At just 18, fashion designer Isabel Santamaria is already dreaming of designing on a global scale. Her vision is to reshape the industry for women, one garment at a time.

Santamaria’s passion for fashion began with the smallest of clothes: Barbie doll outfits. She recalls the tiny dresses being the first pieces she truly admired. Admiration grew into inspiration when her grandmother, a seamstress from Costa Rica, moved in with her family. “Watching her sew, I realized that was something I could bring to life,” Santamaria recalls. 

Her current inspirations range from punk to pretty. As she tells it, “My favorite designer is Vivienne Westwood because she is obviously a woman in the design field, but she’s also able to take dark themes like punk and make them really feminine. She’s really all for sustainability, which you don’t really find in high fashion.” She also loves Betsey Johnson and Anna Sui for their bold, expressive styles.

As for her own wardrobe, Santamaria loves 60s new-wave fashion and prefers feminine pieces with darker tones. However, she also admits to dressing casually to school, “If you see me normally, I’m usually wearing sweatpants and a hoodie because I’m so tired all the time,” she laughs.

While Santamaria had always loved fashion, she knew it would be her calling when she studied it. The summer before her junior year, she took a pre-college online course at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). There she gained insight into the fashion industry from her professors, helping her build her portfolio. “Being with other students who were just as passionate really inspired me,” she says. This wasn’t just a hobby; this was her future. 

College decisions are never easy, and Santamaria admits her family was hesitant. “[They] were nervous because ultimately it is an art major, and there is definitely a stigma that comes with that,” she explains. “But the fashion industry is a trillion dollar industry, there’s so much money to be made out of it, there's so many routes you can go so they were supportive of it after they learned.”

The application process for fashion school wasn’t easy either. “A lot of people spend two years working on their portfolio,” she says. “I spent roughly 3 months which was very stressful because I did procrastinate. The requirements for each school’s portfolio are very different and some are more chill than others.” But she found a way to ensure her success, asking FIT students for their advice on social media. She recommends to anyone applying to follow every portfolio instruction exactly.

Now an incoming freshman at FIT, Santamaria is already dreaming abroad. She hopes to eventually study and work in Milan, where FIT has a sister school. She plans to network in New York first, then study and hopefully launch her brand in Italy. 

Eventually, Santamaria hopes to become a creative director for her own label or another. Regardless of the situation, she wants to prioritize her style, sustainability, and femininity. “In the fashion industry I’ve noticed there’s a lot of men in director roles. So I definitely want to create a brand that’s women designing for women. I just want to inspire people.”