Coffee With Editor-in-Chief, Tomo

A hair dresser turned fashion entrepreneur is about to release his first high street magazine to the public, but will he make the cut?

In a small Italian café, just on the corner of a back street in central London next door to the new HotHot offices on Little Portland Street, Tomo Kembery was strutting his stuff as he burst through the door wearing his bright blue Beats headphones with equally as vibrant trainers. After ordering a large Latte with a double vanilla shot he finally sat down to explain all of his exciting new business ventures (there are many).

27 year old Tomo has set out on a new project that is soon to be released to the public. After spending a year building up the online platform ‘HotHot Magazine’ he has now decided to take it to print on 28 March and has been working solidly over the past four months to make it as hot as the name suggests. ‘Ive sort of come up with a concept of it being very much a lifestyle brand and a magazine i.e where it kind of brings the reader into what we are doing as a publication’ he explains. ‘every other magazine that is currently on the market are all doing the same thing, they’re not giving anything back to the reader other than information whereas I am switching things around so it’s about giving the reader amazing things to come to and do with the magazine with the information kind of being secondary if you know what I mean’ he is then abruptly interrupted with a business call (one of many) as he speaks business in his very convincing phone voice it becomes clear that people in the industry are dying to get their hands on an issue and after wrapping up the phone call then forgets where he was up to in his HotHot speech.

It is safe to say that everybody loves a fun event to go to, whether a fancy restaurant is you thing or you prefer a shopping trip or maybe you are into a night out with plenty of alcohol? Whatever your taste it seems Tomo has a HotHot event to suit your social desires from pop-up restaurants and shopping days to club nights and hot tub party clubs. ‘Ive had some amazing experiences in the industry and I get to go to these amazing parties and fabulous things and I think it’s unfair that the everyday, 9 to 5 workers that live for the weekend don’t get to see this amazing side of fashion’ he explains. It all sounds very fun at the moment but it seems it could be too much play and not enough work but Tomo is soon to assure ‘I have had this in my mind for three years now but the media industry has been a weird one and a lot of magazines are folding so I have kind of sat back and seen what’s going on before launching the product’ he expresses a more serious tone showing the inner business man.

It is hard to believe that somebody who isn’t even 30 can be an editor in chief of a fashion and lifestyle magazine. As Tomo reveals his past he exposes that he started off as a hair stylist and even he admits that it is a weird story of his journey from foils to photo shoots. ‘I was like 17 and I was a hairdresser working in salons, then I started to do some photographic work in hair with my boss at the time and as soon as I did it I thought ‘this is amazing’’ Tomo is getting into this story as he tells it ‘I then left the salon and became Sam Mcknight’s assistant, he is one of the biggest hair stylists in world, he’s massive! He does all the Gucci stuff and Prada which projected me into a completely different world because with Sam I was working with the likes of Kate Moss and Linda Evangelista and working on shoots for Vogue’ he says with pride. However the moment is soon ruined by a second phone call that Tomo answers with the opening line ‘Hello, HotHot Magazine’

So as he has explained so far, he left school hoping to go into catering then became a hair dresser and then became assistant to one of the biggest hair stylists in the fashion world… this still doesn’t explain how he is now editor in chief of a magazine. ‘After working with Sam I couldn’t go back to the salon, I had been bitten by this amazing bug. I gradually became interested in publishing as I watched a documentary about Glamour magazine and thought ‘that looks amazing’’ he pieces together the puzzle for us ‘I took 6 months out and went and did work experience at loads of different magazines starting with Harpers Bazaar. I was just a 19 year old Essex boy, just a proper laddy lad and I was trapped in the fashion cupboard’ Tomo reminisces and expresses how aware he is that he was extremely lucky to get such amazing experience with some of the biggest magazines in the world.

At the age of 19 Tomo launched his first magazine ‘The Fashion Journal’ with London Fashion Week and Vivienne Westwood which unfortunately folded after two issues which led to his second magazine ‘Random’ which he sold after four and half years to get the money to work on HotHot. It seems Tomo has skipped between many jobs over a range of industries and has clearly had his fingers in many pies in his time but what is going to make HotHot work better and last longer? Tomo still isn’t sure if he has hit the jackpot ‘I am confident in my idea, but I am confident in every idea that I have and I have had some mad ideas and I have done them and they have flopped but you just can’t tell’ he says, still trying to sound upbeat ‘when you start something and you put your life and soul into it you just can’t think like that you have to be confident’.

Hopefully Tomo’s new challenge, despite the slight hitches is going to finally take off and he can begin with project of turning HotHot into a well-known brand across the country and after answering his third call of the interview he says ‘I don’t have a PA or an office so it’s just mad. I will eventually, I will have a Tomo town as well’ and I think that just explains it all.

Get your copy of HotHot Magazine from all tube stations and travel hotspots across the UK on 28^th March

Yours Fashionably

Sarah Victoria