Jazmin Larian Hekmat, founder of the Cult Gaia brand

In my spare time, I’d make these goddess-inspired flower crowns that my friends and I would wear around town; we had several people quite literally stop and ask us if they could buy them off our heads. A friend urged me to turn my flower crown hobby into a business, and I did; I expanded my offering from flower crowns to turbans, created using vintage fabrics I’d collected over the years. From that humble beginning, the brand evolved into what it is today.