Laura Byrnes founded Pin Up Girl Clothing in Los Angeles in 1997, and she still designs our house collections. She has retired from running the business day to day, so the design studio is where you'll find her now.
Before she made a single dress, Laura spent more than 30 years behind a camera, photographing musicians and artists. Then she started sewing clothes for herself and her daughter, cut like the women she'd seen on vintage pinup calendars and postcards. It began as a rack of hand-sewn clothes in her living room. PinupGirlClothing.com went live in 1999.
From the very first photo shoot for the website, she put customers in front of the camera instead of agency models. Her idea was simple, and back then it was rare: every woman deserves to look and feel beautiful, whatever her size. We've called it Couture for Every Body ever since.
Laura has also run PUG a little like an artists' collective. She has collaborated with artists such as Mary Blair, Evan Dorkin, Stephanie Buscema and Terry Runyan on fabric designs, with Traci Lords and Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, on capsule collections, and with comic artists Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez.
Her designs come in sizes XS to 5X and are made to order, cut just for you once you order, so we make zero surplus. See "Designed by Laura Byrnes" on a product page? That one's hers.