Spotlight: Martha Hudson, Inclusive Swimwear Designer

Martha Hudson has been sewing as long as she can remember. She began a side hustle sewing to help make ends meet and posting her creations on social media. Swimming every day, she decided to make a swimsuit. She posted it on social media and orders began to come in. Now she creates unique swimwear designs that are all-inclusive in sizing.

How did you get started designing swimwear? Always an artist, or was there a “moment”?

I absolutely was always an artist… my whole family was… art has just always been a part of our lives.

My sister and I were in oil painting classes when we were in first grade. My mom was always working on a craft or knitting project. She constantly encouraged us to explore our creativity. When I was 5 years old, I told her I wanted to take sewing classes, she couldn’t find any classes so she asked the women at the local fabric store if I could come by after school and learn from them.

I’ve been sewing as long as I can remember, and as an adult it was always a side hustle to help me scrape by in California. I made bags and dresses and stuffed animals and then, I kind of happened upon swimsuits. I swam almost daily and needed suits that worked for me. I am plus sized and most of the options at the time were full coverage, boring suits… nothing like the options my standard sized friends had. I started making myself some, posted them to the same Instagram account I posted everything else I was sewing, and folks just started ordering. It was such a gift, I didn’t realize until after I’d been at it awhile how lucky I was to just kinda of fall into something I love this much.

What do you do differently? What is your signature that makes your work stand out as yours?

It’s funny to think of my work as standing out, because there are so many swimsuit makers doing beautiful work too. My friends tell me often they spot my suits in the wild all the time.

I think they stand out for the fun fabrics and the designs that work for so many different shaped people. Creating made to measurements, bespoke swimwear allows me to make suits that actually fit people of every size, which unfortunately isn’t super common in the swimsuit industry. Maybe what stands out is that the people wearing them feel comfortable and contained and cute all at once, and we don’t get that as often as we should.

Where do you find your inspiration for your designs?

That’s a good question. I’ve absolutely always been fascinated by fashion trends and what it is that makes an outfit “cool” vs not work. I love the creativity it takes to piece together surprising looks. I make some fairly wild choices in my personal style, so I think it makes sense that I try surprising things out in my swimwear designs as well. I pull a lot from vintage swimsuit designs and lingerie and just what I think I’d look cute in. it’s all ultimately being designed based on what I want, I’m just lucky other people want it also! Haha.

How do you balance managing your business, marketing and production work? Oh, and coming up with new designs?

Time management is so tough as a small business owner, let alone a one woman creative business.

I try to have a regular enough schedule while also leaving room for creativity and inspiration to bubble up. I always am letting one plate drop to keep the other ones spinning.

Now, many years in, I have found some things that really work for me. A big one is I don’t do my emails or admin work every day. I set aside days or half days for that because it really squashes my creativity.

On most days I work a typical kind of work day: 9 or 10 am to 5 or 6pm. I like time in the morning to get outside and walk my dog, eat breakfast, etc. And I don’t work past sunset because I work from home and working at night blurs my work life from home life too much. I try to take full days off work, or give myself “weekends” or sorts, but I don’t take entire days off as often as I probably should.

Describe your creative space.

I rent a two bedroom Victorian house in Central TX and one of the bedrooms is my work room. It’s a surprisingly big room.

I have an industrial, table mounted serger sewing machine under a window looking out toward the front yard and busy street. There’s a standing cutting table on the opposite wall with a huge computer monitor and fabric cabinets on either side. The room has a teeny tiny closet that’s currently holding XL vacuum sealed bags with more fabric, vintage sewing machines, and a plastic tote of clothes I need to repair.

There’s also a twin daybed pushed up against a wall that is intended for guests but is most often occupied by my dog while I work. A wooden clothing rack with ready-to-ship & sample suits is in one corner, and an easel with half finished paintings in the other.

I have a few plants on whatever open surface is available, planted in pots with eyeballs all over them that I made in a ceramics class. On the walls there is a giant canvas print of Dolly Parton laying on a bed and a 7 foot tall bright orange and yellow wall hanging I found at an estate sale. The room feels the least “done” of any room in my house, but it’s so consistently in flux that that makes sense to me.

How do you store all of your supplies and fabric?

I actually store my fabric in Ikea shoe cabinets. Swimsuit fabric is so slippery that every other storage idea I had just ended up with fabric sliding out all the time. The shoe cabinets are top loading and allow me to keep things organized by pattern or color or texture. They’re so helpful.

