Greenpoint at Work: Marteal Mayer, Designer at Loulette Bride

As part of our new series entitled “Greenpoint at Work,” we’re talking to neighbors about their jobs and asking them about what they do all day.

Marteal Mayer is the designer at Loulette Bride (67 West St.), which creates customizable wedding attire with a focus on sustainability and inclusivity. Loulette has been going strong at 67 West Street for the past ten years. 

We spoke to Mayer to find out more about what it’s like to design bridal wear and how the neighborhood inspires her. 

You can read our first “Greenpoint at Work” interview here. 

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how you ended up in bridal wear?

We lived in Williamsburg for a very long time, so I was always kind of a Williamsburg/Greenpoint local. But before I started this, I worked in fashion. I was a fashion design major in college. I worked in women’s ready-to-wear at fast fashion places, and it was very unfulfilling and jarring going from fashion design school to, “Oh, you’re working mass market, and you’re on your computer all day.” Everything is so watered down and made so cheap, so unsustainable in the amount of product that you’re making.

It felt very disheartening very quickly, so I slowly got into more evening wear and higher end ready-to-wear, and eventually when I wanted to start my own thing, bridal just kind of made sense in respect to all my values. Sustainability-wise, you only make what you have sales for, so there’s no inventory, there’s no overproduction, and it’s so thoughtful and so intentional. It’s the most thoughtful thing you’re going to purchase. 

It just made sense for the way that I like to make things. And I wanted to keep everything made in New York, that was really important to me. 

What does a typical day look like on the job? 

It depends what kind of day we’re having. Some days are jam-packed with appointments, some days are really focused design-and-production days, because we do everything in this space.

An appointment day that’s very heavy, we’ll have new brides and their families coming in. We served champagne—it’s a very happy business to work in, despite what people think about bridal. It gets a really bad rap of being high stress and bridezillas but I think being in Greenpoint and being the style that we are attracts very cool, chill people.

We’ll have brides come in for the first time with their moms and siblings, and we also do the alterations here. We see every client from the first fitting to them taking their garment home. We do a flat rate alteration model so we don’t charge for each little thing you need, we just make sure you have a garment that fits you perfectly by the end. 

On an appointment day, we could have 10 people here in and out all day. On a production day, we usually have two seamstresses here with us. Nedim, our production manager, cuts everything. So on a day that we’re only working on our new styles or our production, it’s a full workroom here. There’s fabric everywhere.

Our days change a lot with the seasons and with the time of year and what we’re working on. 

What’s your favorite part of the job? 

There’s so much that’s really fun about it! I love coming up with a new collection each year, and finding new ways to kind of reinvent the styles. There’s not a lot of huge changes in bridal, but it’s fun to be innovative within a parameter of what bridal is.

We get really, really interesting, cool clients. We are very known for our inclusivity—for size inclusivity and gender inclusivity. We see so many different kinds of people, and that is so fun to see how they are going to interpret their bridal wear, whatever that means for them, and however they want to represent themselves on this really important day. 

And we do a lot of customization, so I would say that’s the most fun part—when people come in with a cool idea, and what to do something really fun, cause we can do anything, in any color, it’s all made-to-order, and I’m the designer here so I’ll come up with something really special and that is always probably the most fun part. And seeing their photos come back!

What does sustainability mean to you with your business model? 

We look at every part of the manufacturing process, and part of that is inherently sustainable because we’re made to order, we don’t have inventory, we don’t overproduce—there literally is no production other than what we’ve already sold. We make everything in house. We get our fabric in, but otherwise we’re not shipping things all over the place. We’re not ordering from overseas factories, anything like that. The nature of the way we do things is sustainable but we also don’t do plastic. We recycle all of our scraps with FABSCRAP, also based in Brooklyn. We choose a different charity every month to donate a portion of our proceeds to, that speaks to our values, but also what’s going on in the world.

Our linings are recycled poly across the board, and we try to use natural fibers as much as possible. We just kind of look at every step of the process and how we can do this better. 

What are some of your favorite local spots?

There’s so many things, and being a mom, now it’s changed. Space Club (220 Newel St.) is amazing.

We’ve been in this building for ten years, and I love how nitty-gritty this building is with different artists figuring things out, and businesses popping up and coming in and coming out. This is such a gem of a creative space. More chain-y stuff keeps coming into the neighborhood, but this building has maintained this artist hub for so long, and I love that about it.

And then, of course, really incredible new restaurants have come in, like Cecily (80 Franklin St.). This Greenpoint Avenue stretch of Restaurant Row over here has crushed it, there’s so many good ones over there. And I don’t know what happened to Ovenly (31 Greenpoint Ave.), but that’s always been my fucking favorite. Oh! Mercy is my go-to (128 Franklin St.), Eden’s (120 Franklin St.)—those are really good spots, and I love how even though there’s a Sweetgreen now, Eden’s was here first, and they’re crushing it. And even the way they do things, of just popping up at a bar and slinging salads. There’s still that in Greenpoint.

And Parachute Brooklyn (151 Norman Ave.) is probably the best spot in Greenpoint. 

What do you do when you’re not working? 

I’m mom-ing, the rest of the time! I have two little kids, one and three, so they take up a lot of non-working energy. My husband is opening a cafe in our new town, so we’re working on that. It’s called Millie’s Provisions. So I help with that and do the design and marketing. 

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Do you have a job you’re passionate about? Whatever it is, we want to hear about it! Email [email protected] to get in touch about possibly being featured for “Greenpoint at Work.”