‘Human Glitter.’ The Beckerman Twins Are Fashion Week Stars

 

Sam and Cailli Beckerman go through every waking moment as if they have just won the big prize on the fun wheel. They radiate optimism to an almost absurd degree. They dress bravely and outrageously.

“They’re two of the most authentically joyful human beings I’ve ever experienced in my life,” said Karen Robinovitz, the creative director and co-founder of Digital Brand Architects, an agency that represents them. “I describe them as human glitter.”

The Beckermans, 36-year-old identical twins from Canada, are bloggers and social media influencers hired by fashion and lifestyle brands. They’re part of an economy in which the number of social media followers you have is currency and your job is to post, 24-7, to Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat.

For the Beckermans, New York Fashion Week is a chance to see friends from the global fashion tribe and to reconnect with companies that pay them.

Hanging out with them, however, you see that it’s hard to determine where the marketing ends and real life begins, which, for the brands, is the point. As Sam put it, about a recent project: “We’re Disney girls. We’re obsessed.”

They are also Chanel girls, H&M girls, Moschino girls, Coach girls, Refinery29 girls, Aldo girls and Kenzo girls. Does that leave anybody out?

“Oh, yeah, we’re Saks girls, too,” Cailli said.

What sets the Beckermans apart from other fashion bloggers, and what brands and designers love about them, is their over-the-top personal style. They often wear clashing, cartoonish, multilayered outfits that few others could pull off — say, Haruno Shibuya Army pants with blue faux-fur on the knees paired with Fenty x Puma sneakers and a Coach black leather vest.

And there are two of them.

 

The designer Jeremy Scott calls their style “intergalactic.” Street photographers like Tommy Ton flock to them. Rihanna follows them on Instagram. And the supermodel Coco Rocha is in awe of their boldness.

“I try to be like the Beckermans,” Ms. Rocha said. “I put on everything in the morning. And then I take it off. I’m scared to be fun.”

Fashion Superfans

The Beckermans were once New York-based designers themselves. They lived in the city for 10 years. They graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology and had a short-lived clothing line, Beckerman, that showed in 2007 during fashion week.

Creating and marketing a collection was stressful, they said. They much prefer attending other designers’ shows, which combines all their favorite things: taking photographs, meeting people, seeing fresh fashion and dressing up.

They arrived on Sept. 7 from Toronto, where they live together, schlepping five bags of checked luggage between them.

“Not the hard-shell kind, they don’t expand enough,” Sam said. “The stretchies.”

On Thursday, after lunch with a friend and before a party hosted by the Gap and Refinery29, they rested briefly at the bar of the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, where they were staying (they are not, for the record, Roosevelt girls).

 

Though the observation commonly applies to identical twins, it’s virtually impossible to tell Sam and Cailli apart. They both have long platinum blond hair parted in the middle and eyebrows dyed black. They both have the same full-throated laugh and voices like that of Melanie Griffith circa “Working Girl.” They share email and social media accounts and sign off “Xo Sam and Cailli,” so you can’t ferret out distinctions online, either.

In person, you’re reduced to remembering that Cailli’s face is ever-so-slightly rounder, and that Sam, by infinitesimal degrees, takes charge in social interactions. Knowing the awkwardness this induces in others, the women are fine with, and even encourage, treating them as one interchangeable unit.

At the bar, Cailli wore Alexander Wang short shorts and thick-soled Chanel sandals that lit up, while Sam paired H&M leather shorts with her Chanel light-ups. Both wore on-brand Gap hashtag #DoYou T-shirts.

They were excited for the whirlwind week ahead, but, then, every day is a whirlwind. In the last few months, working with various brands, they had traveled to the south of France (“We stayed in a villa”), to a big mall in King of Prussia, Pa. (“We’re mallrats”), to Los Angeles (“We got to see our younger sister, Chloe”), to Cuba and Vancouver, British Columbia, to Las Vegas for an electronic music festival (“We love dancing!”) and to New York. Now they were back in the city before going to Toronto briefly and then Paris for more shows.

“I have to look through our Instagram to know what we did,” Sam said jokingly, cracking herself and Cailli up.

Soon their car and driver pulled up outside — provided for them, along with an accompanying hashtag to use, by Lexus. Crawling through traffic, they turned the S.U.V. into a mobile studio, snapping photos of their outfits and editing on their phones.

“This is where we take the best selfies,” Cailli said.

Sam explained: “The lighting is great. You just have to make sure the seatbelt isn’t showing too much.”

The party was at a Gap pop-up shop in a raw storefront in TriBeCa. The Beckermans weren’t required to do much more than show up, pick out some clothes from the racks and photograph themselves having fun wearing them.

Twenty minutes in, they were approached by a breathless Ryan Massel, a Canadian TV host and fashion blogger.

“I saw their Chanel shoes and I was, like, please,” Mr. Massel said. “I’ve been waiting to meet you guys for four years.”

Indeed, Mr. Massel appeared to be overheating in the Beckermans’ presence. “I’m so sweaty,” he said, whipping out his phone for a group selfie. “I’m so excited. I need to get a towel.”

Turning to a reporter, he said: “No one does fashion like them. You can’t follow them for inspiration. You can’t even try.”

Quick-Change Artists

It takes work to look as stylishly kooky as the Beckermans. At the Gap party, under their outfits, they wore other outfits, Superman-style, so that they could quick-change for two more parties later that night.

They also coordinated the entire week’s looks in advance, as they do before every trip, dressing and photographing themselves at home so each outfit is cataloged on their iPhones.

On Friday, amid another day of shows, appointments and parties, the Beckermans were fitted for the Jeremy Scott runway show. As friends and muses of the designer (“We’re like his No. 1 hype girls,” Cailli said), they would be sitting front row, wearing the kitschy, pop clothes Mr. Scott designs for his other label, Moschino, which seem tailor-made for them.

At Moschino’s Midtown headquarters, the sisters picked out complementary rather than matching outfits: rubber cowboy boots in pink and aqua and minidresses with a graphic image of animated characters, one Ren, the other Stimpy. “We try not to dress too twinny because we’re already twinny,” Sam said. (Or was it Cailli?)

Katie Newman, a young publicist who helped the women select the outfits, said, “I wish I could be your triplet.”

At the Jeremy Scott show, held at Moynihan Station, the Beckermans caused the photographers outside to swarm as they approached. Inside, they chatted with Ms. Rocha and found themselves seated beside another pair of selfie-loving sisters, Paris Hilton and Nicky Hilton Rothschild.

“They’re great girls,” said Sam, who, like Cailli, is full of praise for nearly everyone and everything.

Backstage after the show, the Beckermans gave Mr. Scott a congratulatory hug. The designer was asked what he loves about them.

“What don’t I love?” he said. “I don’t love that they live so far away.” Turning serious, Mr. Scott added: “I love that they’re optimistic, uplifting, positive. And it’s not a put-on. I’ve been with them outside of fashion events. It’s who they are.”

In a way, with their everyday outrageousness and unconditional love for clothes, the Beckermans resemble the fashion characters of a less commercial era. You got the sense that, even without the iPhones welded to fingers constantly typing out corporate-approved hashtags, Sam and Cailli would be doing the exact same thing they are doing now.