Butch Diva: A Woman of Spandex and Chaos

When Tiffany Lastar was five years old, she found her mother’s fashion portfolio in their East New York apartment.

Until that moment, Tiffany had no clue that her mother went to school for fashion design and then dropped out when she became pregnant with Tiffany. Little Tiffany went through the sketches and was astonished.

“This is what I want to do,“ she thought to herself. And from that point on, she and her mother would go to local fabric stores and (upon Tiffany’s insistence) purchase “crazy” looking materials that she could turn into funky doll clothing.

In high school while living in the Bronx, Tiffany created five of her friends’ prom dresses, including her own (but she made hers last).

“Until this day, that’s usually how it goes,” says Tiffany grinning.

As a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, she would always finish her required work before the other students and then go through the teacher’s bin to find some “outrageous” colorful materials to create something of her own choice.

After graduating, Tiffany worked in high fashion and corporate fashion -- Alice + Olivia, Ralph Lauren – an experience that left her with a thick binder of contacts, helpful the day she decided that it was time to become her own boss.

After living nine years in New Jersey, Tiffany decided to move back to Brooklyn (it bothered her that her Brooklyn dialect was wearing off).

“I’m a die-hard Brooklyner,” she says.

Tiffany dove head-first into her spandex passion. At the time, the only other major Spandex competitor on the market was American Apparel. However, people complained about the simplicity and cost of their line.

“No one was doing with Spandex what I was doing. I was not playing it safe,” Tiffany says.

Now Tiffany is 30 and the proud owner of her Spandex line Butch Diva and the even wilder and younger line called Spandex and Chaos. On her white Singer sewing machine in her studio on Hart Street in Bed-Stuy, she manufactures around a dozen pieces of clothes every week: leggings, skirts, full body suits, jackets etc. Everything made of Spandex.

“I’m probably doing the job of ten people,” she says. When the demand goes up, she outsources the sewing to a factory in Manhattan. 

Her line is carried at Patricia Fields in Manhattan and at Lucky Charm in Miami. But the majority of her sales are generated on her website, where people order from all over the world.

Even the music artist, Kelis, with her outrageous rocker style and sensibility has purchased and performed in a head-to-toe suit by Butch Diva.

And considering Tiffany’s outrageous designs, seeing them on the likes of big personalities like Lady Gaga or Beyonce might seem like a dream for her as well. But in truth, that is not her dream at all.

Tiffany’s biggest dream is to open a store of her own.

For now, she holds monthly sales out her Brooklyn studio, walls covered in years of colorful Spandex fabrics and designs.