Junior Donna Adi Yehuda, has recently taken on a new venture. She has just launched a new line for the clothing company she has been running for the past three years.
Point Blank LA is a T-shirt company that focuses on Los Angeles art and culture. The line uses 100 percent organic cotton and features a blog that Yehuda, 20, describes as an online magazine, meant to inform the public about the brand and lifestyle it promotes.
“It is an art-focused clothing line, with the idea of living through art and expressing that through a T-shirt,” Yehuda said. “The major influences are music, art, comic books, album covers, and life.”
Point Blank LA’s new line, Back to Basics, focuses on hand drawn art, which means there was no graphics, computer editing, or Photoshop used to design the shirts.
“(We) gravitated towards the original formation of art, what art really was back in the day, raw talent,” Yehuda said.
Although all the company’s shirts are made with 100 percent organic cotton, this is not at the request of Yehuda but rather based on the product her seller provides.
“It’s the fabric we order, it could be temporary,” she said.
The business marketing major said she started Point Blank LA while still in high school.
“I started it as a hobby and turned it into a business,” Yeduda said. “In high school, I would get (iron on) sheets from Michaels, draw designs and iron them on shirts. I’d go around my high school with a duffel bag and sell them.”
Yeduda said an influential moment in her came in the form of the Agenda Trade Show, a massive forum for action sports and street wear.
“What was most influential was the idea behind it, the industry turning something big out of nothing,” she said. “All of these major clothing lines all started from few graphic tees, now they have everything from shoes to sweaters. You can go into something so massive from something so small with drive and perseverance.”
Yehuda has gained recognition through word of mouth and fashion shows. She has been in five fashion shows, including three at CSUN, a Haiti benefit, and one for Industry Boys, a men’s clothing company. She started the company’s website in 2008 with the intention of reaching the masses and making her line more accessible to people, and now sells worldwide. Her shirts can also be found at the International Dance Academy (IDA) Hollywood.
Yehuda said finding people who understand her dream and passion as well as wanting to work as hard as she does is a big challenge. Her staff consists of two people, a creative director and manufacturer.
“I’m a one woman show, everything is on me,” Yehuda said. “Getting to where I want to be is more about being hard working. You can go and get a fashion degree, but what will that mean to you? Nothing is a guarantee that a line will sell. The fact that everything isn’t a guarantee is the biggest challenge.”
