mother and father were going to pick us up at the airport. When I got off the plane in New Jersey, I was so confused. Instead of my parents, I saw white people. I thought, That's not my mom and that's not my dad. I was truly frightened. No one had told me that they would be different parents.
Growing up in the suburbs, I was a tomboy — I wanted to change my name to Mark. I played baseball, basketball, soccer. I rode a dirt bike. But then I would go home and sketch or use my Singer sewing machine. I would show my parents my sketches and ask how much they thought my clothes would retail for. I put posters of Paris and New York in my room. I dreamed of living in a big city filled with light.
I went to Rutgers to be a psychology major, but I missed fashion illustration and design, and transferred to the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York, to finish my degree. To pay my tuition, I worked as a waitress. I freelanced as a designer for Donna Karan, I interned at Polo Ralph Lauren, and this was while I was a full-time student at FIT! My American father is a social worker, and my mother is a piano teacher — and I grew up knowing that in order to reach your goals, you had to work hard for them. Dreams don't come free. My goal was to start my own fashion label, and I landed a design job at Polo Ralph Lauren. That's when I realized I could make it in this industry.
I've always had multiple jobs, and as the global creative director at Banana Republic and the designer at the Marissa Webb private label, I still have a lot of jobs. My drive comes from the gratitude I feel toward my adoptive parents, and it comes from my circumstances as a child. I was born working. I was taught that you survive or you don't; you make it or you don't; you take care of yourself and you take care of the people you care about. It was never an option for me not to work. That drive will never go away. The thing I've learned is, you can start out being something completely different from whatever you decide to make of yourself. You can be transformed. That choice is really up to you.
How to Get Ahead in Fashion
Marissa Webb dispenses some hard-earned wisdom so you can grab your dreams too.
1. Know what fashion is. You have to really understand the many technical aspects of making clothes that most people don't think are important, like how to sew and how to drape. If you don't know how to put a garment together, success will take a lot longer.
2. Keep asking. If you don't know something, ask the right questions. Say that you want to sit in at the next fitting and learn how it works. Ask why the material is taken in at that point instead of another one.
3. Give extra. If you get an internship, kick ass at it. It's an opportunity. It's a future. It's a life. Some interns clock in and clock out, and they fail to ask, "What else can I do?" Show that you want to learn. represent yourself well, and people will remember you. Not only that, they'll want to help you.
4. Cancel the panic. There are moments where I'm like, Holy shit! There are always a million things to get done. But I don't have time to be paralyzed, so I allow myself five minutes to freak out quietly to myself. Then I pull it together and go.
5. Live it. The hours in fashion are crazy. You pull all-nighters and you are constantly on the go. You give up personal time and family. I haven't been on vacation in five years, but that's a choice. No matter how exhausted you are, put on something nice, show up, and work hard. Nothing is beneath you.
6. Make it fun. Sometimes, I'll show up to work in sneakers, put on '80s music, and dance. I'm the ugliest dancer, but if you're around energized people and you can energize them, the day goes by faster. Make other people happy and it doesn't feel like work.
This article was originally published as "From Rags to Runway" in the March 2015 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to get the issue in the iTunes store!
