2 SU alums, best friends’ hand-drawn designs became clothing brand Tonic Girl
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UPDATE: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. on Sept. 6, 2026.
Through pinned designs on the walls of their apartment and long nights choosing fabrics, Nicoletta Vlitas witnessed the progress of her two friends’ clothing business.
“Probably one of the most inspiring parts was I would go over to their house and they would be grinding away doing things or in the library for hours on end, with one computer with schoolwork, one with Tonic Girl and one with Canva,” Vlitas, who graduated from Syracuse University in May, said.
Launched in July, Tonic Girl is a small clothing business started by Jamie Kim and Eliza Cardillo, focused on sustainable and affordable swimsuits that don’t sacrifice style.
The idea of creating a sustainable swimsuit brand first came to Cardillo during fall 2024, ahead of her semester abroad in Spain. Preparing for her trip, Cardillo struggled to find sustainable swimsuits that matched her clothing aesthetic. That’s when she decided to try her luck making her own swimsuits.
When she began developing her brand in the fall of her senior year, it was a no-brainer for Cardillo to turn to Kim, her best friend.
“I was just thinking ‘Oh, there’s this gap where we can’t really find high-quality swimwear that’s not gonna start to pill after one or two wears, that’s fashionable but timeless and in a reasonable price range,’” Cardillo said.
Kim and Cardillo met during their freshman year at SU. Even though they lived on opposite sides of campus — Kim in Sadler Hall and Cardillo in Flint Hall — the two found each other through mutual friends and eventually joined the same sorority, Phi Sigma Sigma. The pair clicked instantly, bonding over their love of art and design.
By their senior year, the pair became roommates.
Jamie Kim (left) and Eliza Cardillo (right) developed Tonic Girl while attending Syracuse University before officially launching the brand in July. On Tuesday, they debuted their new clothing line, Tonic Girl Vintage. Courtesy of Jamie Kim
Kim and Cardillo shared a love for small fashion brands and drew inspiration from their sustainability and the communities they often create, Cardillo said.
Though Tonic Girl is a joint effort by the pair, Kim focuses more on the creative side of the brand. Using her degree in studio art and minor in fashion design, Kim’s education helped her become comfortable with painting and drawing for Tonic Girl.
As for Cardillo, who earned a degree in public relations, her Newhouse School of Public Communication classes helped her with the business’ advertising, website building and product design, she said.
“Both of us are very creative in nature and we really wanted to kind of manifest ourselves and our personalities into a brand,” Kim said. ”We really wanted a brand that defined a sense of community and as seniors in college (at the time) me and Eliza found ourselves asking, ‘What happens next? Does the fun end here?’”
Though neither of them had previously owned a business, Cardillo and Kim hosted five curated vintage thrift sales out of their apartment during their time at SU. This in turn helped them while working on the advertising and sales for Tonic Girl, Cardillo said.
When it officially came to manufacturing their swimsuits, finding the right fabricator took them a few months. Originally, the partners thought about handmaking the items from scratch, but ultimately decided against it after realizing they wanted to sell more than just a few swimsuits at a time.
The pair landed on a manufacturer that shared similar values, from their attention to detail to using fabric sourced from Italy, Kim said. She and Cardillo wanted to emphasize “slow production” and not contribute to the fast fashion process.
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On Tuesday, Tonic Girl launched its latest line: Tonic Girl Vintage. From the founders’ thrift sales at SU and their love for thrifting, they wanted to explore selling other vintage items alongside their swimsuit collections.
The hope for the vintage line is to give a new life to clothing pieces that already exist. Their plan is to have new vintage drops based on the season and what the pair has luck sourcing. The goal for the upcoming drop is to serve as a bridge between their “Spritz Collection” from the summer and their upcoming fall collection.
“As previous roommates me and Eliza pretty much shared our closets. I would see Eliza finding new ways to wear my clothes and it gave them a new light,” Kim said. “Now I feel like I take inspiration from that and how we can do that for other people as well.”
The pair did a soft launch of their brand in the spring of their senior year, where they sold merchandise like hats and collaborated with other brands to give back to their outer circle. This helped them get the word out.
“It was really cool walking around on campus and seeing people wearing a Tonic Girl hat and going to the bar and seeing Tonic Girl hats. It had people asking, “What is that? What’s a Tonic Girl? Are you a Tonic Girl?” Cardillo said. “It became conversational.”
At first, Kim and Cardillo were secretive about their business plans. As far as the prints they were handmaking and the scale they were working with, no one really knew exactly what they had been up to. So, the soft launch they held was a big “bang” for them, Kim said.
The support systems Kim and Cardillo relied on throughout the process of starting their business have made all their work worth it.
As the pair wanted to create a culture through their brand, they realized they wanted a name that encompassed all of their customer base.
“Tonic girls are bubbly, they have a zest for life, they’re bold,” Cardillo said. “If I were to define a “tonic girl,” they would be unapologetically themselves, creative, they take risks, show up for their friends. They’re sincere and they’re kind and they create magic in everyday moments.”
As much as the pair wanted to define their customer demographic through Tonic Girl, the encouragement from their friends and support systems has shown that a “Tonic Girl” is even more than they could’ve imagined, Cardillo said.
When Cardillo and Kim mentioned the idea of their business to Vlitas, she knew she wanted to support them in any way she could. Vlitas has always seen Cardillo and Kim as two of the most creative people she knows and has seen how they’ve used that to create pieces people can feel confident in, Vlitas said.
After two years of work, Cardillo and Kim said their brand has created a new community among all types of women.
“We wanted to create a brand that had a culture and created a camaraderie and community, rather than just some product that gets shipped to someone and they never think about the brand again,” Cardillo said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article said Eliza Cardillo lived in Day Hall freshman year and that Tonic Girl’s manufacturer was based in Italy. Cardillo lived in Flint Hall, and the manufacturer uses Italian fabric but isn’t based in Italy. The Daily Orange regrets this error.
