Eccentric's Corner: Double Identity

Names

: Andrew Andrew

Names

Profession: Designers, marketing consultants, DJs

Claim to Eccentricity: They dress alike and keep their individual identities secret

Andrew Andrew are like a comedy sketch that's gotten out of hand. The two Andrews live and work together, dress and act identically, and earn money jointly as muses for big corporations by rhapsodizing on style. They've kept it up for nine years. I met them at a restaurant in the East Village, where they finished each other's thoughts and even wore matching tape on their glasses. (They've wondered what they'd do if one of them broke an arm.) While keeping their individual identities secret, they say that even close friends don't want to peek behind the scenes, for fear of spoiling the mystique.

What's your main source of income?

A1: We do these crazy projects like one-off design pieces that we sell at boutiques in Williamsburg or Paris. And corporations pick our brains about design and marketing and all sorts of things. We've consulted with Pepsi, Cadillac, Levi's. And it can be something like, we literally come in and talk about luxury. Like, what is luxury? Or we talk about what's new with music. Or it could be something more involved. We made YouTube videos for MAC Cosmetics. Our core competency is everything. It's creativity. In fact, the only thing that we can't do is sit around and come up with new ideas.

A2: Ideas start with philosophers, artists give them shape, and it trickles down from there to design, music, film, and other media. I think we start with the idea and talk about how to give it form.

So you're in between the philosophers and artists?

A1: Sure, yeah.

A2:I think that the artists are being skipped over at this point. Art is castrated. American Apparel has more power to actually change people than something that's in a gallery.

Can you be subversive in the realm of retail?

A2: We made a clothing line consisting of oversize labels. We did this at Barneys uptown and Fiorucci downtown. We would sew the label on the front of your shirt. That kind of addressed the idea of identity. We're empowering you and saying that we believe in your style.

A1: Fashion houses are always trying to get to what it is that you want. Corporations in general are trying to figure out what the trends are. We bypassed that whole process by saying, "Well, clearly you already bought whatever it is you want. Why not just let us endorse it for you?"

A2: We had a fashion show and said to the models, "Okay, we need you to dress yourself how you feel most comfortable, and we'll sew the label on whatever you're wearing." They were all confused because they needed someone to tell them what fashion was, and that was sort of disappointing.

A1: But once they got it, they went full force and it was an amazing project.

A2: For another project, we got these tacky Lladro figurines, like clowns with flowers, had them coated in jet-black car paint, and resold them in high-end designer stores.

A1: We eradicated the bourgeois veneer. We made one of a kind design pieces out of mass-produced artwork. We elevated it at the same time that we took it down a notch.

Why do you dress alike?

A1: People always classify it as a performance, or an installation. It's really the most mundane thing. A lot of what we're about is making people think twice about what they're seeing. We don't look at all alike but people often say we're twins. It's sort of a failure of the human brain.

A2: It works on different levels. The New York skyline is all about one building outdoing another. The Twin Towers were amazing because they referenced only themselves. They were a closed system and sometimes people are kind of frightened by us because it seems like we're a closed system.

A1: We often say that we're post-taste because we don't dress according to our own personal taste. We say, this season we're going to do a preppy thing or a safari thing or a 1970s stoner anthropology professor look or Goth or whatever.

A2: What do your readers want to know?

What makes you tick.

A2: There have been times, fewer in the past couple of years, when I'll wake up and think to myself, "What the f*ck am I doing? This is really weird, isn't it? We should probably seek therapy." But then someone will say, "You are so lucky. You've actually found someone with whom you can really communicate and live a life and be on the same level." It's beautiful, and I hope I never take that for granted.

Do you have critics?

A1: I remember we were riding our bikes and someone yelled, "Andrew Andrew, you suck." And I was like, "Wow that guy knows our names. We've made it."

A2: This has been happening more and more frequently. Someone will come up and say, "Who do you think you are? Andrew Andrew or something?"

A1: We've always wanted to be simmering, but never boiling. We didn't want to just burn out. I feel like the special thing about New York is you see people that you think are interesting looking, but you don't really know what their deal is. And we fit into that system really well.

A2: Also, instead of, "Those are the guys who do design, baked goods, videos, fashion, deejaying, etc.," it's much easier to say, "Those are the guys who dress alike." And that becomes the point of entry into the world of Andrew Andrew. Which is sort of anything, like Barbie and her interchangeable personas. We want Andrew Andrew to be whatever you want it to be.