FIONA KOTUR MARIN
Age: 30s
Occupation: Designer
Fashion Statement: “Editing your look is very important”

A fashion insider, a girly girl and an experimentalist put their own spin on Christian Dior’s radical new threads, observes Blue Carreon

In the 1960s, Fiona Kotur Marin’s mother was designing ready-to-wear for Christian Dior. How fitting is it that Marin now poses for Hong Kong Tatler in John Galliano’s modern interpretation of Dior’s heralded New Look, with its sloping shoulders, nipped waist and peplum hem? With strategic darting on the back of the jacket, Galliano updates the look first unveiled in 1947. “I have great respect for the talent of John Galliano,” says Marin who started appreciating fashion at a very young age. “I grew up surrounded by it. My mother is a very stylish woman. She had a signature look which she keeps even to this day – a very sharp bob and red fingernails.”
Before launching Kotur, a line of ladies’ handbags and minaudieres, Marin, a native New Yorker who moved to Hong Kong two years ago with her husband and two kids, was an accessory designer at Ralph Lauren and helped launched her best friend Tory Burch’s clothing line. Her sister Alexandra is an editor at US Vogue and penned a book on Carolina Herrera. So, yes, fashion really is in her blood. “It was a household that thrived on the creative process,” recalls Marin, who designs every bag in her collection.
Accessories play an important part in Marin’s overall look. “I can dress minimally but go all out on accessories. I lead a very active life so I am always in trousers and shirts which I pair with great cuffs and bags. I have a lot of accessories that I’ve picked up from my travels. I especially love the ones with ethnic patterns.” In the black New Look-inspired jacket which she wears with a white silk shirt from Chloe and black trousers, she adds a punch of glamour via a gold cuff and a Kotur minaudiere. “If something works for you, stick with it,” she emphasises and swears by Chloe trousers and tops from Tory Burch, Tabla and Prada. “Style should be different for everybody. You have to interpret it in your own way.”
True to her style philosophy, Marin is a great admirer of fashion muse Tilda Swinton, as well as Cate Blanchett and Katherine Hepburn, all of whom she describes as “women with a point of view. I look up to women who have a large vocabulary of experience and history which is reflected in their style and how they carry themselves.” Looking no further than her own mother for savoir faire. Marin’s exceptional style genes blend with an enviable 1960s closet she can occasionally dip into, with Mum’s permission, of course.