California Sisters Create Boutique Shopping Experiences for Girls in Need: ‘Gives Them Confidence’ (Exclusive)

During pandemic lockdown, sisters Brooke and JoJo Friedman cleaned out their closets.

“We were filling trash bags with clothes,” remembers JoJo, now a 16-year-old high school junior from Los Angeles.

As they surveyed their donation pile — including long basketball shorts and sporty neon tops — the sisters started to wonder whether the girls who received the clothing they were taking to the shelter would even like it.

“I was especially worried,” says Brooke, now a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Michigan.

The sisters — named two of PEOPLE’s Girls Changing the World in 2024 — tried to think of a better way to give girls in need clothes that they would actually like and feel good about wearing, an experience far removed from rummaging through trash bags.

“A lot of people feel very self-conscious about how they look or the things they wear. It can make you feel 100 times more confident if you get to wear something you like,” says JoJo.

In June 2022, the sisters founded the nonprofit SheStyles which has held 10 pop-up “boutiques,” featuring racks of carefully curated clothing for free, along with fitting rooms, mirrors, a checkout station, and custom bags and tissue paper to round out the experience.

“We try to make it like an actual boutique,” JoJo says.

All the clothes are new or gently worn, and every item has a custom tag.

“To make it feel more special,” Brooke explains. “You’re not just searching through a bin or a bag hoping that you’ll get something you like.”

Before each pop-up, the Friedman sisters send “shoppers” a Google form asking what styles they like, what brands they prefer, what sizes they wear and any religious clothing requirements.

“We want to make it so every girl can go home feeling special and happy,” Brooke says. “Like they’ve been able to get an outfit that makes them feel like themselves.”

At the pop-up boutiques, the sisters and their friends act as stylists, helping shoppers select clothes that look and feel great on them, and hyping them when they come out of the dressing rooms.

“Just the joy of it all makes me happy,” Jojo says. “We encourage them to take as much off the racks as they want and try it on before they make a decision on what they want to take home.”

To date, they have served 700 girls. They mostly work with tweens and teens, but they have served girls as young as 5. Most participants have never experienced the excitement of a personalized shopping spree.

“That’s something a lot of people take for granted, just being able to go to the store, pick out clothes you want to wear. It would be hard for me to just be given a pile of clothes and be forced to wear [those limited options] to school. I probably wouldn’t feel confident, [especially] if they didn’t fit me right,” JoJo says.

“It probably doesn’t feel great when all your clothes are just coming from a trash bag,” she continues, “but it feels good when you get to walk out of the boutique with three nicely wrapped bags of clothes you got to try on and pick out.”

“The girls are always telling us how excited they are to come and how much better they feel when they leave,” JoJo says. “It feels really good [for us too].”