Images by Lucy Carr-Ellison

You’re not likely to find Anna Zeman and Aja Singer, the designers behind Alex & Eli, in the party pages anytime soon, swilling champagne until the wee hours of the morning. Nor will you find them taking a two-hour martini lunch—not that they would be opposed to such a lifestyle, mind you. But when you’re running an up-and-coming label devoted to one of the trickier aspects of design—precisely tailored women’s suiting—and wearing all the hats of the business, there’s not a whole lot of room for socializing. “This is about as much hanging out as we get to do,” confesses Anna about the interview we’re having during one of New York’s particularly punishing winter afternoons. “It will be 9am,” Aja explains, “and we’ll already have our laptops open. We’ll be going through Excel spreadsheets and one of us is picking out fabric and one of our mothers or fathers will call, asking: ‘What are you doing right now?’ Well, it’s 9:30am on a Tuesday, I’m working!”

The duo started Alex & Eli upon graduating from Parsons School of Design in 2008. Both have high-profile internships under their belts: Anna as Rodarte’s first official intern and Aja at Zac Posen and later Carolina Herrera. They operate practically like twin sisters at this point. They complete each other’s sentences and get giddy over the mention of the Jacques Cousteau documentaries that inspired their spring collection. This might partly be explained by their uncannily similar pre-fashion educational backgrounds. As undergrads, they both focused their studies on science. (For Aja, it was cell biology and anatomy, and for Anna, biochemistry.) “That’s kind of what brought us together,” says Anna. “We would show up to school extremely early; we were both very organized. I think that devotion is what launched the concept for us to move forward—especially with something like tailoring. It’s very specific.”

“Specific” might translate into a pattern for a jacket made up of over 70 pieces. For their Fall 2011 collection, it meant scouting hardware stores for cables and cable end fixtures to translate into an industrial-looking print that also features blueprints of different spaceships. Think Hermès scarves for chic sci-fi geeks…

Renata Espinosa: Was your undergrad work in science an influence in designing, or was it unrelated?

Aja Singer: [It was] definitely [an influence]. I think it plays into it in terms of us being detail oriented and meticulous. We took those [skills and interests] from science and translated them to this.

Anna Zeman: We were so inspired by cells and, as you said, meticulous, fine details. And that’s how we started collaborating on the idea of building suits [with] inner pockets that are unexpected…and details and seaming and top-stitching. [You can consider it] in relation to how we thought about cells, where everything is on a microscopic level. We started thinking and building from that perspective.

Renata: How do you work together? What’s the division of labor?

Anna: We’ve merged into one person. At first when we started, there was a lot of clashing, because we both definitely have specific viewpoints, but then slowly, but surely…

Renata: What would you argue about?

Aja: Like there would be a seam—a seam!—-and we would fight over where it should be.

Anna: She’d be like, “It’s so awesome!” and I’d be like, ‘That color’s creepy. Why do you really like that? That’s an old-lady color.’

Aja: But now we trust each other more.

Anna: Now we just meld. We are really just one person.

Renata: Well, you’ve been working together longer now so you can probably anticipate when the other person’s going to object, or you modify ahead of time.

Anna: We’re together all day long. It’s just us in the office, so there’s really no one else to hang out at the water cooler with.

Aja: So we have to like each other.

Anna: We take breaks together, we take lunch together… We have to get along. There’s no time for squabbling.

Renata: Where does the creative inspiration come from?

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Anna: Before we start the collection each season, we go out and ask: “Well, what are you feeling?” [We discuss] social climates and “What do you think is in the minds of people right now?” Or, “Why is everyone listening to that song?” And these emotions play into how we start to feel about color. We both always sense a color… It’s weird! It’s just gotten really creepy. We’ll see a color and say, “That’s it!” and then three seasons from now we’ll use it.

It could be anywhere—on a tree or a piece of chipped paint. Our inspirations are always kind of conceptual. We’ve done things from Art Deco to Motocross to classic hunting. Last season was Jacques Cousteau and all his deep-sea explorations—we were watching a lot of old footage—and jellyfish. We were totally weird that season, hanging out watching Jacques Cousteau films all summer long.

