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Tomboy Style author launches online store

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L.A.-based blogger and “Tomboy Style” author Lizzie Garrett Mettler has entered the world of retail.

She’s launched The-Reed.com, an online destination that is part travel guide, part shop featuring clothing and accessories for traveling well.

Mollusk brand lavender trunks ($65) that work just was as well for swimming, biking and hiking? Check. San Francisco-based Joshu+Vela’s updated take on the classic canvas boat tote ($265) that fits under an airline seat? Check. Brookes Boswell’s Brooklyn-made Ranger Panama hats ($190) with a brim wide enough for ample shade but stylish too? The Reed’s got ‘em, along with kitschy-good beaded souvenir belts spelling out Nantucket and Montana ($46) and Snow Peak’s Fire Protect flame-resistant parka with a utilitarian green hue and loads of pockets ($390).

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“I didn’t feel like there was a store for me that could provide items to go car camping two hours away from home or to wear while sightseeing during the day and to dress up at night,” Mettler says. “Travel items are either really masculine or if they’re for women are really jet-setter feminine. I wanted to bring some balance to the space.”

Mettler launched her Tomboy Style blog in 2010 (it’s had 6.8 million views since its inception), which inspired a book by the same name published by Rizzoli in 2012, covering 80 years of women who mix masculine and feminine elements in their wardrobe.

“With the blog and book, I set out to define what tomboy style was in the 21st century, and catalog the labels and who the role models were,” she says. “After five years, I felt like I’d completed my objective of defining her…. I wanted to get more involved in providing a place for women to buy stuff found on the blog, and I felt the next evolution was travel as it relates to tomboy style.”

The-Reed.com will feature new, photo-driven travel guides each month. On the site is Mettler’s guide to Santa Fe, N.M., and a guide for a road trip from Boston to mid-coast Maine. Next up will be guides to California’s high desert and New Orleans.

For each location, she’s designed a souvenir T-shirt with JungMaven. Available now: New England and New Mexico. Mettler hopes it will be the beginning of a larger product line she manufactures herself. There are also vintage items peppered in, including a 1970s Celine folio that doubles as a clutch, and a brass galleon corkscrew.

Although she thought about naming her e-store Tomboy Style, she says she was ready for something fresh.

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“Reed is my middle name, and it’s a name that’s consistently been given to adventurous women in my family. We refer to the ‘reediness’ of someone,” she says. “It’s a secret code for what tomboy style is anyway, but also a bit of an evolution.”

Twitter: @booth1

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