Laurel Pochucha Ojala

Laurel lives her life with fascination for the world’s people and the stories they tell.

Part designer, part sociologist, part environmentalist, she is forever looking to the past with intrigue and facing the future with optimism. Her work for the past decade and a half has run the gamut from wardrobe styling and costuming for various forms of media, events, and private clients to the sets of major motion pictures. It has been a constant freelance pursuit since earning her BFA in Fashion Design from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2007.

There were also weeks studying traditional Mayan textiles alongside women’s cooperatives in Guatemala, months designing for an NGO with plastic rag pickers in India, and years of cross country trade shows and festivals for an organic and fair trade clothing company based among the redwoods of California’s Central Coast. A move to the foot of the Rockies placed her in a children’s clothing company for a tick, an outdoor apparel company for a speck, and finally three years in the workshop of a master goldsmith in custom jewelry design and sales. Love led her to Shenzhen, China where she lived for well over a year exploring and riding the waves of culture shock with her now husband. She attempted to learn Chinese, tutored English, consulted, designed, and got lost in every fabric market she could. She even dabbled in commercial acting to pay the bills.

Always interested in the magic and possibility of collaboration, she is open to new creative projects in a spectrum of mediums. Most of all she wants to help individuals find their own voice outside of trends, realize the power of purchase and activism against fast fashion, and champion the importance of considering our planet and its plants, animals, and people in our daily choices.