I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Clermont Twins
Tops RUI ZHOU, corset AREA, shorts ORIENS, earrings HUGO KREIT
What’s OUT: Y2K fashion, streetwear as a singular uniform, obsession with labels, designers taking from Black culture without acknowledgement, limiting yourself to one style. What’s IN: quality, dressing everyday like it’s a different decade, streetwear inspired by round-the-way styles from small communities that nobody drives through, the willingness to change, forgetting what you know about so-called bimbo culture—“This is bimbo 4.0.”
Skirts MELITTA BAUMEISTER, socks MAISON MARGIELA, shoes STYLIST’S OWN
As for their destiny, the twins see several possibilities: “We could do reality TV, but we already did that,” says Shannade. “If we did reality TV again, we would need it to be us. We want to do the Simple Life meets Jackass.” Right then, Shannade’s sister, Shannon, jumps up from the sofa and goes out onto the dance floor, catching the attention of everyone in the vicinity. Her song is on—“Situation” by Don Toliver. Shannade, good with staying on the sofa, is talking about her hustle when she was on the inside.
Serving a year in FPC Dublin, she worked in the commissary as a seamstress: “I was the one to give everybody who came in their sets, blankets, pillows, socks. I was tailoring all my uniforms, all my girlfriend’s uniforms, taking them in. All the time the officers would try to crack down on the tailored uniforms, take them away, but I’d just make another one.” The twins are wearing their hair in loose swept up-do’s, blonde curls falling Pamela Anderson-style, circa the 1990s. Their outfits aren’t matching but are coordinated: Shannon in a yellow jumpsuit and coat, Shannade in yellow snakeskin, both with matching sunglasses reminiscent of Lil’ Kim in the “Crush on You” video. Pulling her sunglasses from her up-do to put them on, Shannon looks back at us on the couch, tongue out, shaking her ass.
Jacket, bra, belt, pants and bag DIESEL, top, pants, and bag ORIENS, sunglasses GENTLE MONSTER, necklace MARTINE ALI, hat STYLIST’S OWN
At first, it can be hard to tell the Clermont Twins apart, but Shannon and Shannade are the first to point out how their differences complement each other. Shannon is the social butterfly, while Shannade is more protective. They share an Instagram account, although it’s never hard to divvy out DMs from potential suitors. Shannade likes more old-school New York-style rappers, while Shannon is into fashion hypebeasts. Beauty-wise, Shannon does an advanced contour, while Shannade goes for a slightly softer, dewier look. In conversation, Shannade is a storyteller, winding a story up to its punchline, while Shannon makes quips, ready to pop off with tag-line worthy comments. The sisters went to college in New York: Shannade to FIT for design and Shannon went to Parsons for fashion merchandising.
Blue Kitchen-Jumbo Petals (Hahnemule, cotton rag paper, elastics and gouache sculpture) KARINA SHARIF, earrings HUGO KREIT
The yin-and-yang dynamic of their mirror image has served their business endeavors. While in school, the twins started modeling—a ‘controversial’ Terry Richardson shoot in which the twins touched tongues became the stuff of legend, leading to their breakout roles on Oxygen’s Bad Girls Club in 2015. The show had run for 13 seasons prior to their casting and three seasons since, but it’s arguable that no contestants have ever gone on to become as famous as the Clermont Twins. On the show, the twins were featured in seven episodes before they were sent home following a dramatic confrontation with the other cast members. Their time on the show proved to be more than enough to elevate the twins to a new level of notoriety. The style, poise and self-confidence that had provoked the envy and the ire of their fellow Bad Girls also served to establish the twins’ singular upscale brand that’s equal parts luxury and ratchet. Plus, they were the only contestants on the show’s 17 seasons to call Manhattan home. After Bad Girls Club, the sisters returned to New York City and invested back into their brand, visibly, via their looks, transforming themselves from the late-aughts American Apparel model style that Richardson had captured, into an image of pure fantasy. In early 2017, The twins re-emerged as twin Barbies with long blonde hair extensions and fantastical doll-like measurements.
They had already begun posting on Instagram before their Bad Girls Club tenure, but their newfound fame and updated aesthetic attracted a major following on social media. The twins began posting stylized shots of their looks and glamorous life—always together—at the same time as Cardi B dropped “Bodak Yellow.” A cultural moment was exploding, and the twins became the (nearly identical) faces for the fashion world’s long overdue acceptance and celebration of Black culture, endlessly emulated on runways and in popular culture. The internet has labeled the look as “that bitch aesthetic,” “boujee aesthetic,” “Barbiecore,” “BBL aesthetic,” or “Bimbocore,” but the twins were doing it before any of this hit TikTok.
Jacket, bra, belt, pants and bag DIESEL, top, pants and bag ORIENS, sunglasses GENTLE MONSTER, necklace MARTINE ALI, hat STYLIST’S OWN
By late 2017, the twins had blown up. That year, they started their own fashion line, Mont Boudoir, and were featured in a Future video. They also starred in that viral Yeezy Season 6 campaign, where the twins were photographed, paparazzi style, leaving a McDonalds with matching ice cream cones. Then Shannade was arrested. The Judge sentenced her to a year in Federal prison, during which Shannon would send her sister care packages, a kind of physical “Instagram'' to send to Shannade, printing out photos, memes, screenshots of texts, news stories, different versions of photos of herself with notes.
“I was like, ‘I’m in no rush. You approve these. Which photo should I post?’” The packages were popular on mail days and got passed around. “I just realized, like, I can fake my tits, I can fake my ass, but I can’t fake my hustle,” says Shannon. “Like, even apart, we could still read each other’s minds. We don’t have to be in the same room to be connected. We are gonna figure it out.” *** Back at the club, the Clermont Twins are deciding on another round of drinks for the table. Shannon hops up again to dance and is interrupted by fans asking for a photo. She poses and comes back, energized. “Why can’t we do Simple Life meets Jackass?” she wonders outloud. “Why do we have to do the same boring thing? We have so many ideas.” The girls laugh about their more Jackass moments the public hasn’t seen. “When we first moved to Meatpacking and, wilding out, we got some ski masks and ran butt naked into the street,” says Shannade. “Meatpacking was popping off. The line outside the Gansevoort is screaming. The police were there. They were driving around trying to come after us. We were running in circles, flipping them off,” Shannon laughs. “We do wild shit, like we’ll walk into a sex dungeon in New York just to see what’s going on. We always end up in some shit, waking up like, What did we do?” For now, the plan is to stay bi-coastal: Los Angeles for acting opportunities, and New York for fashion. In 2020, they relaunched their label, releasing Mont Boudoir’s “Money” sunglasses, which sold out in under 15 minutes.
Mont Boudoir is also coming out with a new drop in March with new frames, ski goggles, latex masks, gadgets and accessories; they’re also dropping a new unisex line, and lately, they’ve been talking about branching out into cosmetics. They’ve hired a new acting coach, and spent some time in the studio during the pandemic, playing around with making music. The girls are open to anything that showcases all of their talent. “Shannade! You have to share that mudslide recipe on TikTok,” Shannon shouts over the music from where she’s dancing. It’s a reference to a dessert Shannade learned to make in prison, when she’d ball out at the commissary so she and her girls could throw little parties. Shannade laughs and looks out at the city skyline. She’s quiet for a moment. “Are y'all ready?” Shannon asks as she makes her way back to the sofa, sliding her sunglasses back to her up-do. She pauses, locking eyes with Shannade. “Let's go to the next spot.”
