After graduating from Parsons in Fashion Marketing in 2017, Marina established her career as a Creator, Connector and Strategist in the niche space of sustainable fashion and conscious consumerism. Marina is currently Director of Strategic Partnerships at Earth Partner.

Marina is uniquely tapped into the new generation of consumers who are holding brands to higher social and environmental standards. Her activations and connections help fashion brands, tech investors and consumers alike move towards a much needed reset for the fashion industry.

Marina has worked with brands such as Stella McCartney, Gucci, Davines; Organizations like Greenpeace, United Nations, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and technology companies like Pentatonic, Oritain, and Pyratex.

Instagram: @marinatestino

Released in conjunction with COP27, D Magazine’s ‘Green Issue’ was photographed by Lachlan Bailey and styled by Anastasia Barbieri, featuring and guest edited by Marina using a selection of conscious brands and emerging designers.

The issue is dedicated to confronting the challenges and opportunities that the fashion industry faces on the road to sustainability and circularity.

“It was an honour to curate and conceptualize this editorial, which features an amazing group of sustainable brands and young designers. The idea behind it was to bring colour to sustainable fashion…It’s time to change our perceptions and rebrand sustainability by showing just how fun, bold, sexy, stylish and colourful it can be!”

– Marina Testino

With #OneDressToImpress, Marina exercised her choice not to choose a different outfit every day. In fact, she wore the same red suit every day for two months, challenging early “Influencer” notions and general consumption trends, especially in fast fashion, that a new outfit was needed every day or for every event. This empowering activation literally embodied one of the key tenets of circular fashion: keeping clothing in use as long as possible and rejecting the idea of “disposable” fashion.

During Paris Fashion week, Marina wore only yellow and only sourced her clothes from the Four S’s of Sustainable Fashion: Simplify, Second Hand, Sustainably Sourced, Shared. The activation ended with an event where 200 guests attended wearing only yellow clothing sourced from the Four S’s of Sustainable Fashion. A call to action for sustainable fashion is not a straightforward ask. There are many layers to the problem and likewise many layers to the solution. With #YellowLikeALemon Marina created a simple, memorable series of actions anyone can take to help “make fashion circular”.

#WeSeaThrough was an awareness initiative about the invisible yet incredibly harmful tiny bits of plastic which result from any kind of plastic consumption, including from fashion and beauty. During the month of August, Marina presented the NAKED TRUTH (quite literally! she wore no clothes for the whole month of posting) about the dangers of microplastics, especially focusing on the fact of their inevitable path to the sea. She invited her community to “dare to go bare” in the name of raising awareness around this important issue.

Images by Danilo.

One of Marina’s most recent initiatives is entitled Useful Waste: “People are under the illusion that garbage magically disappears; what they don’t see is the accumulation of harmful waste that ends up underground, in the oceans or in landfills. So I decided to pose for a photo shoot in two recycling centers in Peru (Provesur and San Miguel Industrias), my home country. The clothes I wear are from local sustainable brands: Balkanica, Sophia Lerner, Annaiss Yukra, Mozh Mozh, Macalo, Cornelio Borda, Celanea, Susan Wagner, Nuna Swimwear, Ayniand Escvdo. The goal is to show that the waste that surrounds me can be transformed into something beautiful and useful, like clothes and accessories. The circular economy can, therefore, work and open us up to options that are recycled and reused. It’s the old that becomes new.”

– Marina Testino

Marina received the Sustainability Award at the 2023 Cosmopolitan Influencer Awards in Madrid.