The Fashionable Bystander(s): Coco and Breezy
COCO AND BREEZY: ACCESSORY DESIGNERS
We stumbled sleepily into a Bushwick apartment at nine in the morning on a Saturday, to be greeted by two chipper purple-lipped sisters who admitted they felt great about being able to sleep in until 8am. The two continued to dazzle us with evidence of their dedication, revealing their new handmade jewelry line (in addition to their established celebrity-endorsed eyewear collection; oh, and they give motivational speeches to young people with low self-esteem... all at the ripe age of 20.
You just branched off into creating jewelry with your “Wearable Art” collection. What are the references behind the series?
Breezy: Me and Coco are kinda weird and we actually base the collections on storylines. We use the term 20/20 because we live in the year 2020, as far as the way we dress and do our designs; we turn 20 this year; and when you have Coco and Breezy eyewear on, it’s like you have 20/20 vision in the future of fashion.
Coco: We have an imaginary planet called CMB (which is what our first collection is built off of) and now we’re roaming through the planet introducing you to a new city. The skies are made out of black light and there’s asymmetrical buildings and there’s pieces of art floating through space that we grab and put on our arms. People on earth would call it a bracelet, but we would call it art.
Breezy: Eventually when we have ten collections out we're gonna write a book, because every time we go on a plane we come up with a new story line.
Slideshow
For behind the scenes footage of Coco and Breezy, watch the video HERE!
Well they are pretty fun. But you don't think you're influenced by other existing design?
Coco: We don't even look at other designers because our motivation is to be innovative, and it's really easy to look at something, feel inspired and then accidentally copy it. Like if you look around here, you don't see any TVs...
You don't have a computer?! Internet access?!
Coco: Yeah, we have a computer! But we don't go on blogs. We just go with our first idea.
Would you say your designs are practical?
Coco: The eyewear came from being from Minnesota and a lot of people staring at us. Even though we would dress crazy, back then we were so reserved, so we couldn't make eye contact and talk.
Breezy: What I think about high school, is that it was pointless for us to be so reserved. Now we just wanna share with other people, 'do not care what other people think.' At the end of the day, it doesn't even matter.
Did the move to Brooklyn help toughen you up?
Breezy: Oh yeah, I've definitely grown as a person, and in New York you have to be aggressive.
Coco: Now that we've been through that, we want to promote being yourselves. We we went back to school to speak, and I had a teacher that said 'How Coco and Breezy dress now is how they dressed in 10th grade.' She said that I used to walk into her class with four-inch patent leather ankle booties.
You guys only have one bed between you. Do you have detachment issues or does it function to inhibit sleep?
Coco: We feel like there's too much work. We don't really care about sleeping because we just wanna have space to work.
Breezy: New York is so fast and there are so many people wanting to do the same thing. So being young is ten times harder. We don't wanna be a one-hit wonder.
