Martin Tenorio – Fashion Designer, Photographer, Model, and Actor

Martin Tenorio is a man who has many interests and talents. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico but at eight months old his family immigrated to East Los Angeles. He started acting at a young age and eventually hosted a TV show when he was 14 years old called “Hollywood Entertainment” on the Spanish network TV Azteca. The show discussed movies, Mexican culture, pop culture, and gave viewers more of an insight on the difficulties that Hispanic performers faced in Hollywood. Later on into his teen years, much to his parents’ disapproval, he dropped out of High School and travelled to Milan, Paris, and London for almost one year until arriving in New York City by the time he was 17.

He stayed in New York City where he continued to model for almost two years before going back to LA. Upon his return he enrolled in beauty school following his mother’s footsteps who owned her own salon. While in school Martin started working with Tolento LA, a talent agency focused on Hispanic actors. Over the next year he spent his days going to school and auditions fulltime. However, upon completion of his coursework, Martin decided that hair styling was not the career path for him. He therefore decided to dedicate more of his time to acting and took up a new interest of fashion design.

Martin started designing shirts and selling them at the Melrose flea market on Fairfax. It was there where the LA-based clothing company called Undrest discovered him. They contracted him for almost two years to design rompers, bathing suits, shirts, and scarves. He eventually developed his own clothing line called Eloma. His signature was the creation of distressed shirts inspired by of his own favorite t-shirts that he felt looked better and better the more worn it became. He was influenced by his travels and through observing people’s fashion choices on a daily basis. Especially admiring those “I don’t give a fuck” attitudes. For himself, Martin generally prefers thrift shopping and tries to stay away from looking at too many other fashion blogs because wants to minimize the amount of influence he receives from others in an effort to feel more like himself.

Even after finding success through design, in terms of acting he felt that the people in the industry in Los Angeles were more closed-minded. He was going on multiple auditions but grew tired of hearing critiques like he had “too many tattoos,” was “too tall,” or “too dark.” Martin disliked that people seemed to focus more on his appearance rather than on his ability to perform. Because of this he decided to move back to New York where he felt more liberated as an artist. In addition to acting and designing, Martin also enjoys photography as a hobby and capturing the essence of an individual. You can see samples of his work below: