Quality Makers: Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger and Constance Jablonski on Friendship, Entrepreneurship, and Building French Bloom

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What happens when a Michelin Guide executive and a French supermodel walk away from their respective dream careers to build something that doesn’t exist yet? In the case of Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger and Constance Jablonski, the answer is French Bloom, the alcohol-free French sparkling wine brand they co-founded around a shared belief that celebration, sophistication, and wellbeing shouldn’t have to exist at the expense of one another.

Now, as French Bloom approaches its fifth anniversary this October, the founders are looking toward what comes next. “What started as an idea for something we wished existed has grown into so much more than we could have imagined,” Frerejean-Taittinger says. For Jablonski, the next chapter is about continuing to challenge expectations around alcohol-free living “and ultimately making the choice feel so natural and desirable that it no longer needs an explanation.”

Here, the friends and founders get candid about leaving behind dream careers, building a business with someone you love, finding balance in lives that rarely slow down, and why they believe French Bloom is only just getting started.

TQE: You both had careers many people would consider “dream jobs” before French Bloom. What made you willing to start over and build something from scratch?

Maggie Frerejean-Taittinger: “Before French Bloom, I led the international development of the Michelin Guide. It was genuinely a dream job. I travelled the world discovering new cuisines and cultures, meeting extraordinary chefs and experiencing hospitality at its very best. It taught me so much about taste, excellence and the emotion that can be created around a table.

At the same time, I was beginning to see a real shift in the way people wanted to drink. My first pregnancy made that very personal. Suddenly I wasn’t drinking, but I still wanted the beautiful bottle, the ritual, the pairing, the sense of occasion. And even in some of the best restaurants in the world, there was nothing that offered that same experience without alcohol.

That stayed with me. I loved my career, so leaving wasn’t an obvious decision, but I became convinced there was a real need for a product that simply didn’t exist yet.

Leaving a career I loved was a leap, but French Bloom became something I felt we had to build. We wanted to create a new way of celebrating, without compromise, and a bottle that could earn its place on the most beautiful tables in the world.”

Constance Jablonski: “For me, it was a combination of instinct and curiosity. I have been working in fashion for almost 18 years with some of the most incredible houses and people in the world and I genuinely loved that life. But I have always had an entrepreneurial side that I hadn’t really explored.

French Bloom came from the feeling that there was a gap between what people were increasingly looking for and what was actually available to them. I wanted to create something that felt as desirable, sophisticated and celebratory as the things I was used to seeing in the luxury world, without alcohol.

Starting over was definitely intimidating, but I think there is something very exciting about being a beginner again. You have no rules, no established playbook, and you get to build the world exactly as you imagine it. For me, that was incredibly motivating.”

TQE: You came from completely different industries—fashion and fine dining. What was it about each other that made you instant friends?

MFT: “Constance and I are very different, which is probably why it worked so immediately. But underneath that, we share the same values and a similar curiosity about the world. We both love bringing people together, discovering new places, long dinners, beautiful things, but neither of us takes any of it too seriously.

There was also an immediate trust between us. We became friends before we ever became business partners, and I think that has shaped French Bloom enormously. We know each other’s strengths, we challenge each other, and we can be completely honest with one another. That is incredibly precious when you’re building something together.”

CJ: “I think we recognized something in each other very quickly, we had the same appetite for life. We both love beautiful things, food, travel, people, and creating moments around a table, but we also share a very strong sense of ambition and curiosity.

What really made me trust Maggie was that she was incredibly genuine. There was no ego. We could talk for hours, laugh about absolutely nothing, and then suddenly have a very serious conversation about building a company together.

I think the fact that we became friends first was essential. We didn’t meet because we thought we would make good business partners. We simply liked each other. Everything else came from there.”

TQE: Maggie, your background in the Michelin Guide introduced you to some of the world's best hospitality experiences, while Constance, you've spent nearly two decades working with luxury fashion houses. How have those worlds influenced the way you've built French Bloom?

MFT: “Michelin taught me that true quality is in the details, often the ones people don’t consciously notice. The temperature of something when it arrives at the table, the glassware, the rhythm of service, the story behind an ingredient. When everything is right, the experience feels effortless.

