It’s been two years since Rachel Thebault closed Tribeca Treats (it feels like a lifetime of no icing shots) and in that time she’s been trolling for her next entrepreneurial move. Earlier this month the website went live on Woodley + Lowe, a digitally native clothing company for Gen Z girls that supplies comfy staples with better options on fit, and tries to offer some relief from the body image issues that have clearly plagued that generation. It’s sweats, but with a little something extra.

Rachel walks the walk with three daughters; in a funny twist, her business partner, Neda Talebian Funk, has three sons. But like Rachel, she also has a finance background but with a retail bonus. They recognized a void in the market and pounced.

“I saw my 15-year-old daughter, who is 5’10”, trying to wear stuff her friends liked, but that was either overpriced or fast-fashion,” said Rachel. “So we wanted to create a brand that the girls think is cool, that is well made and priced in the middle, and is not just ‘mommy-and-me.'” (For the record, there are about 30 million Gen Z women born between 1997 and 2012, and I’m going with the definition from Pew.)

Woodley + Lowe clothing is sized from A (a size 12-14 girls) to E (a size 10 women’s) with two options for length in pants. The idea is that girls’ growth is not linear — other companies assume when you grow an inch in the waist you grow an inch in length. “We’re not saying we fixed eating disorders or anything, but we just wanted to liberate girls from the size you think you need to be,” said Rachel.

So far they only have a sneak peak of a few items on the website; the full line will not be shipped from the LA factories till mid-November. But the pieces are snuggly, comfy leisure wear for now, with a lot more come. “Everything is comfort driven,” said Neda. “It’s for the two sides of a teen girl — the style conscious one and the one that still likes to snuggle up with mom and watch TV.”

The new approach to sizing wasn’t the only “aha” moment. Rachel knew her daughter never likes stuff that mom brings home, so the pair took themselves fully out of the design process. They hired two seniors at Avenues to run a months-long Instagram focus group with 150 teen “ambassadors” scouted from around the country. The girls ended up picking out most of the styles, colors, details — even the name and logo (Rachel went to high school on Woodley Road; Neda brainstormed high school literature staples from her youth and came up with Christopher Marlowe, then shortened it.) And the ambassadors were sent products to try out in the wild.

The pandemic has slowed production, but in most ways it has reinforced the value of their idea, which was born a year ago. “We never had to pivot,” said Neda, “we were always comfort clothes sold online. It turned out to be the idea of the day.”

There’s a socially conscious angle to the brand as well, where return customers will be able to build up reward dollars that go to charities they choose. There will be an evergreen return policy that lets customers recycle, resell or donate their used W+L wear. And the founders hope to make the site a platform for the girls of that generation. Already they learned that one of their ambassadors was making bracelets to support the BLM movement, so they bought 50 of them and included them in the next drop.

“This generation cares a lot more and are more supportive of each other than teen girls are given credit for,” said Rachel. “Too many brands are adults trying to speak to teens. We wanted to listen to our customers.”