Nadine Noky is a soldier. She served five years in the United States Army as a radar technician specialist, where she was deployed to Iraq.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, Noky is a woman.
After serving her time, she moved to Venice, Fla., to raise her son. Last year, she launched an apparel company, called Lady Brigade, which makes shirts and tote bags to celebrate women veterans.
Photo courtesy of Nadine Noky
“You go to the VFW posts or military stores on bases and you only see the same veteran shirts over and over again,” said Noky, 30.
She was tired of seeing the same red, white and blue, man-only kind of designs.
“There are pink camo and sparkly shirts sometimes, but those are more for the wives. I am a veteran. Why can’t I find a shirt for me?” she said.
Noky put her design degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology to work and learned how to screen print. She designs and prints T-shirts, tank tops and tote bags from a printing facility in Englewood and sells her products online.
When a Buzzfeed reporter found out about her through a veteran Facebook group in February and wrote a story, business took off.
“I had over 700 orders that first day. I went from 3,000 followers on Facebook to 7,400,” Noky said.
Photos courtesy of Nadine Noky
Beyond the explosive sales, Noky said she was overwhelmed by the support she received from veterans all over the country.
“Women were emailing me saying they served but because they were never deployed, they didn’t feel like veterans,” Noky said. “And that’s just not true. If you served stateside, you are a veteran. You would still go if you were deployed.”
“Remember that all the women who have served in the history of the military have volunteered to serve. We were never drafted. We do it willingly,” Noky said.
Noky was one of about 10 women who served in her 80-person unit in the Army. She was deployed to Iraq in 2005, not long after she gave birth to her son.
Noky works a full time job in design and social media in Sarasota, but still manages Lady Brigade. Did we mention she’s a mom too?
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Photo courtesy of Nadine Noky