That philosophy has stayed with me at French Bloom. We were never interested in simply removing alcohol from wine. We wanted to think about the entire experience: what is inside the bottle, how it pairs with food, how it looks on a table, how it is served, and ultimately how it makes someone feel.

Constance brought this extraordinary understanding of image, culture and the codes of luxury from fashion. I think the meeting of those two worlds, hospitality and fashion, has been incredibly important to French Bloom.”

CJ: “Fashion taught me that desire is created through a combination of product, emotion and storytelling. You can have the most beautiful object in the world, but if you don’t create a world around it, it doesn’t become a brand.

I think that instinct has influenced French Bloom enormously. From the beginning, I wanted the bottle to feel like something you would genuinely want to have on your table, in your home, or bring to someone’s house. I wanted it to feel modern and luxurious, but never intimidating.

Fashion also taught me to pay attention to every detail . The shape of a bottle, the way a campaign feels, the words you use, the experience someone has when they first discover you. The fun has been finding the space where the two worlds of fashion and hospitality meet.”

TQE: Success often looks glamorous from the outside. What's something about building a company that has surprised you the most?

MFT: “How unglamorous most of it is!

There are extraordinary moments, of course, but building a company is really thousands of small decisions, problems and conversations. One minute you’re discussing a beautiful campaign or tasting a new cuvée, and the next you’re deep in logistics, production or a spreadsheet.

What I hadn’t anticipated was how deeply personal it would become, especially building French Bloom alongside one of my closest friends and my husband. There’s something incredibly special about creating something you believe in with the people you love, but it also means there’s very little separation between the company and your life. We celebrate the highs together, we carry the difficult moments together, and somehow French Bloom has become part of our family story too.

It’s intense, joyful, occasionally chaotic, and much more emotional than I ever imagined entrepreneurship would be.”

CJ: “For me, not coming from an entrepreneurial background, I never realized how many departments and responsibilities there are in such a company. From HR to sales to PR to Marketing I was never involved on an operational level before and I’ve learned so much. 

I was used to arriving on set, being surrounded by incredibly talented teams, and seeing a finished image come to life. Entrepreneurship is very different. You are involved in everything, and you have to be patient. It requires serious resilience. You have to be comfortable not knowing the answer, making mistakes, changing direction and starting again.

And perhaps the biggest surprise is how rewarding that can be. There is something incredibly satisfying about looking at something and knowing: we imagined this and now it exists.”

TQE: Since creating French Bloom, has your relationship with alcohol, wellness, and social rituals changed?

MFT: “Completely. I no longer think about drinking in such binary terms.

For a long time, our culture told us that celebration automatically meant alcohol. What I love now is having the freedom to choose. Sometimes I want a beautiful glass of Champagne. Sometimes I want French Bloom. The important thing is that the experience doesn’t have to change depending on that decision.

For me, wellness is increasingly about balance rather than restriction. I want to enjoy dinner, stay too long at the table, laugh with friends, and still wake up feeling like myself the next morning.”

CJ: “Absolutely. I think French Bloom changed my idea of what it means to drink socially. I no longer see it as an all-or-nothing choice.

I love Champagne. I love the ritual, the taste, the glass in your hand, the feeling of opening a bottle with friends. But I also love waking up early, exercising, being present with my children and feeling good the next day. I don’t think those things should be in opposition.

What has changed is that I feel much more comfortable choosing what I actually want in the moment, rather than feeling that alcohol has to be part of the occasion. And I think that freedom is one of the most beautiful things about where culture is heading. I’m also convinced now that being social is probably the strongest pillar of your wellness journey, and French Bloom helps you reconnect with one another.” 

TQE: What's something you fiercely protect in your personal life, no matter how busy work gets?

MFT: “Time with my family. I have three young boys, and they are the greatest counterbalance to everything else in my life.

But I also don’t try to hide the work from them. I’m constantly telling them, ‘Mama and Papa are building our dream.’ I want them to understand that dreams don’t just happen. They require hard work, sacrifice, patience, and sometimes choosing the difficult path because you believe in what you’re building.

Of course, I fiercely protect our time together, the dinners, weekends and small everyday moments. But I also hope that one day they’ll look back and understand why we worked so hard. If they grow up knowing that you can have a big dream, take a risk and work relentlessly to make it real, that would make me incredibly proud.”

