About Tres Fou 

Hiiii darling! Welcome to my women's fashion online store! My name is Irene and I guess this is where I should tell you something about me and why I started this business.. my story. Well, where to begin?

First and foremost, I have to give credit where it's due - my former business partner. Tres Fou started out as a passion project between best friends.. we envisioned so many big things together and embarked on a journey to create something empowering for other women through our brand in April 2024. If it wasn't for her, I'm not sure I would have had the courage to start - and starting is the single most important part in anyone's journey, that I believe whole heartedly. 

As fate would have it, our partnership ended in September 2024 and I felt like I was dragging my feet to pick up from where we left off and pivot into my own direction. The following few months would be challenging and enduring emotionally and mentally. It only just feels like my head is above waters now that we've rolled into the new year, with somewhat of a predictable flow of a routine in business process and operations. 

I've owned and operated businesses before - most notably Lash Therapeutics, a service based business based around eyelash extension services. I expanded a home-based business to a couple brick-and-mortar locations in Toronto, at some point having 16 names on payroll. My biggest lesson was that the whole business of hiring, training and managing (people, and physical storefronts), maintaining quality of work and service, while trying to market and budget and profit, is such a beast to tame.

Before I could really figure it out, Covid came along and just obliterated any chances of a start-up trying to make it.. we were the last ones to be able to open up because it involved close contact with faces, all while paying commercial rent. Finally, I decided I had to close up the business for good after a couple years of on and off operations throughout Covid. 

I'm a shopaholic at heart. It's not that I have an addiction.. but shopping therapy is a real thing. There's something so emotionally rejuvenating about a great shopping experience. The marketing people, they know exactly how to pull your heart strings, creating memorable and emotional moments to get you to buy, and to come back and re-buy. I suppose it's not unlike movies and TV shows - you can transport yourself to someone else's story for a short while, living vicariously and also stepping into a new version of yourself.

Articles of clothing always hold memories for me.. something I wore during a celebratory occasion, something I bought from a trip abroad, something I wore on a romantic date.. every time I see that piece in my closet, it would bring me back to that time. It worked against me too - if a piece of clothing reminded me of something I didn't like about myself, or about someone I just couldn't bear to think about, I'd have to immediately toss it. Now, it's become purge therapy, haha, especially during a decade in my life where purging emotional connections (to people, to things, to identities, to ego) seem to have the greatest benefit for my mental health. 

I would say my biggest dream I have yet to realize is to have the freedom to travel when I please and live where I please, to experience the natural, architectural, and cultural beauty that exists all around this globe, as soon as I possibly could do it in a sustainable fashion. Aside from having savings for these trips, and even if I were to do them frugally, I kept encountering a roadblock with every type of business I would start and work on - geographical independence. Any service based business was like a child - requiring constant physical presence and attention even if it took off and was operating independently with the assistance of a full team behind you. I knew I had to get into a product business. Naturally, Amazon FBA, online arbitrage, and dropshipping were my top choices and I flirted with a seller accounts for several years.

But you know what I've discovered? I actually really enjoy building a brand!! I just love creating and making things meaningful, full of emotional, experience, and memory. In contrast, the idea of continually selling the next big trendy fidget spinner just was so dull. If you need to wake up everyday and enjoy the work you are doing, and have it not feel like it's actual work, yeah - I much much prefer creating and building a brand! And why not shop everything I want from my own store?! The beautiful thing is I don't have to marry a particular product... I can be diverse and flexible, pivot and change as I see fit, as the market shows me what it wants, and if my heart changes course. And once I have enough volume in sales and can afford help with warehousing, i'll be free to do my travels and work remotely (that's the dream!!)

Currently, I'm a one-woman show with all my warehousing at home, managing every aspect of the business, but my intention is that this will transform into something a bit bigger with every week that flies by! It's so fun to learn all the aspects of this business, from shopify to content creation, and marketing. And meeting other entrepreneurs and creators around the world - that's so my cup of tea! Collaborating with other like minded individuals and businesses, local vendor pop-ups in the community, girly events in general - it's just a whole soft era thing that I'm leaning into and it's tickling my emotional brain! If you are another girly like that pleaaaase connect with me! Well, that's enough about me - I'll leave you with a little self-proclamation below on how I romanticize life.. enjoy and toodaloooo!!

My raison d'etre- 

"This restless soul cares only for the grandest vision of love and romance. I let that be my compass in this flicker of mortal life. I love to feel beautiful, be beautiful, do beautiful things, connect with beautiful souls. Beauty is immeasurable and in all things we care to be curious about, and often overlooked. I have a natural craving to learn and an insufferable penchant to iterate. Gut feelings and intuition are paramount.  

A man should make a woman feel celebrated, supported, and adored. He should lead and show strength at all times, and be never-yielding. The woman I want to be is graceful, elegant, loving, nurturing.. a real feminine très fou for love type, the harley quinn for joker type, the bonnie for clyde type, the risk it all for love type.

I'm here to curate fashionable pieces of all kinds to compliment my personal collection, so you will see especially as I grow, pieces selected that resonate with me. I hope to play dress up well into old age, and to teach my future daughters the same."

With Love, Irene