From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. For Style Month, it's been great to have people

whose points of view are directly reflected in the kinds of things they make, be it clothes or cars. It's interesting to have a designer who got to start as an actor and decided to really take hold of his own fate. That man is Tom Brown, who sits right across from me. Tom, thanks so much for doing this.

Thanks, Elvis. It's good to be here. I've got to ask you. I want to talk a little bit about your background as an actor, because you told me something once was very interesting. It was tough for you to get work because you always looked like you didn't need work.

That's, it's really true. And I was an actor. I was out in L.A. trying to act. And I would go to auditions and I would get feedback way too many times of, it looked like I didn't need work.

And meanwhile, I would go home in my broken down station wagon.

And it was something I had to live through, I guess, for what I'm doing now.

I guess life in general, life is, you know, everything happens for a reason,

but it was definitely not the most pleasant experience.

How long did you live in L.A. when you're out there?

For about five years. So it did. It was a very good motivator to figure out just life in general

and figure out what I wanted to do.

What was that process like? Because for somebody who, again,

who's basically built a world for himself,

the idea of having to surrender that much power

to other people must have been kind of maddening to you.

Well, it was maddening because, yeah,

you just have had no control over your future in a way.

And being someone growing up in a family of being very ambitious.

Because I come from a family of seven and I'm the only non-professional in the family.

They're all attorneys and my little sister's a doctor and I'm the black sheep of the family.

So it was, it was. We all really knew, we're very goal-driven because my parents were very much like that way.

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