Cote-Armour Feature in March '13 Issue of Teen Vogue

We are so excited and thankful to announce that we were invited by Teen Vogue last fall to custom-make 'Team Coco' t-shirts and sweatshirts in support of supermodel Coco Rocha’s new TV show, The Face! Coco has been a huge inspiration to the both of us for many years, so being commissioned to make something especially for her by Teen Vogue was surreal.  And the best part? Coco and everyone at Teen Vogue are some of the gnarliest guys and girls we’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with! We've included scans of the feature below, but if you are interested in owning a copy yourself, you'll find it all in the March '13 issue of Teen Vogue!

A big thank you to our friend Chris Pecaro for helping us out with all the screen printing.

You can show your support for Coco and special-order a 'Team Coco' shirt or sweatshirt by contacting us cotearmour@gmail.com.  And don’t forget to catch the premiere of The Face only on Oxygen on February 12th!

Stay Gnarly,
Izzy & Shriya

Cote-Armour Winter 12/13: Dirt, Mud, & Honey

When we were creating our second lookbook, we decided to think about who we were really designing for: in our minds, our perfect gnarly kids are the ones who embody a certain kind of fearlessness.  It’s the fearlessness that makes you able to just throw on a sweatshirt and still look like the one that everyone else wants to be.  It's a fearlessness that’s about taking things into your own hands - whether it’s making your own clothes or making the choice to be the very greatest you can be.  Our fearlessness is street smart, it’s a last minute trip to who-knows-where with your best pals, it’s picking up an instrument and making your own music instead of downloading top 40 tracks.  It’s making the world around you instead of just living in it.

With this notion of ideal do-it-yourself-ers in the back of our brains, we could only think of one movement that embodied the same sort of fearlessness that we were trying to communicate with this collection: Grunge - a movement that pulled from the punk DIY ethic of fighting consumerism and authority, from the kids who wouldn’t sign with major record labels and decided to turn their basements into the hottest places to be, from the boys and girls who wanted to make a new sound for a new generation.  We wanted to make things inspired by the greatest artists and bands of that time - from Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore to Mudhoney - in order to to create the same distortions of sound and contrast of angst and beauty found in their music and somehow infuse our collection with just that.  What we came up with was the juxtaposition of pyramid studs on the coziness of sweatshirts and the layering of plaid flannels under exquisitely-embellished leather jackets.  We made beanies printed with our street art-inspired logo and paired almost everything with our favorite studded collars.  We wanted to take Grunge, that movement from another coast, to our favorite city in the world and give it a 2012 treatment.  

This is Cote-Armour Winter 12/13: we are handmade and we are one-of-a-kind.  We are our own sound and we are our own generation.
Stay gnarly,
I&S xx

Shop the collection here.

Models: Mike Bailey-Gates, Eleanor Bray, Augusta Dayton, Sam Lui, Fatema Maswood, Chayenne Mia, Lauren Poor, and Jake Sigl.

Photos: Shriya Samavai

Styling: Izzy Howell

A huge thank you to Chris Pecaro for helping us out with all the screen printing and to Allyssa Yohana for helping with embroidery and assisting on the shoot.

Artist Spotlight: Olivia Bee and Cooper Campbell

“An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.”
― Charles Bukowski

When Izzy and I founded Cote-Armour, making clothing and accessories was only a part of what we wanted to do.  We were interested in making a place for our artist friends - for the painters, writers, photographers, and musicians - to showcase their work.  We wanted to create a place where people could go to discover something new and something that inspires them.  So when Olivia Bee, one of my favorite photographers, and her boyfriend Cooper Campbell came to stay with me for a few days during their trip to New York, I knew I wanted them to be a part of the artist collective that Izzy and I are establishing. Olivia's work has always been a big inspiration to me - her photographs transmit such honesty and frankness that I strive for in my own photography.  I discovered Cooper's sketches earlier this year, and when he came to visit, he brought along copies of his most recent comic, Rocky Point 97MPH. I just couldn't get enough of his style - his ability to communicate something even more than language with his weapon of choice, a ballpoint pen. What I love about these two is their ability to convey the joy and the wrath inherently tied to the process of growing up.  They don't just create pretty pictures or drawings; their work pulls at some image hidden within you - it makes an unnamable thing in the back of your brain just sort of click.  But, the best part of the time I spent with them was being able to learn that these two are bred from the best sort of stock: they’re some of the kindest and most hilarious people I’ve ever met - the sort of people who can make any moment one of the dearest memories, whether it’s running around Chelsea or talking back at my place until 3 am.  

