Charlie's Girls junior label was founded by designer Erika Elias. In the 1970s, Anna Sui discovered the brand after seeing it's ads featured in Rags magazine. While attending Parsons, she overheard two seniors chatting in the lunch room about a position opening up at Charlie's Girls for a junior design assistant. She ran over with her student portfolio, landed the job, dropped out of Parsons at 21, and never looked back.
"When I got the job, she gave me my own design room with a draper and two sewers. And there were four divisions and I could do anything I wanted within those four divisions. The one thing that she always was a stickler about was research, like finding the best gingham—the gingham that we could afford the minimums and get the color we want. She was just such a stickler that you had to really, really research and give her a choice of things, so that she could choose what would work the best for us instead of just somebody else really doing that part. I learned the fabric market that way from her. She was just a very, very disciplined person. People would say that if you work for Erika, you could do anything because she was such a tough boss. So I think that was really a fortunate first job." - Anna Sui
