Michelle Wendell once put a price on an introduction: $1,500. The recipient would be someone who referred a candidate CLD PR actually hired. She sent the offer to the agency’s mailing list, some 80,000 people. For a founder whose business involved getting brands into the right company, it was a practical reversal. This time, the introduction she needed was for her own office.
That was in 2022. Hiring had become less predictable. Wendell, who normally handled interviews herself, had started keeping three or four candidates in contention. An offer could prompt a counteroffer elsewhere; a promising applicant could withdraw. She was also considering a dedicated recruiter. Even a business accustomed to making connections could find itself needing help with the next one.
The episode offers a useful entrance into her working life. Celebrity publicity supplies the photographs. Running the company supplies the decisions that rarely merit one. Wendell is founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based CLD PR & Experiential Productions, a business whose history begins with a much more tangible asset than attention: clothes.
The archive acquires a second job
Before the events and brand partnerships, Wendell sold designer clothing online. Years as an eBay retailer had left her with an extensive archive. Stylists began renting pieces for shoots. Rebecca Raskind, a senior executive at the company, described that progression as the origin of its rental operation. A collection assembled for one market had become useful to another.
A stylist preparing a shoot has a different relationship with a garment from someone buying it for a wardrobe. The piece must work for a project, a camera and a deadline. Access can matter more than ownership. Wendell’s inventory could meet that need without requiring the business to start again from an empty room.
Raskind described an operation with staff stylists working on music videos and photo shoots, alongside a growing PR division. That combination helps explain the company’s shape. The services developed around people already close to the clothes. An archive brought stylists through the door; their work put the business near the people making visual decisions.
It is an appealingly physical origin for a publicity business. The stock was already there. So were the requests. The opportunity lay in recognizing that the same object could answer more than one customer’s question. An evening dress could be merchandise on Monday and a production requirement on Tuesday, without changing so much as a seam.
The pleasure of the deal
Wendell’s own account put business development at the center of her role. In 2012, she described moving from designer closeouts into wardrobe rental, then PR, as demand changed. She liked discovering designers and bringing them into the U.S. market. She described the attraction in the plain language of a dealmaker.
“I love making a deal”
Michelle Wendell · 2012
Her taste also had a historical streak: thrifting and the fashions of the 1960s and 1970s appealed to her. Yet she preferred the background to the red carpet itself, which she called a “stress bucket deluxe”. There is a dry practicality in that preference. The person arranging the appearance need not volunteer to become its subject.
Her early personal biography describes Chic Little Devil as an online retailer offering new and previously owned designer pieces, with some stock coming from celebrities and stylists. It also describes services extending into styling and event preparation. The commercial world around the business already involved several kinds of exchange: buying, borrowing, returning and presenting.
That biography places her in Los Angeles’s network of wardrobe professionals and costume artists. Her other personal account records attendance at Ohio State University and an ambition to add online rentals and social sharing to the website. Those were stated plans from an earlier stage of the business. They show an owner thinking about how customers might gain access to the inventory, and how its public appearances might circulate afterward.
The people on the other side of the offer
By 2022, the collection of clothes had become a company with a different kind of supply problem. The hiring referral offer made the issue unusually concrete. A large address book could contain people who knew the right candidate. Wendell gave those contacts a clear request and attached a payment to a completed hire.
The successful-hire referral reward Wendell offered CLD’s external mailing list in 2022.
There is a business lesson here, though it comes with conditions. A network can be asked to solve a new problem, provided the request is intelligible. An introduction still needs to lead to someone who can do the work. The reward buys an incentive to help; it cannot make an unsuitable candidate suitable.
A public recruitment listing associated with Wendell gives a sense of the organization that needed staffing. CLD was seeking people across beauty, fashion, business development, events and human resources. The listing named brands including House of CB, Colourpop, Celsius, White Fox and Berta. It also invited applications from candidates who might fit the celebrity and influencer teams.
Those functions require different abilities, even when they serve the same client. Someone has to negotiate, someone has to coordinate, someone has to maintain the relationship after the exciting introduction. The work expands faster than the photograph suggests. A founder can recognize the opportunity in a new service and still have to find the person who can deliver it.
A briefing, a volunteer, a stockroom problem
Event worker Ethan Ho’s account of a White Fox Boutique birthday gifting suite brings Wendell closer to the floor. During the briefing, she needed someone to lead the front-of-house merchandise team. Ho volunteered and explained his approach. She gave him the responsibility, he recalled, and he went on to lead four other interns.
His description concerns the ordinary details that let a polished event function. He divided merchandise responsibilities by color, arranged breaks and helped coordinate communication between the sales floor and backstock. When racks ran short, he and a colleague adapted the available space. The glamorous business had acquired the familiar problem of where to put everything.
This is one participant’s account of one event. It nevertheless supplies a useful scale for the work. Responsibility moved from a founder at a briefing to a small team handling specific tasks. An invitation can promise an experience; the merchandise has to be available when a guest reaches for it.
Another participant, Julia Hardy, described showing Wendell her previous creative work when an opportunity arose to shoot social content. Hardy was given a chance to photograph and film guests, then helped assemble a reel. She described staying after other interns had left, sharing editing work with two fellow shooters and returning to the cut around midnight.
Her account follows an event beyond the moment most guests would consider its ending. The material still had to be downloaded, selected and edited. The room emptied; the work continued on a screen. For a company selling visibility, that later shift matters. An event’s public life depends partly on what someone can make from the footage after the music stops.
The occasion becomes part of the service
In March 2025, Wendell used LinkedIn to seek brand partners for CLD’s Pre-Festival House. Her invitation was specific about the occasion: festival season. She offered interested brands the deck and details. The founder’s business development work was visible in a short public post, directed toward a particular gathering with a reason to exist on the calendar.
In February 2026, COLAB appointed CLD as its U.S. agency partner for media, celebrity and events strategy, alongside the haircare brand’s existing social activity. The announced brief included a product launch and appearances around festival season, Miami Swim Week and New York Fashion Week. A brand could have its own channels and still want introductions in other settings.
That April, CLD held its Pre-Festival House in Beverly Hills. Jordan Chiles and Scheana Shay were among the guests. The partner mix included clothing, footwear, sunglasses and handbags, with names such as Dream Pairs, RAEN and Teddy Blake. The gathering brought products into a setting where guests were preparing for an approaching occasion.
The company’s announced 2027 offer extends that approach across six planned events: Festival, Miami Swim Week, Peak Summer, NYFW, Falloween and Holiday. It also offers brand-dedicated production, from venue sourcing and creative development through guest-list work and onsite management. The calendar makes the range of responsibilities visible. Someone must choose the moment, arrange the room and account for what happens inside it.
Wendell’s career can be read through those changing requests. A stylist wanted to borrow a piece. A designer wanted exposure. A brand wanted an event. Her company developed services around each. The recurring task is practical and personal: understand what someone needs, bring the relevant people together and make the arrangement work. The clothes may leave the rack. The work keeps coming back.