This Toronto designer pushes sustainable fashion beautifully beyond the organic t-shirt
“I would go to my mother’s sewing machine and play with the knobs,” Chizoba Udeh-Martin remembers, of her early fascination with stitching.
As Cher Horowitz would put it, Chizoba is like a thoroughly essential designer. Guide designer in reality, of the Toronto-based mostly, created-to-purchase vogue model, Zoba Martin.
Her earliest recollections of trend design date back to her childhood in Nigeria, seeing her aunt style and sew her own marriage ceremony dress from scratch. Chizoba says the knowledge planted the seeds for her to one particular working day become a designer in her individual ideal.
She remembers her aunt experienced bought “several yards of white satin fabric” and Chizoba, as a youthful lady, viewed the overall course of action with curiosity and fascination.
The designer Chizoba with a flowing lace garment. Image courtesy Zoba Martin.
Right before launching her personal label in 2016, she labored as an alteration expert for Kleinfeld, in awe of the function that went into the bridal robes. There, she determined she was getting referred to as to design and style her own attire.
While her patterns are not solely bridal, it’s her favorite situation to structure for. She describes the method as “intimate,” feeling honoured to make aspiration attire for her clients on a person of their most unforgettable occasions.


“My goal is to make sophisticated parts that rejoice every single particular person that wears Zoba Martin,” suggests the designer.
I found Chizoba at Startup Style Week, back in 2019 in which she was displaying a tiny completely ready-to-don assortment. I was drawn to her abnormal use of millennial pink and sparkly tulle.
Audience members were given a very small white bottle of soap bubbles — you know, like the types they give thrilled small children at weddings to keep them entertained. The group was awestruck by the exaggerated silhouettes and Chizoba’s artistic whimsy.


Chizoba has a way of earning you sense special, whether or not she’s producing the gown of your desires, or supplying you a little bottle of bubbles and whisking you absent on her fashion fairytale.
In spite of dabbling in all set-to-put on, Chizoba prefers the sustainable facet of custom made, designed-to-buy items for her clientele. She is assured that her custom-made items carry sentimental price, and are incredibly very likely to be held and handed on for generations.
Of the treatment and time she places into just about every style she jokes, “You would believe I’m the just one wearing the gown.”


Chizoba is hopeful that we will go further than the shameful association with becoming an outfit repeater (à la Lizzie McGuire), propagated by the consumerist, fast-manner marketplace.
She encourages those seeking for luxurious fashion and night put on to “Consider obtaining anything custom-created for you, be extra aware of what you are sporting and what pieces you happen to be investing in.”


Effectively aware of the environmental toll, fashion’s waste problem weighs heavily on her coronary heart. The ordinary Canadian client throws out 81 kilos of non-biodegradable textiles annually (yikes!).
Chizoba consequences adjust as a result of significant, customized parts her shoppers will use about and in excess of yet again to at some point go on. This would make a enormous affect, when you contemplate the reality that Canadians purchase, on typical, 70 new content of outfits a yr.
In 2022, sustainable trend is not just a warm take, and most designers with a sustainable method err on fashion’s safe side. We all know we can get elevated basics, but who just is finding excited in excess of an $80 organic and natural cotton t-shirt in muted mauve?
Zoba Martin’s brand name would make sustainable, slower vogue fun, deluxe and female.


Pre-pandemic, Chizoba was in the system of opening up her own Toronto storefront, a desire which has given that been place on maintain. Generally optimistic, she says the pandemic created her character and she has “had a ton of silent, resourceful time since the Spring of 2020.”
She still desires of opening her personal store in Toronto, with an atelier in the back and a further in Nigeria, “My intention for 2022 is to expand the Zoba Martin model.”
The designer wrapped by a string of material. Picture courtesy Zoba Martin.
“If you are on the lookout for somebody to produce a one of a kind piece for you, attain out to me. I often consider my time with every single solitary client I work with. I layout parts that mirror my clients’ temperament and intensify their splendor.”