“He’ll walk out and have, like, four belts on,” Caroline Beckwith said of the maximalist approach that her husband, Shane Buddo-Larrier, takes to dressing. She calls him her biggest enabler. “I have always collected outrageous clothes, but I wouldn’t wear them because, I don’t know, I felt crazy,” said Beckwith, 36. “But having someone next to me also dressed the same way gives me more confidence.”
By contrast, Buddo-Larrier, 35, considers his wife to be more his editor. “She’s there to tell me to wear less belts,” he said. “Sometimes I think, ‘How many belts can I fit on an outfit?’ And she’ll say, ‘Four belts?’”
On a Sunday in May, the couple were standing outside a vintage furniture shop in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Both had incorporated fringe into their looks: him, with a floral bandanna around his neck; her, with a hand-painted bandanna worn around her waist like an apron. But they stood out for another fun reason: Only a few hours earlier, I had received an email from Beckwith’s father, who attached a photo of pair, gushing about their style. I never got a chance to respond to that email, and I happened upon them purely by chance. (They didn’t know about the message when I approached them.)
The couple split their time working together at the Y.M.C.A. in Lower Manhattan where they met and upcycling leather accessories to sell at markets in Bushwick and the East Village. They seemed to agree that style was their love language. “I don’t have to be afraid of what people are going to think about me,” Buddo-Larrier said. “I am already impressing the most important person to me.”
Simbarashe Cha is a Times photographer and visual columnist documenting style and fashion around the world.
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