What started as a temporary wildfire relief pop up for teenage girls impacted by the Eaton Fire has turned into a full-fledged operation for Avery Colvert, the 14-year-old founder of Altadena Girls, which recently signed a 10,700-square-foot lease for a permanent space in Old Pasadena and is looking to hire full-time employees.

“When you lose your home, you kind of lose a part of yourself,” Colvert said, who initially watched many of her friends’ houses burn, as well as her middle school, Eliot Arts Magnet Academy. “I really wanted to help. I was begging my parents to please take me home so I can take my clothes out of my closet and bring them to them.”

The next day, Colvert’s parents helped her set up a donation drop-off center at a creative studio in Boyle Heights which quickly became an overnight sensation and garnered over 60,000 Instagram followers in just one month – spread by the likes of celebrities including Paris Hilton, Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington, Meghan Markle and Charli XCX.

Altadena Girls became flooded with donations – from both individuals and brands – and, in just a matter of days, became a movement where girls impacted from the fires could come in and rebuild their wardrobes – receiving everything from clothing and accessories to personal care items, as well as hygiene and beauty products, all for free.

Colvert said her biggest goal was to help local teens regain a sense of normalcy and confidence amid devastation and to destigmatize the idea of what a donation center could look like.

Every girl that came to shop was paired with an individual personal stylist, many of whom were professional stylists and hair and makeup artists working in the film industry, according to Matt Chait, Colvert’s stepfather. These included prominent entertainment stylists Kara Welch, Djuna Bel and Shirley Kurata.

“Almost all of the volunteers were people who came to donate stuff, saw how overwhelmed we were and stayed,” Chait said. “They had very specific skills in either hair, makeup, styling or just in production assistance or retail. We got extremely fortunate that these girls felt the calling and showed up, and that they quickly became a team. They elected leaders for different departments. They gave themselves name tags. It just became a department store quite literally overnight.”

Items were separated by category and stylists worked with shoppers to showcase each person’s individual style, down to foundation matching, color matching lipstick and seeing a bra-fitting specialist.

“When you lose everything you own, the last thing you need is to be digging through a dirty bin of clothes – it just feels inhumane,” Colvert said. “And that’s why people go into donation places, and they feel embarrassed or ashamed to get the things they really desperately need.”

Long term vision at play

But as Colvert and her family felt they were overstaying their welcome at the temporary location in Boyle Heights and demand had nowhere near dwindled, they said it became evident that Altadena Girls was bigger than a one-off shop.

“It was clear that it was more than a pop-up,” Chait said. “It became clear partially with the volunteers, that they were sad to leave at the end of every day. We created, even however accidentally, a community really quickly and a community needs a community center.”

The family got connected with Hunter Brown, a vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., who found Altadena Girls a short-term, ground-floor office lease in Pasadena, which they signed five days later. The lease was funded completely by donations and Altadena Girls is in the process of negotiating a longer term.

“These homes will be rebuilt soon-ish. The fires are done now, the girl will have clothes,” Chait said. “The (physical and emotional) recovery from this – at the Palisades, in Santa Monica, in Malibu, and especially here in Altadena – is easily a five- to 10-year recovery that we’re looking at. There’s no way that doing a two-week pop-up shop and handing out a bunch of shoes is going to fix the problem.”

At its new location, expected to open before the end of March, Altadena Girls will serve as an ongoing safe haven for impacted teens.

Colvert’s plans include mental health offices for private counseling, yoga and movement classes, homework rooms, music practice rooms, a large event space, a communal lounge and to continue operating its permanent “free store.”

Altadena Girls is in the process of working with Long Beach-based architecture firm RDC to carve out the interior, while Alo Yoga and Paris Hilton are both building out spaces downstairs.

Urban Outfitters is providing furniture from their UO Home line for the common areas and Cisco Home is outfitting the mental health offices and providing additional furniture, free of charge. Colvert said they continue to receive donations from companies and other community members daily.

“I just really want this – the idea of Altadena Girls or even just the shopping experience – to be sort of a blueprint for other disasters,” Colvert said. “I think this is a very good example and a very good model for other disasters in other cities because it’s kind of the new reality. This is not the first time (disaster) is going to happen. It’s going to happen in other places as well.”