27-year-old earning $108,000 a year makes nearly all her own clothes—she's brought in $23,000 selling and sharing them online

This story is part of CNBC Make It's Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

Where you might see an average Goodwill Store teeming with used clothes, Brooklyn Karasack sees racks and racks of inspiration.

The 27-year-old has built a massive social media following showing off her creative thrift flips where she takes a piece of clothing, a blanket, curtains or another textile and turns it into something totally new. She's turned a pair of shoes into a corset and fashioned skirts out of old purses.

A resident of St. Petersburg, Florida, Karasack started making outfits to wear to music festivals three years ago. Now, she makes nearly every outfit she wears.

"It's really fun to take the character that's in something from the thrift store and turn it into something new, take something that probably wouldn't be worn and would go to a landfill otherwise and give it a new life," Karasack tells CNBC Make It.

She earns $108,000 a year at her full-time job as an internal audit consulting manager and works on her clothes in her free time. 

Making clothes is more of a hobby than a side hustle for Karasack, but she has been able to monetize it. Together with her friend Mariah Allen, she started a company called Controlled Chaos in 2021 to sell pre-worn festival outfits. To date, Karasack has brought in over $10,000 in sales on items she's made, including nearly $3,900 in 2023.

Additionally, she earns extra cash from TikTok, where her thrift shop transformation videos garner thousands of views. She's made nearly $13,000 from the social media site since joining the Creator Fund in June 2023. As of early November, she's made $4,551 from TikTok in 2024.

The extra income is gravy to Karasack. Her full-time job pays well enough for her to live comfortably in Florida, she says. She was even able to buy a condo earlier this year. 

"I think [my salary] very easily covers all of my necessities and also all of the fun that I like to have," Karasack says. "But it is also nice to have this little side hustle income as well."

Getting thrifty

Though she went to music festivals like Warped Tour when she was in high school, Karasack started regularly going to festivals, especially electronic dance music festivals like Electric Forest, in 2018. On top of the live music, she loved the chance to experiment with fashion and see all the creative outfits other attendees put together. 

However, "I wasn't getting enough out of just being able to be creative with the fashion I was buying," Karasack says.

So in 2021, she decided to make her own festival outfits, using the sewing skills her grandmother had taught her as a child. She first made her own clothes in high school, but "I would literally just take pictures in them, post them on my Tumblr...I would never leave my house in them." The garments were "really poorly made," sometimes held together by safety pins or hair ties, she says.

Luckily, her sewing skills had improved by the time she started making clothes for festivals.

The idea of bringing new outfits to life was both exciting and cost effective for Karasack. She had previously spent over $100 on festival clothes that didn't fit right, but could customize outfits herself with just $5 of materials.

Around the same time she decided to get back into sewing, Karasack had started thrifting to save money. She realized shopping for items she could upcycle was cheaper than buying new fabric from a craft store. Revamping existing items also "adds a lot of character to your wardrobe" and is "better for the environment," Karasack says.

Saving money and getting full creative control over her looks inspired her to make all of her festival outfits going forward — as many as 11 per year.

Soon after she started making festival gear, Karasack began making pieces to wear more regularly, like when she goes out with her friends on weekends. Now, "I rarely wear anything out that I didn't make," she says. 

"Other than buying bathing suits, shoes and accessories, I haven't shopped at a store other than a thrift store in about three years," she says. "I thrift just about everything and it definitely has helped me save a lot of money."

From scraps to made-from-scratch

Like many festival goers, Karasack and Allen would typically only wear their outfits once, then they'd sit in storage.

That led to the idea for their business, Controlled Chaos, in 2021. "We had a ton of really cute outfits that were just sitting in our closet, and we wanted to do something more with them," Karasack says. "People always liked them, so we thought we might as well sell them."

The pair primarily sell outfits they've worn to festivals themselves, but Karasack has sold some original and commissioned pieces as well. The brand auctions pieces off on its Instagram page — Karasack and Allen will let their followers know what's going on sale, list the items and give customers 24 hours to place bids. The item goes to the highest bidder. 

"We do this so that we don't have to price the things that we are making because we struggle with underpricing whenever we do that," Karasack says. "And it also just lets people pay what they think it's worth. It's a really cool way to do it."

