How Coco And Breezy Went From Broke To Style Icons - At 26

Corianna and Brianna Dotson (better known as Coco and Breezy) are the style icons and creative geniuses behind their eponymous sunglasses line, which they launched in 2009.

Their glasses have been worn by icons like Beyonce, Gaga, Rihanna, Serena, and [the late, great superlative style icon] Prince; they’ve partnered with brands that range from Twizzler to Samsung to Foot Locker and – most importantly, at the age of 26 – they’re writing their own rules for their brand.

The road to the top of the N.Y. fashion world was rough-paved; they’ve overcome immense financial challenges, and learned the hard way that sometimes the only path to success, requires pushing it to the edge.  

In this interview, they talk about some of the most pivotal moments of their career, and the importance of perseverance. They also talk about how a foundation of self-love will carry you through the toughest times. We hope they inspire you, as they did us.

Allie Hoffman and Ally Bogard: What have you triumphed over?

Breezy: When we were 14 years old, our father had four or five strokes. He was in the hospital for a while, and we went from our father who had a pretty good job and being comfortably middle class, to not being able to work because he was sick.

At that same time, our mother went back to school to get her x-ray technician license, so both of them didn't have income coming in.

We realized we needed to get jobs to help our parents, but also to provide for ourselves. So when we were 15, we got a job at a Chinese restaurant called Leeann Chin.

They weren't supposed to hire us because we were underage, but we begged them.

Coco: We actually worked there until we were 18 years old, at which point we both had three jobs.

We were working 90 hours, and we had all the normal workload of a high school student, and we got bullied a lot. People never understood our style at our suburban school, where we were different not just racially, but culturally. We always loved to express ourselves through our art and through our style of clothing, especially the sunglasses that we were wearing. We didn't really have a group of friends [be]cause we stood out so much.

When we were 17, we gr