Designer Q&A: Coco & Breezy

They’re twins, they’re stylish, and they’re pushing the envelope in the accessories game.

Designers are everywhere, but “wearable artists” are far and few between, and that’s what these high-voltage twins are bringing to the industry. “We are artists,” they unanimously exclaimed at their show last season. It wasn’t that long ago that we fell in love with them.

We finally got to see what they were all about at their futuristic fashion week presentation last season. The designers set the tone for what seems to be a studded sunglasses craze, and slowly added accessories to their collection.

We sat down with the twins for a chit-chat, and to hear about what’s to come.

ESSENCE.com: You’ve become very well known amongst fashion enthusiasts. How do you feel about that success?
COCO & BREEZY: It feels amazing that we have people that support our art. We don’t give ourselves a limit, so the things we have accomplished make us happy, but never satisfied. We are launching our new sunglasses in September and they are definitely going to show you all that we are ready for this business. We are excited because it is showing our growth. We recently got back from Paris and did a photo shoot wearing the new glasses for the car company “Renault.” They have a new car/scooter launching in a few months called the “TWIZZY,” and we will be the faces in their look book and online commercial.

ESSENCE.com: How has your style evolved throughout the years, and what are you new obsessions?
COCO & BREEZY: LIPSTICK!!! Oh my gosh, we are so obsessed with lipstick. And, our style has evolved a lot in throughout the years. Growing up, we have always been interested in fashion, and had a different look. But as we got older, our style has calmed down a lot. We now know how to give a simple outfit, and we just let our accessories, hair, tattoos, and piercings speak. We don’t believe in taking more then 30 minutes to get dressed. Why would we spend a whole hour, just to get dressed? We are entrepreneurs, so we have to know how to get a fabulous look in 10 minutes, we might get a call for a last-minute meeting. 

ESSENCE.com: What’s the one thing that everyone should have in his or her wardrobe?
COCO & BREEZY: Coco && Breezy Eyewear & Accessories. We feel that our Accessories make the outfit and the outfit is the accessories. You can wear something very simple, throw our pieces on, and it will pop. Our customer is not a certain gender. It’s not for just a male or female, its for the person who has the confidence to wear them.

ESSENCE.com: Who are some of the designers and celebrities that inspire your design process?
COCO & BREEZY:  Honestly, we couldn’t even name any designers or celebrities that inspire our design process. When we are in our design process, we block ourselves from the magazines, blogs, etc. Now, we can say a good friend of ours, French designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac inspires us with his mentoring. As a successful designer, he is making sure we are going in the correct path. One quote he told us was, “Be sure that every piece you create has a true meaning behind it.” We also highly respect Alexander McQueen, Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs.

ESSENCE.com: How does your creative process work as designers, as a team?
COCO & BREEZY: When we are creating, we always feed off each other. Sometimes Coco will have an idea, and then Breezy will execute it. Also, breezy will start off making a product then Coco will finish it. So we work together as a team when we are in the creative process. It’s a lot of fun to have two brains with different perspectives come together while working on one piece at a time. Even though we are twins, we have our own ideas that we just put together to create a masterpiece.

ESSENCE.com: Have you ever thought about expanding your line into ready to wear?
COCO & BREEZY: We do plan on expanding our line to ready to wear. We feel that every designer has to start off with one category to brand themselves. Branding is very important when starting a line. An example we always use is Ralph Lauren started with ties, and that is how he branded himself. Once people got familiar with his brand name, then he expanded to more. We will be following those same steps. We are very big on branding, so we know once we brand ourselves even more, we will keep adding more categories.