It was November 2019, we were sitting at the Le CopperBay cocktail bar in Paris, after a mutual friend put you in touch. Opposite each other, it was hard not to notice our differences. Zoe was brunette. She was small. She had two older brothers. She was very stylish. And she was collection director at Le Slip Français . Celine was blonde. She was tall. She had an older brother and a younger sister. She was very professional. And she was a business strategy consultant at Kearney .
Despite our differences, we quickly discovered our mutual love for motorcycles and everything that has wheels in general, love (unfortunately) not so common among women in France. But the similarities didn't end there. We lived a ten-minute walk from each other, were going to leave our posts a month apart, and were ready for an entrepreneurial adventure. Céline was desperately looking for protective clothing that matched her body type and her tastes, and Zoé was desperate to find functional women's clothing like those in her husband's closet.
Between us, these frustrations finally seemed to be able to find a solution. We were a statistically impossible complement. If Zoé was gifted in a field, Céline did not even know that this field existed. And if Céline liked something, Zoé had nightmares about it. Clearly, if we didn't feel like getting started together, it's because we never would have gotten started!
So after leaving our posts and taking a short break, we got started… finally confined, since it was March 2020. That didn't stop us from working on a brand platform and market research.
The project took a turn for the worse when Zoé had an opportunity for a position as creative director for the technical line of a prestigious luxury brand. She started the interview process because she had always dreamed of it, but the further she went, the more attached she became to the project she was building. One day, she called Céline and told her: “Céline, I am leaving the interview process, what I want is to do TOMO Clothing!”.
She began to draw a rain cape on a corner of a sheet, and that was the start of TOMO Clothing.