It’s said necessity is the mother of invention, and that’s especially true for Tomé Koichopolos. As owner of Tomé Dress Salon, he encountered some rough times before opening the shop in 1992. “I couldn’t find a job, actually,” he admits, “so I started my own from home, which then led me here to Avenue Road. I was designing with private customers from home.”
It helped, too, that he had a creative and daring sense of style, as well as the business acumen to marry the two. Tomé briefly thought about working with menswear, but decided to stick with women’s wear when he saw the limitless opportunities their clothing could offer him. “There’re many more options with women’s wear, you know,” he says. “Men’s suiting is very classical and usually pretty much the same, whereas women’s fashions are always evolving. It changes all the time.”
