At Santa Clara’s Valley Fair Mall, walk past Dior and glance across the hall at Diptyque before stepping into Atlas, a boutique that curates ethically sourced, sustainable pieces from small fashion brands. One of those brands, a retro Hollywood and 70s surf culture-styled line called Last Minute, was conceptualized, designed and founded by Menlo alum Lauren Lawson ‘21.
From selling 50,000 dollars worth of designed and curated merchandise as her sorority apparel chair to starting an environmentally-focused fashion publication called Blu3 Skie Magazine at Menlo, Lawson’s life revolves around her love for fashion, a love that sparked at the Parsons Pre-College program in Paris, France, the summer before her junior year at Menlo. “[After that program] I realized I was going to do everything I possibly could to work in this industry, and I didn’t care what it took,” Lawson said.
At Menlo, Lawson infused fashion into every aspect of her Menlo experience through curating Menlo drama costumes, designing sustainable pieces for the climate coalition week and taking as many arts classes as she possibly could. Beyond the arts opportunities Menlo offered, Lawson applied what she had learned about taking initiative and communication in classes to start Blu3 Skie Magazine, which started as an Instagram platform discussing topics like the fashion industry, fast fashion and global warming. “It eventually turned into my total passion project,” Lawson said. As Blu3 Skie Magazine’s audience grew, Lawson hired approximately 80 interns from around the Bay Area, who wrote, edited, designed and managed what turned into a publication focused on a variety of topics from fashion to mental health. Lawson and her team later donated the profits from print editions they published to the National Eating Disorder Awareness (NEDA) organization.
Frustrated by the lack of fashion opportunities throughout her college experience and encouraged by her success as apparel chair for the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority at Villanova University, Lawson channeled her passion for fashion into conceptualizing a potential fashion brand. What started as a hobby Lawson worked on in her free time the summer before her senior year of college, soon had a name, storyline, creative direction and business plan — enough to pitch to potential investors.
With little guidance from others, Lawson used contacts from her days as apparel chair, what she knew about marketing as a communications major and hundreds of resources on entrepreneurship and fashion. She built her company from the ground up, using resources from books to articles to podcasts.“I taught myself everything,” Lawson said. “I’m just always wanting to be the dumbest person in the room, because I just want to always be learning.”
Lawson designed her company with the consumer in mind — every aspect of her entrepreneurial journey is shared on platforms like TikTok and Instagram to ensure real-time feedback on products from the public. “I am a consumer making a brand for the consumer,” Lawson said. “There’s not a piece of it I haven’t touched. Every detail, every little bit of it, is all a culmination of me and all the hard work I’m doing, not necessarily for profit, but purely for passion.”
Last Minute aims to simplify trends into staples and capsule collections anyone can feel confident in while remaining ethically sourced and locally made. “Now that I’m able to do this full time, I can really put my 100% into it,” Lawson said.
Moving forward, Lawson hopes to expand her company through collaborations with other fashion brands and retail locations or pop-ups, and credits Menlo with instilling in her the ambition and drive to get where she wants to be in the industry she loves. “I feel so lucky that I am so passionate about something because a lot of people don’t feel this way about a specific career,” Lawson said. In a world with so many expectations about the professional lives of young adults, Lawson advises Menlo students to always pursue what brings them joy, follow their passions even when doing so is difficult or scary and be present in the moment for all of it.
