The first years of Brown's childhood were spent in Camden, a suburb in Sydney's southwest, where her father was a dairy farmer.
The pair later moved to North Sydney and Brown attended Willoughby Girls High School, where she said, "I don't think people would have even thought of me as especially fashionable.
[1][3] Brown's media career began at the now-defunct Australian fashion magazine Mode where she was a production editor for two years.
At age 21, Brown then moved to London for two years where she worked as a freelancer, including as a correspondent for Harper's Bazaar Australia.
While freelancing in London, Brown paid her own way to Paris where she snuck into fashion shows without credentials and took photos on a disposable camera.
She entered the U.S. on a foreign journalist visa and was writing for magazines outside of the U.S., sending her cheques back home to Australia for her mother to deposit into her bank account.
She produced many of the magazine's coups: from The Simpsons in Paris to fashion designers Oscar de la Renta and Diane von Furstenberg on Sesame Street.
While at Harper's Bazaar, Brown broke the exclusive interview with Janet Jackson after the death of her brother Michael and profiled influential women including Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and also hosted two popular digital video series, "The Look" and "In and Out of Fashion with Laura Brown".
"She challenged the status quo with unconventional collaborations, developing art, film and fashion portfolios with artists Takashi Murakami, John Baldessari, Francesco Clemente and Cindy Sherman, and directors Martin Scorsese, Mike Nichols, Pedro Almodovar and Tim Burton", Time Inc.
[7] In September 2017, InStyle featured its first man on the cover, comedian and late-night TV host Stephen Colbert.
Brown was introduced to Mon Purse founder Lana Hopkins through a mutual friend when she came back to Australia for a holiday, and after the pair clicked, a collaboration was born.