Meet Laura Brown of Pretty Sour in DTLA

Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Brown.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Laura. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I started sewing back in high school when Etsy had just become really cool. I just made one-off pieces draping fabric on my little styrofoam mannequin. It was very DIY and to be quite honest most of it was not good, but it gave me an outlet for a lot of issues that I was going through at the time. After a while, I started building a little collection of weird garments, and without anything else to do with them, I started doing fashion shows at some all ages night clubs in San Diego.

Once I graduated high school, I moved to LA for fashion school. I went to school during the day, worked at night and continued designing and sewing one of a kind pieces on the weekends. The week that I moved to LA, I was immersed in the Japanese fashion and kawaii culture scene when Sanrio approached me to make a one of a kind dress for Hello Kitty’s 30th-anniversary fashion show, which was my first real validation that I could do this as a career. After that I toyed around with my first brand, I think it was called Candy Spooky back then.

I continued making one of a kind pieces, doing fashion shows in LA, and selling here and there on Etsy or at craft fairs. The problem was that I really didn’t understand how to go about making clothing in a variety of sizes or how to produce clothes for a broader audience (even though that’s exactly what I went to school for lol). It wasn’t until I finally found a job in the fashion industry that the pieces all fell together to allow me to launch Pretty Sour.

I spent my first couple of years out of college working in product development, and now I’m a fit technician for a big fashion company and many of the skills I use day to day transfer directly to my business. I spend every moment I’m not at work developing, sewing and promoting Pretty Sour. I make all of the patterns, I grade all of the patterns from sizes XS to size 5X, and up until a couple of months ago I was the only one sewing all of the garments that I sell exclusively through my website PrettySour.com.

Has it been a smooth road?
The struggle was real from the moment I began honestly. When I started sewing in high school, I had just been kicked out of my home in Louisiana for just generally being a difficult teen. I lived with my brother for a while in San Diego, but we couldn’t afford the rent on our own, so I moved in with my high school boyfriend and his parents who I owe so much gratitude to. Because of this I really think that I threw myself into sewing as a distraction and it ended up being a lifelong passion.

14 years later and I feel really lucky to have come so far, but it is still a continuous struggle. I worked nonstop for a year trying to re-build my brand after a long hiatus in my mid-twenties and truly the only reason I was able to afford the startup costs of my business was because my boyfriend and I were injured in a really rough car accident back in 2017 and we received an injury settlement.

We both have some lingering health issues because of it, but in a dark way, I have to feel grateful. Wealth is so hard to attain in our country but even more so in a big city like Los Angeles so when I got that money I knew I had to throw every penny of it into my business. However, the biggest hurdle I had to overcome happened literally three days before the launch of my clothing line. At the time I was working as a technical designer for Torrid. It was a really exciting time for me because it was my first big corporate job, so I made sure to tell them all about my clothing line before I was hired.

Everyone in the company knew that I had a side business and would ask me “Hey how’s Pretty Sour coming.” I really felt like I had found the perfect balance between work and my own business and to have the people I worked for supporting me felt amazing. Then like I said… three days before the launch of my website, the director of my department pulled me aside and told me that they realized that my clothing line was actually a conflict of interest.

She told me to choose between my job or my business. I left and never went back. But that meant that I was there just about to launch a very expensive possibly not profitable business with absolutely no income and no safety net. The next six months were the longest hardest hustle of my life, but I made ends meet working freelance and had so much free time to work on my own line. I don’t want to say it was a blessing in disguise because I still feel really hurt by what happened, but I do believe that I used that anger to fuel my ambition, and ultimately it did get me where I am today.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Pretty Sour is a slow fashion brand of contemporary streetwear. Being a slow fashion company means sort of rejecting the way we’ve been trained to consume clothing which is awful for garment workers and for the environment. I launch approximately four – five designs a year, each in small batches or made to order to combat wastefulness.

The designs are very colorful and whimsical, using a lot of kitschy prints mixed with graphic appliqués. When I first started, the biggest seller was a plaid shirt dress that has a cheeky little skunk appliqué on the back, and I made matching shirts for cats and dogs that said ” Lil Stinker” on the back. People absolutely love matching their pets.

From the very beginning, it was really important to me that every garment be offered in a wide range of sizes. I’ve been all over the spectrum of plus sized myself in the past couple of years, and it is the worst feeling ever to find a small brand that you love and that you want to buy from and then see that they only offer XS-XL. There is absolutely no reason in 2019 to be a small brand that doesn’t offer plus sizes.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
I can’t imagine doing this anywhere else. I think LA is the best place to be in if you need to fund your small business by working a 9 to 5 regular job like I do, especially if your business is fashion related. For one, the fabric district is a life saver. I make almost bi-weekly trips to the fabric district for little things like trims, notions, fusible interfacing.

Not to mention the giant network of other fashion entrepreneurs here. I’ve been lucky enough to find my own little place in the fashion community here. I have friends who have employed me to sew their production when I was hard on my luck, people I can call when I need a little help sewing my own stuff and other friends who I can go get coffee with and swap resources with.

Contact Info:

• Website: PrettySour.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: @prettysourofficial
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Pretty-Sour-162560670428456/

Image Credit:
Photographers: Laury Woolery & Jamie Hansen
Models: Nkechi Kai, Alexandra Hansen, Liane Petersen, Vanessa Soltero, Mabel Garcia

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.