Our stereotype of gay fashion designers is usually only slightly more wispy and effete than Snagglepuss, but Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra, the mustachioed men behind Costello Tagliapietra, have a…beefier profile. The Brooklyn-based boyfriends, who’s Spring 2012 is going down the runway today, met in 1994 at New York’s Sound Factory and have created a namedrop-worthy brand that’s suprisingly feminine. Though their personal pop-cultur
e tastes are very ’90s-grunge, their clothes are both forward-looking and naturalistic. (They’re pretty green, too, working only with eco-friendly suppliers and utilizing a water-waste-reducing dyeing process on their fabrics.)
Rolling Stone sat down with the burly bespokers to chat about their their new collection and what music inspires them.
On Trent Reznor: “Nine Inch Nails was my first concert ever! Trent opened with Think Tree for Peter Murphy’s “Strange Kind of Love” tour. Ten years later, we were costuming the band for the Fragile tour.”
On selecting music for their shows: “We go through a bunch of our recent loves and try to come up with a story; we work with Geordon [Nicol] and the Misshapes every season because they understand our tastes and always create the perfect soundscape for the collection.”
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On current style icons: “It’s tough — there are so many great musicians out there but fashion is much more intertwined in it, so there are fewer Courtney Loves a la Pretty On The Inside.”
On what to expect in their Spring 2012 collection: “Florals and femininity—the fashion equivalent [of] shoegaz[ing].
Get the full interview here and then check out great NY Fashion Week events on GayCities.
Images via CostelloTagliapietra.com
RomanHans
If they ever want to make a sandwich, they should give me a call.
Any kind of sandwich, actually.