We recently connected with Corliss Gilmer and have shared our conversation below.

Corliss, appreciate you joining us today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

This story is actually funny to me every time I tell it. So one day I was talking with my branding advisor and she had told me to come up with a chicktionary, which is my own vocabulary for my brand for the girls to use. I had a hard time coming up with some catchy words so I called my bestfriend Drea and asked her to describe me in one word by making up her own word. Right off the top she was like uhh… Tomboyrella and started saying a few other words but I had blacked out and was like, “No wait THAT’S IT!” and she was like, “what Tomboyrella?” and I was all excited like YES! and she goes, “really?? I was just joking 😂” And that’s how the name of my clothing brand came about. I was using a whole different name at first but once i heard “Tomboyrella” I knew that was it, it’s so me! I always wanted my brand name to represent myself and there honestly couldn’t be a better name.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

So you know when you get to a point in your life where you look over everything that has happened and you see how it all aligns and it just makes so much sense in the now? That’s where I’m at, and I feel like it was destined for me to be in the industry that I’m in. To give a little background story to make sense of that; All the way back to 6th grade (2004) up to 12th grade (2011) I took sewing courses in school. My first time ever touching a sewing machine was in 6th grade and I was great at it, but following after that, sewing wasn’t anything that I took seriously. I wanted to be everything else but a fashion designer. In high school I went through sooo many phases, first I wanted to be a dancer, then a singer, a producer, a choreographer, honestly anything that dealt with creating art. And I would just take fashion courses as an elective because I knew I would get an A without having to work hard for it. So here I am in 12th grade (2011) and it’s crunch time for me to figure out what I’m going to study in college and which college I’m going to attend. At that time, I honestly never knew Fashion Design was a major, but when I discovered that it was, I was like, why not? So I attended Baltimore City Community College and It wasn’t until mid freshmen year when I decided that I actually really loved creating clothes and wanted to be a fashion designer, and that’s when I begun to take it seriously. After dropping out twice, I decided to attend Stevenson University in 2016, then in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I received my Bachelors of Fashion Design. During the time while I was at BCCC I started my clothing brand, it wasn’t called Tomboyrella at the time but it still had the same message. I wanted to create clothes for girls like me. I grew up a tomboy, like I played youth football, basketball, and all that. But as I got older I started to grow more in my femininity, as we all do. So I wanted to make clothes for girls who had that tomboy vibe but still know how to be a lady with it you know, tomboy vibes feminine energy type girls. Tomboyrella is a lifestyle brand, it isn’t just about the clothes. So with my brand, it provides young ladies and women with versatility and having that freedom of pairing some Jordans or any sneaker with a dress or a baggy fit that still allows them to have a whole face beat and still give off her feminine energy. That’s why when my bestfriend came up with the name Tomboyrella, it was just so perfect!
I’m most proud of the authenticity of me shining through my brand. It was a point in my life where I was afraid to fully being ME, worrying about what others may think or say because of when I was young I would always get picked on for not wearing “girly” enough clothes. But now, I’m unapologetically being myself, creating clothes, and inspiring other young ladies and women

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Omg, I had to unlearn trying to do everything on my own. In the black community, we take pride in “getting it out the mud” and doing things on our own and it’s just like, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you don’t have anyone in your corner go find them, network, build a team. Don’t be out here trying to do everything on your own. It’s literally DRAINING and you’ll get no where fast. Also, a piece of advice that I’ve learned is to work sideways not up. Sometime’s we’re so focused on making it to the top that we only see the one’s who have already made it and we try to work with those people when there’s others around you working their way up just like you. Work with those people and ya’ll all work together and work your way up. So to use myself as an example, if I was given this advice while I was in college, the smartest thing for me to have done was work with the students in graphic design to get logos or artwork for t-shirts, network with students studying photography and do photoshoots using the high quality camera’s that you can check out for free on campus, and use the photography studio’s. That’s just a few examples but you get what I mean about working sideways, not up.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

YES! just knowing that I was meant to do this. Like it doesn’t get any simpler than that for me. When you know, that you know, that you know!? Scratch that, when God has shown you and sent you confirmation it’s like why play with it? How can you not live in it after that? You’re only playing yourself if you don’t go after what you’ve been praying for. That’s what keeps me going. God has blessed me to create, so why not, how could I not, share that with the world? I want to live out my purpose here on Earth and inspire others to do so too. That’s my mission that keeps me going. We all have a purpose and are blessed with gifts, search and find out what that is, and live through it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tomboyrella.com
• Instagram: Tomboyrella(Clothing Brand): @tomboyrella / Designer’s page: _cor._
• Facebook: Tomboyrella

Image Credits
Christopher Caine Christina Mayer Katherine Fox