His name is Brandin Vaughn, and he is quietly standing at the forefront of a movement in the St. Louis fashion industry. The city has plenty of designers, but Vaughn is among the few operating his own boutique. it’s a storefront on Cherokee St. in south St. Louis where you can walk in and see the designer cutting patterns and creating garments in the back.
For Vaughn, it’s a long way from modest beginnings as a kid in a struggling family who cut up and redesigned clothes his mother bought at Goodwill so he could fit in at school. He took his pragmatic approach to the art of fashion to design school in Chicago, then into the business world. Now he wants to be a player in the re-emergence of the fashion industry in St. Louis.