I have a rolling cart next to my sewing machine holding my tools and extra thread & needles and packing materials. There are baskets under the cutting table for scrap fabrics, a label printer on the cabinet, and a clothing rack with ready-to-ship and sample suits in a corner. I try to stay organized but it is difficult to keep everything contained to just the work room. I end up packing all my finished work on the dining room table because there’s no where to put finished pieces in the workroom.

Do you use a sketchbook or journal? How does that help your work develop?

I do use a sketchbook, mostly for drawing my own day planner every week and for sketching naked chubby babes though.

I rarely sketch out my designs unless I need to show what I’m imagining to someone else and can’t explain it clearly with my words. I find myself skipping past the sketching out designs stage and just directly diving in to prototyping. I need to see it in 3D, on a person more than I need to see it 2D.

I think sketching people & places and painting regularly helps keep my creativity muscles stretched and that does influence my business. If I’m not keeping my other art alive, I often get stuck in a rut with my swimsuits as well.

What plays in the background while you work? Silence? Music, audiobooks, podcasts, movies? If so, what kind?

I don’t admit to just anyone what I listen to in the background and while I work, it is most often more reality TV than seems humanly possible. I listen to tons of audiobooks and podcasts too, but I’m regularly running out of those and boy is there a seemingly endless well of reality TV or what?? I’ve found it’s the perfect background noise for me: Entertaining enough that I’m not too bored and thus trying to wander away from the monotony of the sewing machine, but also something I’m not at all invested in so I don’t need to look at it. I go through phases though, if I find a new podcast or book I really want to listen to I will do that too.

Can you tell us about the inspiration and process of one of your pieces? How does a new design come about?

A new design actually getting stitched up is usually fairly spontaneous. I have tons of ideas floating around in my brain all the time. I like to let them marinate for awhile so I can work out how to make them actually work on real life bodies. Then one day I’ll just have to see them sewn. Sometimes I go months without making a new design, while other times I’ll make multiple new designs in one weekend. I just have to wait until I get the itch I guess, or until I really want to wear one to something. Haha.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

My favorite part of the design process is putting a new design on a body (usually that body is mine because it’s readily accessible). It’s so interesting to see what happens as the fabric and seams stretch over body parts— I think that’s what has kept swimwear fun for me after all these years. working with stretch fabric is challenging but in the best way.

I think the most challenging part is also the most important: figuring out how to size grade a new design to fit any and every size body. That part is a ton of math and often very confusing, but I love a puzzle so even that is kind of fun.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

“Dress for the job you want” is a ridiculous cliche but also great advice if the job I want is to float around in a river and hang out with your dog and eat fruit and make art!

In all seriousness though, I think the best advice I was given was a reminder that we are making up the rules, about everything all the time. I might as well go ahead and try to carve out a little life for myself with my own rules before someone forces me to live under theirs.  

How has your business and creativity evolved over time?

I think I’ve let go of a lot of my ideas about “seeming professional” or convincing people I know what I’m doing. I think most working artists have at least a touch of imposter syndrome and doubt ourselves regularly.

I’ve had so much practice allowing myself to just show up in my work as myself that it’s easier to live with those doubts now. For example: my emails take me too long to respond to (and when I do, there are far more explanation points than there should be., I sometimes have to scramble to meet my deadlines, and I know now it’s better if I pay my friend to do my fabric inventory for me because otherwise I will inevitably procrastinate and run out of something. None of that sounds very “professional” but it’s all absolutely human and anyone that knows me in real life would laugh and say “yea, that sounds like Martha”.

I think what it comes down to is, I trust myself and my work more now. I know my suits are great, I know my designs are interesting and I know what I’m doing for inclusivity in the swimwear industry is important. If somebody somewhere wants to complain “hey that artist took a whole week to email me back”, I’m probably not the maker for them and Im okay with that.

What traits, if any, do you think that creative people have as compared to people who are not creative? 

I think we’ve learned to be okay with a little discomfort. I think creativity comes from boredom, comes from a want for something you don’t have, comes from needing to say or see or feel something. and choosing a creative life under capitalism isn’t generally signing up for a comfortable or super stable life.

Where can people learn more about you and your custom swimwear?

My website: luvmartha.com or my Instagram: @luv_martha

Interview posted March, 2024