A Lowcountry Life

Click here to view photo gallery

Poland native Maria Dobrzanska Reeves uses her dance discipline to achieve success in Charleston.

Entrepreneur Maria Dobrzanska Reeves Marysia (Ma-REE-sha) to her friends i is used to overcoming life's hurdles to pursue her passions. From aspiring ballerina to Charleston businesswoman, she's come a long way from her native Poland to make the American dream her own. Listening all the while to her inner voice, she has learned to focus on her strengths and parlay talent and discipline into a successful career in fashion.

Q: At the age of 10, you were among the select few chosen out of hundreds of aspiring dancers to attend professional ballet school in Warsaw, Poland.

Reeves: Yes, I was a little girl. I knew I was going to miss my parents, but it was something I really wanted to doi it was like an honor to be chosen. Nobody wanted me to go, but I said if they didn't let me try out, I'd cry for the rest of my life. Three days after I entered ballet boarding school, my parents left Poland for the United States so my dad could run in the New York City Marathon.

Q: Why did you give it up?

Reeves: I realized over the next four years, I was growing up, and I saw the ballerinas didn't have much of a life, and their education was not on a par with normal schools. I left a very harsh system. I've met some of my friends who went on and they're so drained. And I was excited about living in the States, starting something new and being with my parents, who had come for just a year, but kept staying on.

Q: How did you make the leap from ballet to fashion?

Reeves: When I first came to the United States I didn't speak any English. We left everything in Poland and had to basically start over. We shopped in consignment stores, and everyone wanted to know where we got all these great clothes. My mom's very stylish i always had everything perfect. I remember her red nail polish and perfect hair and makeup. I always had a flair for it.

Q: Where did you go to school?

Reeves: I went to the University of Delaware and majored in biology to satisfy all the requirements for physical therapy school. It was what my mom and both my brothers did so I always thought that's what I wanted to do. In my senior year, my boyfriend, Nathaniel Heyward Reeves i the great-great-great-grandson of the Revolutionary War patriot i proposed to me, and I looked into the physical therapy program at MUSC because he'd always wanted to come back to Charleston.

Q: How did you and your husband meet?

Reeves: I met Nathaniel in a surf shop looking for a surf board. I was a lifeguard in Dewey Beach, Delaware. I had 18 saves in two years. I surfed with him almost every day.

Q: So you moved to Charleston after the wedding?

Reeves: We'd looked at homes a couple times when we were in Charleston, but Nathaniel asked me if I was sure this was what I really wanted to do. Then, on the way back from a vacation in Hawaii, I visited a friend who went to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising [FIDM] in Los Angeles. When I saw the school, I thought, "oh no, this is what I want to do!" Right after our wedding we drove cross-country to L.A.i School started one week after our wedding.

Q: How did you get back to the East Coast?

Reeves: Towards the end of the one-year program, my husband found a house here online in a neighborhood we really liked near Folly Beach, so we settled on Charlestoni it had a city, the beach and is not too far from New York. After I did an internship there with the Milly fashion designer, my husband and his family were very supportive and encouraged me to start my own business.

Q: Why is the marysia CHARLESTON line exclusively swimwear?

Reeves: I only did a short internship; that's why I started with only bathing suits, and I've always been in a swimsuit or leotard for most of my life.

Q: What advice would you give someone hoping to start a business of her own?

Reeves: Go to school first, that gets you ready for life. My mom has been an examplei at age 50 she started her own business. I thought, if she could do it I could definitely do it. And as far as the fashion business side of it goes, if I hadn't gone to FIDM in L.A., I wouldn't have known where to start. I'm still learning every day.

I know what kind of product I want to put out there, I just have to work hard to get it into the store the way it looks in my mind. You need determination. My parents always taught me if you really want something, you'll be successful.