Karasack has brought in a total of about $10,100 selling 105 different pieces since Controlled Chaos' first auction in 2021. Allen does not keep track of her sales.

She doesn't track exactly how much it costs or how long it takes to make each piece, so Karasack doesn't know precisely how much of her revenue is officially profit. But "the majority of my pieces do end up turning a pretty good profit," she estimates. 

That's largely because her supplies are fairly cheap. In addition to thrifted textiles, Karasack occasionally buys additional notions — buttons, zippers, clasps or other details to bring the pieces together — for between $5 and $30 a month.

She relies on a sewing machine she inherited from her grandmother for most of the work, and despite it being an older model, she has been able to avoid getting it serviced.

Karasack's biggest single-item sale was a sweatshirt, which sold for $350. It was made out of a blanket and sweatshirt, and she estimates putting about $20 of supplies and about two hours of work into it before selling it. Though sweatshirts are a lighter lift labor-wise, some of Karasack's more intricate designs take longer. A recent chain mail ensemble took close to 16 hours of work, she says.

How she spends her money

A big chunk of Karasack's annual budget goes toward tickets to concerts and music festivals, one of her favorite pastimes. In 2024, she'll attend eight music festivals, and she typically goes to nine or 10 per year.

"The music festival scene is the most open and welcoming scene that there is — it is so much fun," she says. "Everyone is so nice and so uplifting."

Most of the festivals she attends are in Florida, but sometimes she'll travel, having attended fests in various states and Canada. And since growing such a big social media following, Karasack has scored a few festival passes for free in exchange for posting about the events online.

The most she's spent on a single festival pass was $642 for a four-day pass to Michigan's Electric Forest earlier this year. 

This year, she's spent a total of around $4,000 on passes, travel and accommodations for her festival lineup. Karasack takes advantage of payment plans to spread her festival spending out across several months. She usually camps when she travels for festivals, but if she has to get a hotel, she'll split it with friends.

"I'm very easily convinced — if my friends want to go to something, I will find a way to make it happen," Karasack says. "I'm very happy to splurge on a festival if it means my friends are going and we'll have fun."

Here's how Karasack spent the rest of her money in September 2024.

• Savings and investments: $4,334 toward her 401(k) and cash savings.
• Discretionary: $2,206 on festival tickets, pet supplies, a cat sitter, clothes and beauty purchases, home supplies, gifts and shipping costs for Controlled Chaos sales.
• Housing and utilities: $1,216 on her mortgage and homeowners association fee, which she splits with her boyfriend, plus utilities. Karasack covered the utilities in full this month.
• Food: $1,162 on groceries and dining out. This was higher than usual, Karasack says, because she went to a festival and a bachelorette trip in Las Vegas.
• Travel: $515 on flights.
• Insurance: $357 on health, dental, vision and auto insurance.
• Transportation: $231 on gas, parking and Ubers.
• Subscriptions and memberships: $220 on a Pilates membership, Hulu, Spotify and Patreon subscriptions.
• Phone: $111 for her plan and hardware.

Karasack spent more on gas and household supplies than usual in preparation for Hurricane Milton. She ended up evacuating her home in St. Pete during the storm.

Her condo, which she bought in March for $205,000, was mostly unharmed from the storm, but her HOA includes flood insurance coverage if she were to need it.

Compared with renting, "it's definitely more stressful being a homeowner for the two hurricanes that just came through," Karasack says. "But for the most part, I am very glad to be a homeowner."

'Live music is something that you love for your whole life'

Karasack doesn't have a set savings goal. She automates virtually all of her recurring expenses, including an auto-payment to clear her credit card balance in full each month, and puts whatever's left in her savings account. 

That money goes toward major purchases, like when she bought her condo in March or when she renovated her kitchen in the spring. Next, she's looking to remodel both of her bathrooms.

But overall, "I definitely want to keep being able to save, keep contributing to retirement as I have been and keep being able to have fun," Karasack says.

She and Allen don't currently have plans to expand Controlled Chaos and Karasack isn't sure she'd want to scale it too much. She enjoys her full-time job and wouldn't want to "depend on my hobby for all of my income."

As for music festivals, she says she might attend fewer as she gets older or if she has kids in the future, but "I don't see myself ever stopping going to festivals altogether."

"I do think that live music is something that you love for your whole life — there is no age limit."

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