When Laura La Rue thinks about her life — from modeling for Elite Models at age 13 to living off the grid in a trailer — the 32-year-old tie-dye designer marvels at her quiet life today in Ojai, where she lives in a school bus with her 16-month-old daughter, Lasca. “I feel like I should be 100 years old,” she says, laughing. “I just had my 32nd birthday, and my goal is to try and enjoy it and all that comes from the changes I’ve made.
I’m trying to be present for my daughter. My hope is that she’ll learn the value of simplicity and that happiness doesn’t come from material things.” Growing up in Thousand Oaks, La Rue says she had a happy childhood and was “very fortunate” to attend private schools.
“My mom was always a horse lady, interested in ranching, while my dad was passionate about camping and bird watching,” she says. “So I grew up with a deep love for nature.” La Rue left high school at age 16 after taking the California High School Proficiency Examination so she could model full-time in editorial campaigns shot by famed photographer David LaChapelle and walk the runway for designers such as Jeremy Scott .
Soon afterward, she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived in Los Feliz from 2009 to 2015 and eventually partied with celebrities, including Seth MacFarlane, Jared Leto and Leonardo DiCaprio. “Those were my party girl days,” La Rue says of carousing at L.A.
-area spots such as Soho House, No Vacancy, Drai’s, Teddy’s at the Roose.