When Sophia Amoruso was a dumpster-diving 22-year-old in Portland, the very last thing she probably expected was that, in less than 10 years, she’d become a millionaire CEO. Or that, in the year 2017, Netflix would be rolling out an original show about her life called Girlboss. And yet, both of those things happened.
Before binging Netflix’s Girlboss, set to drop on April 21, it’s wise to acquaint yourself with Amoruso’s legacy — both its triumphs and its controversies. While the fictional account starring Britt Robertson is pretty sensational, Amoruso’s life doesn’t need too much sprucing up to make entertaining. There are enough twists and turns to keep you hooked until the very last slide.
It just goes to show that life is a long, winding, and unpredictable road. Think of Sophia Amoruso as a millennial Cinderella, weaving vintage rags into veritable riches before our very eyes.
If you’re interested, pick up her memoir and guide to life, #Girlboss, for a deep dive into the Nasty Gal founder’s thought processes.
Meet Sophia Amoruso.
Let’s get to know the subject of the tale, shall we? When Sophia was 22, she planted seeds for a company that would blossom into Nasty Gal. Ten years down the line, the 32-year-old entrepreneur has an estimated net worth £225 million.
How the heck does one travel from struggling anarchist to millionaire? In the case of Amoruso, it doesn’t take an Ivy League degree or rich parents. It just takes business sense, branding, and quite a bit of pluck.
@sophiamorusoSophia was a wild child, in a wild childhood.
While Girlboss takes place in San Francisco, Sophia wasn’t always based in the City by the Bay. Due to her family’s financial situation, she moved around California often. Amoruso ended up attending 10 schools over the course of her 12-year education.
School wasn’t really Amoruso's thing. In fact, her fourth grade teacher used to send home a litany of her daily misbehaviours.
Here’s how she puts it in her memoir #Girlboss: “I felt [school] was the Man’s way of training America’s youth to endure a lifetime repeating the behaviours taught in school, but in an office environment. I felt like a prisoner.”
@sophiaamorusoShe attributes her success to a string of "shitty jobs."
Before becoming the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation, Amoruso went through a phase of “job promiscuity," as she puts is. In her early teens and 20s, she worked at Subway, Borders, two orthopaedic shoe stores, a hydroponic plant store, a dry cleaner, and a restaurant, which she quit after one day.
Her last job pre-Nasty Gal was working as a campus safety host in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Amoruso says she got a lot out of that phase in her life: “What all of these jobs taught me is that you have to be willing to tolerate some shit you don’t like — at least for a while. This is what my parents’ generation would call 'character-building,' but I call it #GIRLBOSS training.”
@sophiamorusoFor a while there, she was a straight-up anarchist.
At the age of 15, Amoruso found the philosophy she'd been looking for in anarchism. She aspired to be wild, free, and liberated from a 9-to-5.
So, at 17, she left on her anarchist Great Adventure, which involved hitchhiking to Olympia, Washington, dating someone who lived in a tree house, dumpster-diving for Krispy Kreme donuts, and decorating her house with stolen goods.
@sophiaamorusoShe had a history of stealing.
How did this anarchist support herself? By preying off the capitalist suckers, that’s how. While living in a commune of anarchists in Olympia, Amoruso started a book shoplifting scheme. She checked Amazon for the bestsellers, stole them from stores using her friend Mack’s special technique, and sold them on Amazon for ten cents less than other sellers.
In # Girlboss, Amoruso details her money-making schemes, and the different techniques she used for swiping assorted items, from wine to rugs. But she was 20, she stopped stealing cold turkey and moved to San Francisco.
@sophiaamorusoNasty Gal was born from a competitive spirit.
While living in San Francisco, vintage was all the rage. Amoruso said her own decade was the ‘70s, and regularly dressed in polyester pants and platform shoes.
After being bombarded with emails from eBay vintage stores, Amoruso decided she could do that, too. She had the eye. She had the drive. All she had to do was learn the business.
@sophiaamorusoThe meaning behind “Nasty Gal”
It’s simple: “Nasty Gal” was named after an album by the funk singer Betty Davis (not to be confused with Hollywood diva Bette Davis).
Amoruso was inspired by Davis’s unapologetically fierce attitude and unique fashion sensibility. As she wrote in Girl Boss, “I thought I was just picking a name for an eBay store, but it turned out that I was actually infusing the entire brand with not only my spirit, but the spirit of this incredible woman.”
It all begins in a pool house.
By day, Amoruso was bouncing from estate sale to estate sale, unearthing vintage gems. But she needed a place to store her treasures. So, she moved somewhere cheap: a pool house with no kitchen, which cost £400 a month to rent.
After that, she was attached to a chaotic 24/7 schedule of MySpace marketing, photo shoots, customer support, and paying models with burgers and Starbucks (seriously).
@sophiaamorusoThere’s trouble in eBay City.
By the time she was 23, Amoruso’s auctions were making about £2,000 a day. But the community of other eBay vintage sellers weren’t amused by the wild child. A controversy resulted in Nasty Gal getting booted off eBay.
Amoruso took this as an opportunity to push Nasty Gal to the next level. She bought the URL nastagalvintage.com, and moved from the pool house to a larger space.
From there, Nasty Gal was well on its way.
@sophiaamorusoThere’s trouble in Nasty Gal city.
For some time, Nasty Gal was on a surefire trajectory to success. Recently, though, the company has come under public scrutiny.
For one, there have been multiple accusations of copied designs. In 2013, jewellery designer SaylorRose accused Nasty Gal of stealing her designs. Amoruso responded by saying, “Congrats, you've been knocked off. It's a rite of passage." Later in 2013, the bag designer Sophia Webster publicly accused Nasty Gal of the same thing.
But it was in 2015 that the real trouble brewed. Amoruso stepped down as CEO amidst public complaints and lawsuits from former employees, who claimed they were unlawfully terminated and treated badly.
Then, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy and closed all brick-and-mortar stores.
@sophiaamorusoSo then what’s #GIRLBOSS?
While Nasty Gal has been experiencing some ups and downs, Amoruso has poured her energy into creating an ethos for herself, and that ethos is #Girlboss, the name of her memoir and personal philosophy.
What makes someone a Girlboss? In Amoruso’s words, “A #GIRLBOSS is someone who’s in charge of her own life. She gets what she wants because she works for it... You’re going to take over the world, and change it in the process. You’re a badass.”
Put that on a pillowcase.
@sophiaamorusoGirlboss comes to Netflix.
Amoruso’s life and times come to Netflix in an original TV show, “loosely” based on true events. The show stars Britt Robertson as Amoruso, and Ellie Reed as Annie, Sophia’s (fictional) sidekick and BFF for life.
While Nasty Gal may have encountered trouble, executive producer Charlize Theron doesn’t think that diminishes Amoruso's story, as portrayed in Girlboss.
“I love the idea that we should encourage girls to not feel, at 19, that they're too young to chase their dreams. There's a world to do what they want to do, and that's what I want to support,” Theron says.
@sophiaamorusoGirlboss comes to Netflix on April 21.
Now that you know the preliminary context, you can jump right into Girlboss like Sophia, long ago, dove into a dumpster for a Krispy Kreme.
@sophiaamorusoLike what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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