Women Who Build Businesses on Their Own Terms

For Briana Lee, her own brand has never been simply a business project. LoveCashionista grew out of her love for fashion and art, and her desire to turn ideas and emotions into something real and tangible. Back in ninth grade, Briana took a fashion illustration class and realized for the first time that she wanted to build her life around fashion.

“Fashion is an expression for me when I can’t put things into words,” she says.

The idea for her own brand came later. In 2019, Briana learned how to crochet. At first, it was simply a new creative hobby, but she quickly saw far more potential in the technique. In 2020, she officially launched LoveCashionista.

Today, it is an independent accessories brand that exists somewhere at the intersection of contemporary design and wearable art. Its foundation is statement earrings, sculptural bags, custom accessories, and experimental one-of-one pieces. Briana makes virtually every one of them by hand.

Not Waiting for Perfect Conditions

Stories about women founders are often presented as a sequence of perfectly calculated steps — an idea, a business plan, a team, production, growth. LoveCashionista’s story looks different.

There is no large production team, no outsourcing, and no mass manufacturing. Today, the brand essentially operates as a one-woman atelier: Briana develops the ideas, crochets the pieces, and communicates directly with her customers. She also works without patterns and does not always know in advance what the final result will look like.

“I don’t use patterns. I freehand everything. It’s more of a feeling for me,” she explains.

The starting point might be an unexpected color combination, an unusual yarn, or simply a material that catches her attention. Sometimes the form changes while she is already working. Briana does not even use mannequins — she only truly sees the result once the piece is on a person. That freedom from a rigid plan has become one of LoveCashionista’s defining qualities.

“Crochet is easy to transform. Something’s never really truly messed up — you can turn it into something.”

In a fashion industry built around precision, seasonal cycles, and repeatability, this approach can feel almost radical. A mistake does not necessarily need to be corrected — sometimes it becomes the beginning of an entirely new form.

Accessories as Freedom

LoveCashionista deliberately avoids the traditional system of seasonal collections. Accessories — above all earrings and bags — sit at the center of the brand. And that choice is intentional.

“Accessories allow me to not put myself in a box,” Briana says.

For her, the idea of one size fits all is about more than practicality. It creates far more room for experimentation and removes many of the limitations that inevitably come with designing clothing. Earrings do not require a size range, and bags can be worn by almost anyone — allowing the designer to focus on color, texture, scale, and the character of the object itself.

A pair of earrings takes her around 20–30 minutes to make, while a bag takes one to two hours. A custom order usually takes about a week. But speed does not mean standardization. On the contrary, two completely identical pieces practically do not exist.

“When you get a piece from me, you know it was handmade. It never looks the same twice.”

A Business That Stays Personal

This is one of the most interesting things about LoveCashionista as a young independent brand. As they grow, many brands try to separate the founder from the production process as quickly as possible. Briana is currently choosing the opposite model.

Every piece passes through her hands, and customers communicate directly with the designer. Colors, sizes, materials, chains, or color combinations can be customized. This level of personalization becomes a natural part of the brand precisely because the production process has not been turned into an assembly line.

Briana also intentionally tries to keep her prices relatively accessible. Earrings are priced at around $50, bags at approximately $150–$200, while custom projects vary depending on their complexity. She describes her pricing philosophy as reasonable rather than aligned with a traditional luxury tier: it matters to her that handmade design remains attainable without losing its value.

For a young brand, this means constantly searching for a balance between growing the business and preserving the individuality that made it worth creating in the first place.

Making the Unusual Beautiful

Briana’s character comes through especially clearly in her choice of materials. Alongside traditional yarn, she might use scrubby yarn typically intended for dish sponges, decorative holiday tinsel, multicolored fibers, or deliberately asymmetrical chains.

“I like non-traditional materials and turning them into fashion.”

Perfect symmetry interests her far less than the character of a piece. Briana might intentionally disrupt the balance, alter the placement of a chain, or combine contrasting textures so that an accessory never feels too perfect. Ask her to choose between symmetry and asymmetry, and the answer is immediate.

“Asymmetrical. I like weird stuff.”

Perhaps that is precisely why LoveCashionista is difficult to fit into the conventional idea of a crochet brand. Here, crochet is not simply a decorative technique, but a full-fledged design tool — one that allows Briana to experiment with materials, proportions, and the very idea of what a fashion object can be.

Glowing Literally and Metaphorically

One of LoveCashionista’s most distinctive experiments is the Glow Up capsule. For it, Briana uses glow-in-the-dark yarn in earrings, bags, and tops. Under certain lighting conditions, the pieces literally transform, becoming objects that are difficult to ignore. But for the designer, Glow Up is about more than a visual effect.

“Glow Up isn’t just literal — it’s about feeling like you’re glowing up.”

Behind this play with light is a simple, recognizable idea — confidence, transformation, and giving yourself permission to be seen. Briana wants people to feel a little bolder when they wear her work.

When asked what she wants people to feel in LoveCashionista, her answer is just as concise: confident. Like they’re glowing up.

Building a Brand Without Losing Yourself

In this sense, Briana Lee’s story goes far beyond earrings or crochet bags. It represents one possible model of contemporary female entrepreneurship — independent, deeply personal, and uninterested in copying the structure of major fashion companies from day one.

LoveCashionista exists without mass production and without the need to release a new collection simply because the industry calendar demands one. Briana builds the brand around what genuinely interests her: color, texture, unusual materials, asymmetry, and the freedom to change an idea while bringing it to life. And perhaps it is exactly this ability not to conform to an existing system that has become one of the greatest strengths of a new generation of independent women founders.

Asked to describe LoveCashionista in three words, Briana says: “Fun. Exciting. Unpredictable.”

And if she had to choose just one — “Unique.”

Perhaps that best describes not only the brand itself, but also the principle behind it: rather than trying to fit perfectly into the existing fashion system, Briana is gradually creating a space within it on her own terms.

Photos & Brand: Briana Lee (LoveCashionista)
Model: Nikyta Forman