Meet Mary Korlin-Downs: Influencing Seattle’s fashion scene with her own style

Mary Korlin-Downs is an influential force in Seattle’s fashion community.

She’s a self-proclaimed ‘fashion tech girly’ who has leveraged social media and her own sense of style into a budding career.

While the former gymnast turned content creator has been posting on TikTok since 2020, her platform didn’t gain traction until she moved to Seattle. Korlin-Downs attributes much of her success to finding her niche — the fashion technology industry.

Since moving from Minnesota to Seattle in 2022, Korlin-Downs has built a significant TikTok and Instagram following by sharing educational videos on fashion and her creative campaigns using AI or DIY projects in her home. She has also hosted several networking events in an effort to foster community in Seattle’s fashion landscape, and even launched design and creative agency Cropd.co alongside her fiancé.

After discovering the fashion tech sector and securing a full-time job in the industry, Korlin-Downs started using TikTok as a platform to educate others on the topic after seeing a “need for knowledge.” The videos quickly spurred online discussions and curiosity about the fashion tech landscape, which Korlin-Downs would explain or break down for viewers.

“I’m trying to think of the skills that I have and how I can differentiate myself as a fashion content creator. I’m not a stylist, I don’t put together the most amazing outfits — 90% of the time, I’m wearing activewear because I work from home, so I’m not going to be posting my outfits everyday, I’m not going to be that kind of content creator,” she said. “So, then I was thinking, ‘Okay, well, I am in the fashion tech space, that’s an area that no one else is really talking about. I would love to set myself apart by bringing more knowledge to that industry.’”

Korlin-Downs quickly began building a strong network of people working in the fashion tech industry, which became critical after having to pivot her career in 2023 due to layoffs.

“When I lost my job, my [fiancé] and I decided to create this design and creative agency where we’d work with founders and small businesses and entrepreneurs,” she said. “It was nice that I had that little pocket, that little network of fashion tech founders to lean on, because now they are entirely our client base.”

Building on her fashion technology foundation, Korlin-Downs started focusing on creative campaigns and other types of unique content. With several brand deals under her belt — including a recent creative campaign with UGG, several with Levi’s, and even with Seattle-based retailer Pipe and Row — Korlin-Downs is making a name for herself in the industry as tangible proof of hard work, passion and purpose.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that niching down and being that point person for that one specific niche, I feel like it’s almost going to get you farther.” Korlin-Downs added that a majority of people asking to join her LinkedIn network are founders that want to connect “because of my business or just talking about the fashion tech space.”

As part of her efforts to strategically curate her content, not only does Korlin-Downs show the final result of her fashion campaign, but she often documents the entire creative process. Everything is intentional, she stressed.

And her greatest source of inspiration? Seattle.

Or, in general, the city she lives in.

As someone with a “very small budget” who is just building her career, Korlin-Downs acknowledged that she “can’t go out to big budget studios to create these elaborate things.” But she can go to the grocery store, which was part of her artistic process for a Marc Jacobs campaign using cherries — an ad that prompted conversation for several reasons.

“I can go out and walk around our city and figure out a cool place that’s city-specific and shoot there,” she said. “So, I think it comes down to the accessibility part of food and cityscapes and environments that I’m in [that] have allowed me to dabble in those creative realms pretty easily.”

Keep up with Mary’s journey on Instagram and TikTok here.

Kelly Stroh is a freelance writer for Seattle Refined. Follow more of her work here.