Costello Tagliapietra are known for their gorgeous, slinky, jersey dresses that swish and swirl when you wear them. The boys, who are equally famous for their own adorable plaid-shirted Bear looks, launched a collaboration today with Uniqlo, the Japanese retailer known for its high fashions at low prices. Mr. Mickey caught up with the boys as the store opened and fashion addicts scooped up pieces from the new collection.
    

Tell me about the Uniqlo project. Did you treat it like you would your regular collection?    

Robert Tagliapietra: We really wanted to treat it like it was an offshoot of our collection, a proper diffusion line. We treated it with the same respect. We did the patterns ourselves. We spent time with each piece the same we would with our collection. It's just with a different kind of mentality. It's more like daywear. It's how the girls we're around on a daily basis dress during the day. We would like to think our dresses are worn day and night but we know the reality is they're worn at night. This was a nice opportunity to dress the girls for day.    

Did Uniqlo tell you what you could spend fabric wise or did they say tell us what you want and we'll make it work?    

RT: They flew us out to Japan to go over the fabrics and the reality is all the fabrics they had were from similar mills we work with and were fabrics we're used to. It's not unlike what we wanted to do. Nice rayon jerseys and cotton jerseys that felt nice.    

They look nice. Is it only available in NYC?

RT: It actually went on sale in Japan and China. It's like the Jil Sander collection. It's the only [collaboration} that's been all over.    

You're a global brand! You said you were thinking of adopting a baby down the line. What would you do if your child dressed very the opposite of you, and hated beards and plaid? 

RT: We would love him.    

Chastity Bono syndrome.     

RT: Like Family Ties. Especially with a boy. I'm sure we would be forced to go see baseball games.     

I wonder what it's like to be past the 'hot new thing' phase and be in the middle level of building a brand in these trying economic times.    

RT: This was an inevitable turn the industry took. Brands are becoming a little smaller. You think about people like Jil Sander who worked since the '70s and Gaultier. They didn't get brand recognition for 20 years. They had time to buld these brands and I think we're looking at that again. Look at Alaia -- it's only recently that he's selling out at Barneys.    

It's the prices!    

RT: It's a realistic look at how this industry is.    

It's a more European look. The American way is 'Who's the hot new thing that nobody's written about yet?" So you take someone  who's still in school and do tons of press on them before they've had any chance to build a company.    

RT: That's sort of what happened to us. Our first article came out before we even had any kind of brand name. It was American Vogue that kind of made our name. We were still going by Jeffrey Costello, Robert Tagliapietra. We had no concept. We had never worked for another brand. It was scary for the first two years. We had no idea what we were doing. So now it's kind of nice not to be that person. To have that time to think about it in a logical way. It's a business not a game.             

Jeffrey Costello: I'm not very literate.

That's fine. Neither are PAPERMAG.com readers [Ed: he's kidding!]. This collaboration makes you a global brand. How does it feel to be an international sensation instead of a local boy made good?    

JC: It is exciting. One of our dreams has always been to take our collection and make it available to more people. Unfortunately doing small production runs and the way we do our dresses, they have to be  priced accordingly and not everyone can afford a $2,000 dress Uniqlo has afforded us the opportunity to expand our design aesthetic and make it more affordable. $29 for a dress.    

I wanna buy these dresses and wear them over leggings around the house!  Think about people in Japan and China wearing your stuff!    

RT: It's so exciting. We didn't do this to become famous.    

You did it to pick up cute boys. Otters and cubs and such.    

RT: We love what we do. It sounds corny but I love the way fabric feels and you get a beautiful fabric in your hands. It's kind of exciting. We never really thought of doing this to become world famous.    

When you guys went to Japan to meet with Uniqlo how did they react to your personal looks? Did they go crazy? Did they run?    

RT: We got a lot of stares.    

Admiring stares I'm sure.   

RT: We went to Harajuku and it was really cute. We got the hand over the mouth with the smile and that made me so giddy to see that. Because I never expected anyone to do that and it was kind of nice. We went to another part of town and the whole time we were there we only saw one other big person and it was a sumo wrestler.    

Amazing.  You two could be cartoons in Japan.    

RT: I would love it.    

I'll talk to my people. As soon as I meet them I'll talk to them.    

RT: I'm holding you to it.