Never Fully Dressed is looking to LA for its first US location, starting with a pop-up store

Lucy Aylen is surrounded by a swirl of colorful dresses, tops and skirts inside a a small pop-up store that opens Friday in Los Angeles.

The space, with large windows that overlook a plant-lined walkway at the trendy mall of Platform L.A. location, is also filled with six-foot-tall plants that blend into the outdoors.

In some ways, this is a moment of deja vu. Three years ago, British label Never Fully Dressed had a pop-up store in Los Angeles with plans to later establish a permanent store in the city. But the COVID-19 pandemic has put that on hold.

Now Aylen is opening a pop-up store in LA again and visiting realtors who are pointing out some of the best shopping streets in the city.

"We're just picking up where we left off," said Aylen, who with a small team, was preparing the pop-up for a 12-day race.

Never Fully Dressed, or NFD, was founded in 2009 when Aylen took over the attic of his parents in East London and started a clothing company whose designs are heavy with colorful prints designed by Aylen and her team. At first, she sold her clothes in the Portobello and Spitalfields markets, known for their artsy and creative merchandise. Five years later, she opened a boutique in Essex.

"We were working in my mom's attic, and she was like, you're devaluing my house. I mean, we were stocking up on the stairs, and the rugs were getting worn," Aylen recalls, noting that her parents were also market traders.

So she opened a small store that doubled as an office. This store was closed and open for several months during the COVID-19 pandemic, but Aylen and her staff refocused by selling more merchandise online and setting up a table in front of the store where people could take their orders. p>

Now that the business world is getting back to normal, Never Fully Dressed is in expansion mode. The company recently hired a new e-commerce manager who analyzes sales trends and helps refine company direction.

Analysis shows that the dresses, which sell for between $90 and $130 on average, represent 70% of purchases.

Most of the company's sales are from the UK, followed by the US, which account for 20 percent of turnover. That's one of the reasons for the Los Angeles pop-up: another pop-up is set to open in New York's SoHo from October 13-22.

Australia is the third most popular country for sales, followed by Ireland and Dubai.

Never Fully Dressed is well known for its wrap dresses and versatile garments that can be worn in a variety of ways . "We show customers how to layer our dresses with jeans or how...