We had the good fortune of connecting with Gwynne Vinstein and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Gwynne, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Bottom line was that I wanted to spend more time with my daughter. I was working very long hours in the corporate fashion world for over 10 years and wanted to slow down. My priorities changed once I had my daughter and I didn’t want to travel as much and miss those important milestones she was hitting. My mindset had also changed, as I was working in fast fashion and started to rethink what that means to us and the environment. It was no longer cool to have a disposable outfit to wear every Friday night. Slow fashion or as I like to say, timeless fashion is more interesting to me and working with my daughter is the cherry on top!

What should our readers know about your business?
Anchors-n-Asteroids is a mother/daughter business. Pearl, who is now 12 yrs. old started drawing portraits at very early age, so with that it all started once I discovered her Bowie portrait. I was blown away by it and thought to myself, (being a jeans and t-shirt type of gal), that I would really like to wear her drawing on a tee. It was a few years later after I decided to leave my position as Trend Director for a fast fashion company that we decided to go for it! We actually launched at Pearl’s Elementary School Craft Fair, Mt. Washington Made. As Pearl told me she wanted to be a kid designing for other kids 🙂 We received such support and positive feedback. Pearl really felt empowered after seeing her classmates wearing her designs!!! I think that separates us from others. I really wanted Pearl to feel a sense of self worth and female empowerment when supporting her in making her own decisions regarding her designs. Hence, she then wanted to support other women too, so after some research we found a women owned/run screen printer! Another key point for Pearl was to use organic cottons and sustainable fabrics. That was probably the most difficult and longest process as we wanted the tees to be super soft and the fit to be just right. There was definitely a lot of trial and error. We’ve learned that mistakes are ok, patience is a virtue and to laugh a lot 🙂

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We live on the Eastside so we’d probably start by having breakfast at Penny Oven, which has the best Dutch Baby pancakes with lemon curd we’ve ever had! Then if it was a beautiful day we might go to the Descanso Gardens or walk around Little Tokyo and then grab lunch at Sushi Gen. We could also head over to The Broad or MOCA on another day to see their latest exhibits and wind up in Silverlake at Cafe Stella for dinner. We’ve been going there for over 20 years and still aren’t tired of it. We love their ambience and pot de creme!!

If it were just up to Ross we would take them to The Schindler House first thing! Then work our way back downtown for dinner and drinks at Redbird.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to give a shoutout to my husband and Pearl’s father, Ross! As another creative , he has always encouraged us to pursue our dream of building a mother/daughter brand. He’s our biggest cheerleader and has always been there with sound advice to help support us through our labor of love!

Website: anchors-n-asteroids.com

Instagram: anchorsnasteroids

Image Credits: picture of me and Pearl by Keith Kleiner

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