Clothes to hold dear.
I’m Māra — a hopeless aesthete from Latvia. Playing with clothes has always been one of my biggest joys, whether it was raiding my mum’s closet, dressing up paper dolls with my own designs, or hand-sewing outfits for my dolls.
I was drawn to vintage long before I even knew what Etsy was. As a teenager, I would spend hours wandering through thrift stores, often finding pieces I couldn’t leave behind — even if they weren’t for me.
I studied interior design at an art college, where I fell even more in love with shapes, colors, and details. While working at my first job in a small printing house — something I both enjoyed and felt trapped in — I heard about Etsy. Within a year, I boldly quit and started selling what I had collected over the years.
The first item I ever sold was a skirt that had belonged to one of my sisters. It carried stories I’d heard again and again from all three of my sisters — about a small festival I was too young to attend, but which had shaped their youth and lived vividly in my imagination. That skirt felt, and still feels, so meaningful that I sometimes wonder how I could let it go. But when the order came in and I saw the buyer’s name was Liberty, something clicked. It made me feel like this small shop could be my freedom — my way to do things differently, outside of systems I never really fit into.
Later, I studied fashion design and styling to better understand how clothes are made and to create the kinds of pieces I couldn’t find in thrift stores. Being in this business has taught me a lot about the impact of fast fashion, and making my own clothes felt necessary — I couldn’t justify buying new just because I wanted something.
Today, bemydear is both my creative outlet and my way of giving new life to things. I pick every item by carefully going through hundreds of garments in local thrift stores, wash and iron or steam everything, repair when needed, and prepare it to be worn and held dear again.
