The Best Brands And Designers For Both You And Your Girl

Image via Complex Original

Carven

Key Demo: Young people (ugh @ me, who says “young people”?!) with floppy beanpole limbs wearing suits and glasses insouciantly yet post-ironically. They read Situationist manifestos and mutter, “Everything I’m wearing is well tailored and coordinated,” while their faces are green and purple with Pixy Stix detritus.

Who This Couple Is: Woman is a plant archivist at a members-only greenhouse in Tribeca and Guy is a banker who uses an abacus.

Where They Are Going: A "downtown business casual" Plant Opening at said greenhouse.

Club Monaco

Key Demo: Club Monaco is like the Neil Young of brands, just rolling into America and saying everything we want to say better than we ever could.

Who This Couple Is: Proto-mods who host Mad Men viewing parties that include highball cocktails and tiny burgers, all of which you were vehemently opposed to until you went and it was actually, like, sort of fun, maybe, actually, even though they made you wear a nametag which is lame, but the tiny burgers were actually really good and the couple is soooo nice and now you feel sort of bad for calling them “Dweezil and Moon Unit” behind their backs.

Where They Are Going: After Mad Men is over, they’re taking their stupid hypoallergenic dog—but, like, OK, you have to admit, it’s like, a pretty cute dog or whatever—for a walk to get ice cream, if you want to come! Their treat!

Mark McNairy

Key Demo: Boarding school dropouts who don’t shower, but make really weird jokes you feel smart for understanding.

Who This Couple Is: After getting kicked out of prep school, they showed up at Brown to crash with friends for a few weekends, but ended up staying for a few years and were then accidentally awarded degrees. Now running an art and fashion PR agency that plays cyber pranks on Anonymous.

Where They Are Going: An underground gator wrestling club.

Rick Owens

Key Demo: When you ask them how they are, they respond, “It is so different to feel.”

Who This Couple Is: He is a photographer and nobody knows what his girlfriend does because whenever you look at her for five solid seconds you believe your entire soul has just been taken from you and turned into charred bacon bits.

Where They Are Going: A deserted bank where a guy is blasting Megadeth while he dips his hair in red paint to slowly paint the floor.

Barbour

Key Demo: The self-righteous classmates of the McNairy types who took themselves too seriously and now have weird formal cocktail parties with professional bartenders and passed puff pastries.

Who This Couple Is: In my most pleasant dreams, the girlfriend works in travel PR and the guy works at a lame real estate job. In reality, she probably works at an art auction house and he works at a non-profit that encourages companies to build green.

Where They Are Going: Hell (fingers crossed).

A.P.C.

Key Demo: Minimalist romantics who say shit like, “I’m just going to grab a coffee and a 'cwa-sohn' and then I’ll be there in 'twah minutes'” and you just have to sit there and take it because you want to get invited to a party at their giant loft that contains nothing but a white couch, a small ceramic poodle, and a big painting that says, “C’EST MOI” in Chiller typeface.

Who Is This Couple: Assholes who make jeans, a striped T-shirt, and sneakers look like an incredible sartorial achievement.

Where They Are Going: Circling the same block in Soho over and over like some horrible beautiful fascist army on parade.

Nike

Key Demo: Nike is the most affordable and accessible cool couplez brand, offering anyone a little whiff of Eau d’Cool Enough for Tommy Ton.

Who Is This Couple: Everyone from Joe College and Suzy High School to those people who walk around art fairs like, “I’ll take this Basquiat and that giant silk bag filled with Fritos called 'Installation #87' please.”

Where They Are Going: Everywhere. Well, probably mostly to get sushi. Sushi makes everyone feel like a $$$millionaire$$$, whether it’s from the grocery store or served on the Shroud of Turin. Then 21 Mercer. Definitely 21 Mercer.

Rugby (RIP)

Key Demo: Mildly mischievous college-age aesthetes who drew lewd doodles in their older siblings’ copies of The Preppy Handbook, dreamed up Jay-Z scoring a Great Gatsby movie five years ago and thought embroidered skulls for little lighthouses on pants was the height of irreverence. And, you know what, for a while there, it was.

Who Is This Couple: Dead.

Where They Are Going: Nowhere :(

Billy Reid

Key Demo: Lovers of upscale Americana who think On the Road is prescriptive and dunking string in a pit of hot wax for three hours to make candles is a hobby. Also, definitely those people who say their mother, a normal and wonderful second-grade teacher, worked in a one-room schoolhouse and refer to their normal suburban home as “kind of like a manor.”

Who Is This Couple: Woman does marketing for a company that makes $15 jam and GUY is a guy with a beard in the mayor’s office.

Where They Are Going: Brunch! Brunch! Brunch! Brunch!

Band of Outsiders

Key Demo: People who want to quit their management consulting jobs to build wooden speedboats.

Who Is This Couple: Dude is a management consultant who took a year off college to work for a political campaign, but found it “too brisk” and also writes a fashionz blog about dressing for the office called “Politics of Design”. It fucking sucks.

Where They Are Going: A tennis club they saw in a George Bellows painting.

Comme Des Garçons

Key Demo: Art gallerists and the artists that fill them/people who hide under their desks at work.

Who Is This Couple: You dated this girl once, for maybe three weeks, and every few days she emailed you a picture of a goat wearing a birthday crown and wrote, “The situation of the Russian creative class is very upsetting.” When you called her, she wouldn’t talk, but played a 45 minute CD of romantic comedy sound effects. Her new boyfriend is, um, a better match for her.

Where They Are Going: A five-hour-long performance of pop songs remixed with John Cage’s completely silent 4’33”. They are on Molly.

Acne

Key Demo: People with pompadours who debate “concepts of otherness’” after attending EDM concerts. They never get cold.

Who Is This Couple: He is a graphic designer for an architect. His girlfriend is a model/consultant at Opening Ceremony.

Where They Are Going: Probably, like, the New Museum.

Shades of Grey by Micah Cohen

Key Demo: New York City intramural whiffleball league participants.

Who Is This Couple: She played for the Williamsburg Dis Placerz, he for the East Village Gentry Fires. And yet, not even the molten hot kinetic energy of rivalry could keep these two apart. They have each other’s haircuts.

Where They Are Going: To buy slurpees and watch a midnight double feature of an alien documentary and a Larry Clark film.

Levi's

Key Demo: Annoying girls who laugh and say, “I don’t even care what I put on in the morning” and their boyfriends who are like, “It’s super important what I put on in the morning.”

Who Is This Couple: He works at a sustainable coffee shop and she works at an Internet start-up farm whose tagline is “Farm to ethernet cable.” She pays for everything.

Where They Are Going: They’re having like a picnic right now.

Ralph Lauren

Key Demo: Women who want to look like they’re shuttling around kids they frequently forget exist, males who were born dads.

Who Is This Couple: Employees at Ralph Lauren.

Where They Are Going: To work.