The story behind the piece
Wren Magazine wanted 3,000 words on Mara Ellison, the designer turning deadstock fabric into red-carpet gowns. What they got was something better: a three-hour conversation about failure — the failed first label, the failed funding round, and the compost heap of samples behind her studio where the good ideas grow.
I structured the feature around that compost heap, literally and figuratively, cutting 90 minutes of transcript into a Q&A that kept Mara’s rapid-fire humour intact. Readers wrote in for weeks; one called it “the first fashion interview I’ve finished in years.”
How it was shaped
Great interviews are edited, not transcribed. I kept the digressions that revealed character, cut the repetitions that stalled momentum, and checked every claim with Mara’s team before filing — so the piece was vivid, accurate, and lawsuit-free.
“Sustainability isn’t a fabric choice. It’s deciding your work deserves to outlive you.”
—Mara Ellison, in Wren Magazine
