Photo by Jason Kruppa

November 2011. And their “pretty promise” to Southern style.

Down in New Orleans, a pair of young entrepreneurs have a sense that they can change the city for the better, one dress at a time.

Both Southern women in their twenties, Jolie Bensen first met Sarah Elizabeth Dewey a few years back when she managed interns for the clothing design firm BCBG in New York City. “Southern girls were always the strongest interns, so when that new group arrived at BCBG on their first day, I went looking for her. ‘Who is the girl from LSU?’ ”

The two hit it off at BCBG, but that’s not when they decided to start their own design company in New Orleans, Jolie’s hometown. In 2009, both had relocated to the Crescent City in hopes of tapping into the young post-Katrina energy there.

“I just moved home to see what could happen,” said Jolie. “Sarah Elizabeth and I met for lunch and expressed our frustrations about local job options in the design industry.”

Sarah Elizabeth adds, “By the end of lunch we were talking about a name for our own company and came up with Jolie & Elizabeth, which means ‘pretty promise.’ That was it. Then we started brainstorming color palettes for our first collection.”

Flying by the seat of their fashionable pants, Jolie and Sarah Elizabeth had a big break soon after that business-launching lunch when they discovered a local factory that was on the verge of closing down, having never fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina.

Sarah Elizabeth, still clearly excited by the rushed decision, explains, “We didn’t have any orders, we didn’t have any retailers lined up, but we just went for it and saved the factory,” along with the jobs of the twenty or so seamstresses who work there.

Having a local production venue is something they’re proud of. When they give talks at area high schools, “we explain to those kids the importance of money staying local. When you shop at certain stores you’ll never see that dollar again. But when you purchase a locally-made product, that dollar reaches the factory, the seamstresses who work there, and then they go to their local bakery to spend. The money stays here,” said Jolie. Indeed, each of their garments boasts a charming “Made in Louisiana” tag.

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