Maria Pinto

Maria V. Pinto (born 1957) is a fashion designer from Chicago, Illinois.

She has designed clothing for Oprah Winfrey, the Joffrey Ballet, Marcia Gay Harden, and Michelle Obama.

Maria Pinto was born in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, near Chinatown.

She and her twin brother are the youngest of seven children.

Her parents, Constantino and Virginia Pinto, are a sanitation worker and a caterer, respectively.

When she was still young, her family moved to the suburbs of Chicago.

When Pinto was 10, she started reading a neighbor's copies of Women's Wear Daily.

In eighth grade, she started sewing her own clothes after getting a sewing machine.

She attended Palatine High School, where she sold clothes to her friends at the age of 15, and eventually sewed her own prom dress from a Halston pattern.

Pinto began working in her mom's West Dundee Italian restaurant when it opened in 1975.

When the restaurant closed four years later, Pinto's older brother Silvio opened a restaurant in the River North neighborhood, and she became a partner there.

The fashion show's winner had their design worn by the presenter or a nominee at the 81st Academy Awards in Los Angeles, as well as being able to attend the Oscars.

After an online poll, a dress by another Chicago-based designer, Sam Kori George, was chosen.

That restaurant also closed, in 1987, and Silvio died of cancer a year later.

She went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987 when she was 30 and graduated from there in 1990 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, focusing in fashion.

She then went to New York and attended Parson's School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she also worked as an assistant to Geoffrey Beene.

She started her first business, Maria V. Pinto Designs, in her apartment with a $20,000 loan from a friend in 1991.

Her collection was sold at, among others, Neiman Marcus, Barneys New York, Saks Fifth Avenue, Takashimaya, and Bergdorf Goodman.

She closed her Michigan Avenue shop in January 2002 because of embezzlement by a bookkeeper and the economic downturn after the September 11 attacks.

Maria Pinto designed costumes for two Joffrey Ballet ballets, the pas de deux Ruth, Ricordi Per Due in 2002 and Age of Innocence in 2008.

She also spent six months recovering from peritonitis after laparoscopic surgery but reopened in late 2004 after spending some time oil painting.

Oprah Winfrey wore a long, cognac-colored leather skirt of Pinto's for the 2007 premiere of The Great Debaters.

On August 12, 2009, she opened a retail boutique in Chicago's West Loop.

She held a kick-off party for 350 guests to benefit the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's women's board.

That year, she also was invited to become a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

She was selected out of 100 as one of eight to present a design for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscars preview fashion show on February 9, 2009.

In spring 2009, actress Brooke Shields wore a bustier and pants that Pinto had designed to a Tupperware event.

Actress Marcia Gay Harden wore a Pinto dress to the August premiere of The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler.

The next month, television host Nancy O'Dell wore one of her minidresses as co-host of the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

The same month, she presented a runway show at New York Fashion week.

In February 2010, she closed her Chicago boutique.

The Great Recession caused an economic downturn that hurt the fashion industry—particularly a high-end label like Pinto, whose pieces cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.

However, she announced that she planned to return to the business, saying, "I'm here. I just need to take a break. I will be in fashion for sure but in some new facet. I think the whole industry is changing".

Pinto had previously invited Palatine High School fashion students to visit and tour her boutique in January 2010.

In "Fashion and the Field Museum Collection: Maria Pinto", an exhibit at Chicago's Field Museum from September 14, 2012 to June 16, 2013, Pinto matched eight of her designs with twenty-five of the museum's artifacts.

In December 2012, about sixty students from Palatine High School and other surrounding high schools went on a special trip to meet Pinto and see the exhibit.

On August 31, 2013, Pinto announced on her blog that she plans to launch a new collection, called M2057, with the crowdfunding website Kickstarter.

She offered garments such as dresses, jackets, scarves, a shrug, and a wrap for ordering through Kickstarter.

They range in price from $75 to $250, much cheaper than her $500–1,000 previous dresses.

She exceeded her goal, to raise $250,000 before October 14, 2013, by obtaining $272,523 in funds from 624 different backers.