Most 14-year-olds spent the Covid-19 lockdown learning TikTok dances and playing Among Us. Jingyi Luo, now a 19-year-old student at Parsons School of Design, launched a fashion brand “for fun.” After Luo’s grandmother taught her to sew, the Australian teenager experimented with selling her own designs and vintage clothing on Depop. By the end of 2021, LovebyVenus was born.

“I just always wanted to see what would happen if I tried [starting a brand] myself, but I really never knew if that was going to be possible,” Luo tells Fashionista.

Anchored in a romantically feminine aesthetic, LovebyVenus pays homage to its namesake — the Roman goddess of love herself — through whimsical lace mini dresses and ruffled babydoll tops. With an artistic background in drawing and painting, Luo was also inspired by the art world’s centuries-old fascination with Venus’ beauty, spanning classical statues to Renaissance-era masterpieces. At its core, LovebyVenus is about “this feminine nature and this celebration of femininity,” Luo says.

The brand is also grounded in nostalgia, mirroring the growing trend of younger generations reminiscing on the simpler days of their (not-so-distant) youth. Case in point: The Melbourne-based brand’s Summer 2026 collection titled “Sugar Lawn” was inspired by the summer Luo spent with her childhood best friend and her sister running wild on the family’s farm. It’s the very portrait of girlhood, manifested in a breezy cotton slip dress, a bright coral pink skirt and a slouchy, lace-embellished top.

Luo’s OG Depop account lives on through LovebyVenus’ curated selection of vintage finds that she accumulates during her travels or sources via eBay and Buyee (a Japanese proxy website). LovebyVenus’ one-off vintage pieces typically align aesthetically with the brand’s most recent collection, but Luo is focused on scaling the brand’s vintage selection to meet consumer demand.

After building her direct-to-consumer business throughout high school, Luo set her sights on attending university in New York City, and one art-focused college stood out from the rest. “It’s always been my dream to go to Parsons and live in New York,” she shares. “That was one of my main motivations to continue and persevere through all the high school stuff while running the brand.” With her parents’ support, she hopped on the 22-hour flight to NYC, and this spring, Luo completed her freshman year as a Parsons fashion design student.

Navigating college is already challenging enough, but adding the responsibilities of a business owner on top of that sets the stage for even more headaches. There’s also a logistical snag: Luo isn’t currently able to work in the U.S., meaning she works as much as possible when she’s home in Melbourne and then passes off the business operations to her parents when she returns to NYC. Every design detail and photoshoot idea is logged before her departure, which has taught Luo to organize six-month business plans for her parents to execute. “As long as I have people that support me and that see my vision through, it gets done in the end,” she says.

Plus, attending Parsons as a brand founder has its perks: Luo’s classes have explored topics like sustainability, production processes and fashion illustration — all of which can inform Luo’s strategy for LovebyVenus. Parsons’ fashion design curriculum also highlighted various artistic approaches such as photography, painting, drawing and sculpture, offering Luo an opportunity to “expand [her] vision.”

“Before having any formal fashion training, I relied on…advice that I had heard from other people or things that I had learned on the internet, so I could never feel 100% sure of myself,” Luo says. “But after speaking to a lot of professors and people in the industry in New York, I’ve been encouraged to be more confident in myself and have better boundaries for myself.”

From the get-go, Luo didn’t concern herself with chasing skyrocketing revenues. (LovebyVenus brings in approximately $75,000 annually, she says.) Instead, it’s always been about building a tight-knit community. Since securing its first sales thanks to its social media presence, LovebyVenus has grown to more than 30,000 Instagram followers. Further traction (and viral products) came from influencer gifting, which Luo admittedly thought wouldn’t work out at first.

However, LovebyVenus’ reach goes beyond online interactions: The label hosted a three-day pop-up in Melbourne last year to connect with its community in person and receive real-time feedback on its designs. Looking ahead, Luo has big goals for the brand, including growing that community; she wants to host more pop-ups and increase her collection drops. She’s also interested in collaborating with other artists, be it female poets, visual artists or photographers.

“I always have envisioned the brand being more of a community than just me behind it,” she adds. Her big-picture goal? Opening a brick-and-mortar store, whether that’s in Melbourne or elsewhere. But at just 19 years old, Luo is focusing on what’s in front of her: building LovebyVenus (and its community) one step at a time.

“At this point in my life, I don’t really care too much for the revenue and sales aspect of it,” Luo says. “I think because I’m still a young creative, I want to just keep developing my vision,”

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