CJ: “My family, and the feeling of being present with them.

My life can be very fast, travel, shoots, meetings, events, so when I’m home, I really try to be home. Dinner together, taking the kids to school, walking the dog, weekends without a schedule. Those very ordinary moments are actually the ones I value the most.

I also fiercely protect a little bit of space for myself. I think that’s something I’ve learned with time: you can’t constantly be available to everyone else and expect to have energy left for the things that matter most. But that balance is never easy to find.”

TQE: Both of your careers have involved constant travel. Is there a place in the world where you feel instantly grounded or most inspired?

MFT: “Somewhere I can walk everywhere. I spend so much of my life on planes and in cars that I feel most grounded in places where I can just walk out the door and experience the city on foot. That’s often when I feel most observant and most inspired.”

CJ: “Weirdly I find inspiration in places that are completely new to me. Fashion taught me to be very observant when I travel: how people dress, what they eat, how they entertain, what they consider beautiful. I love discovering those little cultural codes.”

TQE: What's one daily ritual that’s completely non-negotiable for you?

MFT: “Coffee before the world starts asking questions of me. With three children, French Bloom and a life that moves between different time zones, there are very few truly quiet moments. That first coffee is mine. I use it to think about the day ahead before the messages, meetings and beautiful chaos begin.”

CJ: “Movement in the morning. It doesn’t have to be a perfect workout ,sometimes it’s just stretching, sometimes a run, sometimes a long walk with my dog. 

It’s the moment when I get out of my head and back into my body. With a life that can be very mental and very scheduled, that feeling is important to me.

And, of course, coffee. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”

TQE: What's one piece of advice your younger self would be surprised you now live by?

MFT: “You don’t have to have everything figured out before you begin.

I used to think the right path was the one you could carefully plan. My life has taught me almost the opposite. Some of the best decisions I’ve made came with no guarantee they would work.

At some point you have to trust your instinct, surround yourself with exceptional people, and jump. You can work out a surprising amount on the way down.”

CJ: “It’s okay not to be perfect.

And I’ve also learned not to be afraid of changing direction. A career can evolve, an identity can evolve, and what feels like starting over is sometimes just the next version of yourself.”

TQE: If someone spent a day with you, what would surprise them most?

MFT: “How many completely different lives can fit into a single day. I can go from a Universal Music Group board meeting, where I serve as Vice Chair, to a French Bloom tasting, jump on a call about a new department store flagship partnership, and then be home negotiating dinner and bedtime with three little boys.

There isn’t really a separation between the different parts of my life anymore, and I’m not sure I want there to be. I love business, I love building things, I love being a mother, and I love being surrounded by people. My days are full, fast and occasionally completely chaotic, but I think I’m happiest that way.”

CJ: “Maybe how accessible I can be? When you are a model on advertisements and magazine covers , people sometimes forget you are also a real person. There is a funny contrast between the glamorous image people might have of my life and the very normal reality of it.

I also think people might be surprised by how much I enjoy the business side. I love fashion and the creative world, but I genuinely love building things, looking at numbers, solving problems and thinking about what comes next. French Bloom allowed that part of me to finally have a real place.”

TQE: Looking ahead, what are you most excited about—not just for French Bloom, but for this next chapter of your lives?

MFT: “We’ve just moved our family from Paris to Miami, so it genuinely feels like the beginning of a completely new chapter. After so many years in France, there’s something incredibly energizing about coming back to the U.S. with my husband and our three boys, and experiencing it through their eyes.

It also happens at such an exciting moment for French Bloom. The U.S. is becoming one of our most important markets, and I love the idea of being here on the ground, building the next chapter of the Maison while beginning a new adventure as a family.

There’s a lot of change all at once, but I’ve always been drawn to that feeling of stepping into the unknown. It’s usually where the most exciting things begin.”

CJ: “I feel like we are still at the beginning, which is probably the most exciting part.

French Bloom has grown so much, but there is still so much we want to build, new markets, new products, new ways of experiencing the Maison.

Personally, I’m excited about continuing to evolve beyond the identities I’ve already had. I’ve been a model for almost two decades, and now I’m an entrepreneur and a mother too. I don’t feel like I have to choose one version of myself. I’m excited to see what the next chapter looks like when you allow all of those parts to coexist.”