Community Highlights: Meet Nellie Stokeld of Gravitatas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Nellie Stokeld.

Hi Nellie, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’m Nellie, a Los Angeles-based entrepreneur and founder of Gravitatas, a supportive sleepwear brand. I’m originally from Wine Country, California where I caught the entrepreneurship bug growing up in my parents’ British pub. I loved seeing my gregarious English dad interact with the butchers, bartenders, and musicians who made his business what it was. After graduating from college in the aftermath of the Great Recession, I tried my hand at running a food business, turning my dad’s recipes into a mobile catering company in the Bay Area, selling British meat pies to techies, breweries, and festival attendees. Ultimately, the food scene wasn’t for me.

I made my way to New York out of curiosity for what kind of jobs and career paths existed for creative, kinda offbeat people like me. There, I started working on film and TV sets, doing food styling and floral design, but somehow landed in the same industry I’d left the Bay Area to avoid: tech.

I’d had an idea for a bra company for years, as someone who had big boobs and a small band and was incredibly frustrated with the lack of available options for the “after-hours,” the time when most women are flinging their bras across the room. I wanted something comfy, supportive, and cute to wear at home. So I started toying around with the idea.
Finally, after getting laid off from my tech job in February 2023—and finding creative momentum in Los Angeles—I was able to focus on the project full-time. That’s when Gravitatas was born.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There have been so many challenges! With no formal background in apparel design or product development I had no idea how many choices I’d need to make on every minute detail. Strap thickness, fabric quality, hook & eye enclosures, curvatures of the seam; everything needs to be pored over obsessively. Meanwhile, my journey finding a manufacturer who would work with small quantities and deliver our first orders has spanned the pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, and Trumps tariffs. I’m currently in a standoff with my bra manufacturer who, in spite of promises made during my site visit in Sri Lanka, has managed to set us back at least 6 months. Manufacturing a product from start to finish is not for the faint of heart!

Meanwhile, my frustration with the available options while my product was still in development ultimately led me to have a breast reduction in the fall of 2022, a few months after arriving in LA from New York. Women are secretly complaining and offering advice and sympathy for the #bigboobstruggle online know firsthand the frustration of not being able to find a comfortable way to feel supported at home. All the design back and forth, the confusion from manufacturers about offering such large cup capacities to relatively petite frames, has been absolutely worth it. To provide my fit testers and models with something theyre excited to put on is such a thrill.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Gravitatas?
This is a really exciting time for me, as my business baby, Gravitatas, has just launched. Gravitatas is a supportive sleepwear brand for women with DD–J cups and small bands—because while big boobs are idolized, they’re still wildly underserved.
Our bread and butter product, the Remi bra, is a supportive bralette designed for after-hours lounging, sleeping, and slow mornings. It’s still in production (expected to arrive stateside in August!), but in the meantime, we launched our first product this spring: the Sleepie, a breast pillow for side sleepers. It helps prevent wrinkles and offers soft support for anyone with sensitive breasts—especially around their period or during pregnancy.
To celebrate the launch, we threw a slumber party at the Casper store in Santa Monica, complete with mocktails, a life-sized Sleepie pillow photo op, and a game of Truth or Dare. What started as a cheeky launch event turned into a surprisingly emotional night. We shared stories about body image, puberty trauma, and the weight—literal and emotional—of having breasts of any size.
Since then, we’ve been building an IRL community around body comfort, reclaiming the narrative around big boobs, and humor—from a sound bath with D.S. & Durga to a busty-friendly water aerobics party coming this summer.

Who else deserves credit in your story?
So many people. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my community here in Los Angeles. One of the most unexpected blessings of starting Gravitatas has been the ability to support myself through freelance creative work while building a brand from the ground up. That flexibility wouldn’t exist without the incredibly generous artists, filmmakers, and producers who’ve brought me onto their sets and projects.
Friends in the film and photogray world—many of them actor/director hyphenates—have trusted me to jump into totally new roles: sound engineer, production assistant, assistant director, set dresser, you name it.
LA gets a bad rap for being flaky or fake, but what I’ve found here is a deeply collaborative, experimental spirit. It’s like that game, 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon, in LA, you’re always a few texts or kismet run ins away from your ideal collaborator. I’m currently manifesting getting my bra to Billie Eillish and Renee Rapp and have the kind of delulu confidence in this city to make it happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nelliestokeld.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gravitatas/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelliestokeld/
• Other: https://gravitatas.com/

Image Credits
Aly Whitman, Faith Davis