Martin came to prominence with her first major film credit alongside Luhrmann on his feature directorial debut Strictly Ballroom (1992), which later became the first installment of the "Red Curtain Trilogy".

[2] She and her brother grew up in Sydney but spent a lot of time with their grandparents in France's Loire Valley, visiting "every art gallery, every museum" along the way.

[2] Martin cited The Wizard of Oz as her childhood inspiration and an extraordinary journey to take when she was 10, and then Gone with the Wind as the movie that, at age 13, changed her life from a fashion perspective.

At that time, Luhrmann returned to NIDA looking for young designers with whom he planned to stage his one-act play, Strictly Ballroom, and Martin did some work on that production.

[7] Martin's first professional engagement came after graduation when she began working on Luhrmann's environmental opera experiment, Lake Lost, staged at a television studio in Melbourne to celebrate the Australian Bicentenary in 1988.

[8] Martin gained international acclaim when she entered the film industry, recreating her designs in Luhrmann's feature directorial debut, Strictly Ballroom (1992), the first part of the "Red Curtain Trilogy".

It was a major financial success and received widespread acclaim from critics and audiences, who lauded the acting, direction, and production values.

For their next project together, the pair teamed up adaptating Luhrmann's earlier Australian production of La bohème for Broadway theatre, which opened to critical acclaim in December 2002.

[13] Luhrmann and Martin started working on the cinematic reinvention of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic, The Great Gatsby, a novel that she had not read since adolescence and had not much appreciated as a teenager.

[15] For their ambitious purpose of trying to achieve an authentic feeling for the film but also something connective for a modern audience, the pair consulted academic texts about the novel as well as historical analyses pertaining to both Fitzgerald and his work.

[17] Before filming started, Luhrmann said that since the book took place in 1922 and was published in 1925 but foreshadowed the economic crash of 1929, anything within that decade was appropriate to borrow for design purposes.

[14] This approach gives Martin more room to play with trends and flattering pieces, such as her choice to dress lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio in slimmer-cut suits, a decision that otherwise would not be typical for the time period in which the depicted events are taking place.

[16] Her inspiration came from the works of 1920s British designer Syrie Maugham as well as the iconic turn-of-the-century houses on Long Island, such as Beacon Towers for Gatsby's mansion and Old Westbury Gardens for the Buchanans' estate.

She also gave credit to the 1920s silent film designs, particularly those of Sunrise (1927) and Speedy (1928), for inspiring Gatsby's high-gloss Art Deco visual style.