THE
EMMIE
ISSUE.

Before PGLE, being lost looked like waking up every day and doing the same thing. No real changes, just autopilot. I was grieving, battling my mental health and still keeping a smile on my face while a million thoughts ran through my head. I was trying to figure out where I belonged while trying to heal from untreated trauma and wounds I had buried so deep because staying “normal” and sane for everybody else felt easier than opening them back up.

I had lost a few really good people close to me, and those losses changed my life. For a long time I was not building toward some big dream. I was letting time pass me by. I was functioning, but inside I was still trying to understand grief, myself and what my life was supposed to look like after losing people who had been such important parts of it.

I have always been shy and stayed to myself, but shy has never meant I do not have a personality. Once you actually know me, I am funny, outgoing, loving, giving, humble and selfless as fuck. I love hustling. I have been hustling since I was 15, moved out at 18 and have been supporting myself and figuring life out on my own ever since. At one point I was literally a nail tech. I never imagined myself making clothes, owning a fashion brand or becoming somebody's CEO.

What I did always know was that I wanted something involving girls. I wanted to mentor girls. I wanted my own community. I wanted to meet girls like me and create the kind of genuine support I had spent so much time looking for myself. I had been around selfish people and people who did not return the same love I gave them, and I wanted so badly to find something different.

“PUT YOUR CREATIVITY INTO SOMETHING FOR THEM.”

At one of my angels' funerals, I heard a pastor say those words and it felt like he was speaking directly to me. I sat there with my eyes closed, bawling my eyes out. I am Muslim, but I still believe people can speak life into other people, and that is exactly what I felt happened in that moment. I did not leave the funeral knowing I was going to create PGLE. I did not consciously connect those words to a business. They just stayed somewhere inside me.

By then, grief had already changed so much of my life. I had experienced multiple losses over the years, and somehow that one sentence stayed with me through all of it. Looking back now, I realize how deeply it manifested into my life. I took creativity that did not have a home yet, grief I did not know what to do with, and love for people I could no longer call, and eventually I poured it into something that gave me a reason to keep moving.

THEN FEBRUARY 2025 CHANGED EVERYTHING.

I started planning my birthday. That was literally it. I was not planning a fashion career. I was not planning to become a founder. I was just planning my birthday, and somehow that one decision woke something back up in me. By May, those ideas had started becoming PrettyGirlsLoveEmmie.

Some of the earliest ideas included PrettyGirlxHeartbreak and PrettyGirlxCheetah before Pretty Girls Love Emmie became the identity. What began as something for my birthday kept growing after the celebration was over. For the first time in a long time, I was not just letting days happen to me anymore. I had something to wake up and build. Something to think about. Something that was mine.

PGLE became my first baby and the place where I learned everything in real time — branding, products, drops, streetwear, campaigns, shoots, websites and community. I did not enter this knowing how to do all of that. I learned because I cared enough to keep figuring it out.

And the craziest part is that it still feels surreal. At photoshoots, when I get the pictures back, when an order comes through, sometimes I catch myself watching my own life in third person like, “what the fuck… this is all you?” I do not know if that feeling will ever completely go away.

I still get scared. I am not the face of my brand, and I never want to be. Being behind the vision feels more natural to me. Being shy has made collaborations difficult for me before because meeting up with people can have me in complete work mode with my anxiety on ten. Criticism used to hit me deeply too. Nowadays I take it with a grain of salt and keep moving. But being scared has never made me want to stop. Stopping has never crossed my mind. I built this from the ground up, and ever since I started I have had this rush to keep going.

PGLE did not turn me into a completely different person. It gave me a position where I could use who I already was for something bigger. I became a CEO to other girls like me — girls who may be shy, overlooked, still finding their voice or just looking for somewhere they belong. I spent so much time wanting to find that community that somewhere along the way, I realized I was building it.

When PGLE is turned off, I am still Emmie. I am a girls' girl. I am a listening ear. I love helping people. I will put everybody else first before remembering myself. I am nice, smart, creative, loving and genuine. A lot of people might see my mean mug and think I am mean, whole time I could be having an anxiety attack on the inside. I am working on that day by day.

Ever since creating PGLE, I finally feel like I found my purpose. I know I am still young. I am still learning, healing and becoming different versions of myself. PGLE gets to become those versions with me. I do not see this as something I will grow out of. I want this to evolve with me for the rest of my life.

Sometimes I wish I could call my angels and tell them what I am doing now, or receive one more DM or message saying they are proud of me. When they were here, even the smallest accomplishments I made were praised. I wonder what they would say seeing all of this now. I hope this is something they are proud to watch me build.

And I am still dreaming bigger. I want PGLE to keep growing, but I also want to become a manufacturer one day and help other brands like mine grow too. I want everything I had to learn from the ground up to eventually become something I can use to make the road easier for somebody else.