Martha Stewart

My Name is Taylor McMahon I am a senior fibers major with a concentration in experimental fashion at MICA. This past summer I was lucky enough to find an internship with a MICA alumnus. Alison Mazur attended MICA and was also a fiber major. She is currently working as a freelance stylist in New York City. I met her at a MICA alumni panel on fashion in the spring of 2012 and reconnected with her later on when I was home in New York for the summer. She had just gotten hired as Martha
Stewart’s personal stylist and asked me to intern for her and Martha.


This summer Martha was working constantly on shooting a new show that will air on PBS this coming spring. The show is a cooking and show and each episode focuses on a theme and Martha teaches the viewer how to cook and prepare several dishes (for example one episode is only on meat and butchery while another focuses only on grains). Working with Alison I got to see how styling for television worked and helped prep each day for the segments that were to be filmed. I also helped style whatever guest chefs Martha had on the show.  One day Alison had to run out to do last minute shopping for a black tie event Martha had that night so I got to prep the filming segments myself. I shopped frequently with Alison for both the show and for many of Martha’s black true events and for when she traveled. During shooting Alison and I were also working on the large task of transporting, documenting and organizing Martha vast wardrobe from the offices and set in the city to her home in Bedford, NY. We converted part of her basement in to a huge wardrobe room and organized everything for her.

Interning at Martha Steward was quite an experience. I learned a lot about how important organization is as well and being able to clearly communicate your ideas. I also got to see how styling for a single person works as well as having to work with on the set of a show and think about the television aspect of it.

What was also great was that while interning for Alison at Martha Stewart I started also interning for her on her freelance jobs. I was able to work with her on a music video for the rapper Silm, an editorial for the September issue of Tank magazine and on several Solezia 2012 ad campaigns (a Korean design house). Since I was working as Alison’s only assistant, both at Martha and with her freelance work she gave me a lot more freedom and I had many more responsibilities which was really helpful in learning all about the business of styling. I learned how important it is to use resources and connections you already have and to be constantly making new ones any way you can. With both experiences I got to experience a field I had always been interested in and was able to learn quite a lot about the industry.