Olivia is modeling our Astalot Headpiece and Cooper dons the Carr Studded Baseball Hat in red. Both the products are up for sale on our Etsy and similar pieces will join them in the coming weeks.

Stay gnarly,
I&S xx

Photos and styling by Shriya Samavai. All items of clothing are the models' own.

Cote-Armour Fall 2012: Rock Solid

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,/dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,/angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...”
      - from Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Howl always makes me think of the first time Shriya and I had dinner together, and our conversation that scratched at Patti Smith, Garage Rock, and some plan to start wearing more black lipstick to give a little kick every now and then to what’s “acceptable.”  Even then, there was this terrible itch to relive everything Howl - to relive that inspired-by-broken-glass-on-the-sidewalk way of looking at the world, to walk through the fire, to exist between the chords of a song you just can’t stop playing.  

For our first collection, we wanted to create a sort of beauty hidden by an exoskeleton of street-tough cool; to stab at the struggles of coming of age that we face along with our friends.  As we made our pieces, we wanted to unify spikes and sparkles, male and female, but with the simultaneous urge to dissect the unity -  to overlap and push the definition of gender beyond the establishment, because this issue is such an irrevocable component of growing up right now.  We wanted to acknowledge the gender issue while still nodding our heads to our idols, to our mutual sources of New York City inspiration: from Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe in the 1960s to the Basquiat-headed reign of the 80s, and finally to the early 2000s when The Strokes could always be found within a block or two of Mercury Lounge.  How dearly we wanted to transmute all of that, not only into our apparel, but into our lives.  We wanted to create pieces that could somehow be reincarnates of the up-all-nighters and ready-for-anythings of the last fifty years, yet pull from the Fall 2012 rocker-chic, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo dream gal galavanting down the runway and mix her with the "angel headed hipster" drinking a slurpee on the Bowery.

But, then we took a serious look at our pieces: the jewelry made from Brooklyn Flea treasures, the studs we bought from a stoop sale on Thirteenth and First, the bits and pieces of clothing we have collected from our incredible city - the things that we have now torn down, painted, reconstructed, and renamed. We realized that we were already living it - that we have something better and stronger and more honest than a desperate emulation of the past. Because this is how we live our lives: this collection is made from the minds of two nineteen year-old girls striving to make sense of the beautiful, smashed-up bits of New York City.  This is how we are. This is what we wear, this is what we do, this is where we live, this is where we eat, this is the music that we play. Welcome to the new youth claiming the streets of New York City. We are Rock Solid.

Models: Claire Christerson, Mike Bailey-Gates, Lauren Poor, Nicole Poor, Jake Sigl, Allyssa Yohana, Kaela Chambers, and Izzy Howell

Photos: Shriya Samavai

Makeup: Izzy Howell

Styling: Izzy Howell and Shriya Samavai

New York City is a panic attack on Houston and Essex, it’s a broken down Q train, it’s a 45 minute schlep to work. New York City is finding yourself in your friend’s ex-girlfriend’s most recent ex-boyfriend’s apartment, it’s a roof in Brooklyn, it’s a bar in the East Village. New York City is a fake ID that expired 3 years ago, it’s an $8 show that changed your life, it’s a kitten found in a box 2 blocks from the office. New York City is a text message that was never responded to, it’s a photo pass to your favorite concert, it’s free drinks on a ship in mid-July. New York City is being in love with everyone you see, it’s a cup of coffee that makes you crazy, it’s your friend putting lipstick on you outside the venue 10 minutes before the show. New York City is platform shoes, it’s a pair of Converse, it’s taking a couple of Advil when you get home. New York City is thrifted treasure, it’s a stoop sale that saved your life, it’s the best cup of cocoa chai you’ve ever had. New York City is a sweaty room full of BK’s hippest, it’s missing an opportunity only to get another, it’s a lot of anxiously waiting. New York City is realizing your dream, it’s passing your current boss’s girlfriend on campus, it’s an iChat that got sent to the wrong person. New York City is a library full of tired kids, it’s a brownstone full of addicts, it’s a dorm room full of outsiders. New York City is a laugh attack in a quiet room, it’s a crick in your neck, it’s a stack of vinyl in your desk drawer. New York City is a walk to the waterfront, it’s an endless conversation, it’s 4 cups of tea in one work day. New York City is a revelation, it’s an exchange of words with the nicest stranger, it’s a never-ending beginning.