Anna Daniels
In 2010, Eckstein founded Her Universe, a fashion company dedicated to producing fangirl-friendly clothing and accessories for women. While Star Wars was the starting point, over the past ten years Her Universe has added products inspired by Marvel and DC Comics, Pixar, Disney, Jurassic Park, various video games, and so much more to its collection.
It’s a successful business — Her Universe was purchased by Hot Topic in 2016, and Eckstein remains heavily involved with the brand — but Eckstein says that making money isn’t the goal.
“First and foremost, it’s a community,” Eckstein says. “I started Her Universe as a way to end the bullying, because female fans were being bullied and being bullied terribly for just liking Star Wars, and I wanted to break the stigma… The community of Her Universe has always guided all of my decisions.”
From that perspective, Her Universe has been wildly successful. “I would say, within our community, we’ve completely broken the stigma,” she says. “Now, we actually started a sub-brand called Our Universe. We released clothing for men and boys. And so, I feel like we’ve achieved that.”
Her Universe isn’t just Eckstein’s way of giving back to the fan community, though — it’s changed her perspective, too. “I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned over the years is how important it is to just listen to people,” she says. “One of the worst feelings in the world is to feel invisible… Everyone just wants to be seen and be heard and be listened to. And it’s amazing how many things we can change and how many conflicts we can resolve if we just listen to people.”
Written by: Looper
