I was born in Greenwich, London. A year after that, my family moved back to Borneo, to a beautiful tropical city called Kota Kinabalu. That's where I spent most of my young life growing up. As a child, my mother used to sew many dresses for me. She took sewing classes, and I used to tag along and sew Barbie doll clothes under the table. When I grew older, my mother taught me how to sew my very first skirt. From then on I was hooked, so much so that I was constantly in trouble at school because I was designing dresses in my textbooks!

By the time I was done with high school, I made up my mind to pursue a degree in fashion design. I enrolled in a three year college for Fashion Design called CENFAD (Center for Advanced Design). In my first three years of my Associate’s Degree in college, I attended classes like textile design, design concepts, and fashion sketching. I absolutely loved what I was doing.

After graduating, I worked at quite a few companies, like Harper's Bazaar magazine and even a bag manufacturing company. But I finally found myself in theater, designing costumes for a private production company. Here is where I discovered the my love for historical costumes especially costumes from the 1940's to 1960's.

After two years in theater, I realized there was more I needed to learn and accomplish. So I decided to head back to school to earn my Bachelor's Degree in the United States.

In the US, I discovered vintage clothing. I found it exciting to find dresses from the 1950's and other eras gone by. So while I was in college, I opened my first Etsy shop, Minicoops vintage clothing. During my vintage clothing hunts, I discovered that a lot of the clothes were in sizes that women don't wear anymore, and the condition of the clothes were less than desirable. It was frustrating that these things were out of my control.

Then a light bulb moment hit! Why don't I recreate these styles of the past and make it available to the everyday woman? So at last I found a perfect meeting ground for my love of historical costumes and designing clothing. That's how MichyLou retro clothing was born.

So right out of college I opened my handmade Retro Clothing shop. I am doing it full time and I didn't even have to look for a job!