Aja: It’s this crazy idea that we [then] have to take down into something that translates into clothes…

Anna: Especially for the contemporary market. That’s the hardest part.

Aja: Making it wearable—especially in a blazer.

Anna: It’s a lot of talking. We just sit and hammer out ideas and just talk and talk and talk. I love it. It’s not really work. I mean, it is. It’s the most ridiculous amount of work, but it’s exciting. I’m pretty spoiled, actually. Sometimes.

Renata: How did you arrive at the suit as your focus? Is that where you saw a space in the market?

Anna: We knew we wanted to specialize in something. At the time, it was so the “party dress.” You were in school and it was all about these cocktail dresses. But we both just had this feeling: Let’s specialize in [suiting]. When we talked to people about it, they were like, “What? A line without dresses? You guys are going to fail.” But we’ve been developing it and now there are underpinnings—and there are dresses.

Aja: We did see it as a gap in the market, for women who have to wear blazers to work, or wherever, and want to be creative. They don’t want to just wear black or gray or pinstripe. We saw the demand for that. We do have dreams of designing evening gowns and very opulent things, but it’s a great challenge to distill those same ideas into pieces that people can wear every day.

Anna: They’re investment pieces. They’re not super cheap, but they’re something that we want people to appreciate and love, put in their wardrobe, cherish and have forever. I mean, the coolest blazers that I have are all vintage, because there were just black and gray blazers in the market. Now it’s really taken off for everybody and there are a lot more options out there. But when we first started, blazers were hard to find.

Aja: It’s just that style that we’re attracted to—that kind of masculine/feminine fusion.

Anna: That was the discussion. I mean, there are all these bad-ass iconic men out there. You have Frank Sinatra, Al Capone….all these guys who are in their suits.

Aja: Mick Jagger.

Anna: But where is this iconic woman? Where is her suit? It was all about the iconic man. We wanted to create something for the iconic woman.

Renata: Where is everything produced?

Anna: In the Garment District, which is great. I know it’s not necessarily cost effective—everyone says we need to go to China—but we love it. We can go in and check the work and see the seams and really work hands-on with these people. Other people tell us how their samples come back and they’re crazy; they’re completely wrong.

Aja: Quality is so important to us. We have to know that it’s being produced to the quality that we expect. So, for now, it needs to be here. I think there are really good factories in Turkey, especially for suiting, but the Garment District here is great.

Anna: We’re not just making jersey tanks. We can’t just say: “Here, sew by sample,” and send it off to Indonesia. We have to go in and check.

Aja: We have one pattern that’s 70 or 80 pieces.

Anna: We don’t know why. I mean, we built it very specifically.

Aja: It has piping on the front…

Anna: …and the lapel is built into like ten different pieces.

Anna: We were really adamant about physician’s sleeves, which have actual working buttons. In women’s suiting, it’s very rare. It’s all about the trend of suiting, but suits don’t necessarily fit properly. A physician’s sleeve will open.

Aja: It’s all about making it fit properly.

Anna: There are inner working pieces that you’ll never see and seam details built within the cross-back and the shoulders that you won’t even realize are there. They’re built within the pattern to create ease.

Renata: Did you find all the factories on your own?

Anna: All on our own. And we did the sales.

Aja: It was very strange. We’d need to come up for a price for something. Well, how do we do that? It was figuring out every single thing. But we managed.

Anna: But it was good. Now, at this stage, we know what we’re doing. We can really tell what things cost. “It doesn’t really cost that.” Or, “That yardage seems a little fabricated.” We didn’t even have a studio. We were always sinking every bit of money that we generated into the collection.

Renata: In dealing with pieces, like that jacket, that are so specific in their fit, how do you make it work with different sizes?

Anna: We wish we could do it bespoke. Someday that will be an aspect of our business. For now, we have people we work with to help grade the patterns. There’s a specific grading regulation to take it from a sample size 4 on up to size 10. We do a range from size 0 to 10.

Aja: Since we started, we’ve just been working on getting the proportions right to fit the most amount of people we can. But suiting should really be tailored to your body. That is a dream of ours.

Anna: When we started, no one really cared. “Working vent? Working buttons? Who needs all that! Take it all off and lower the price point $75!” And originally buyers would be like, “Women don’t care. Make it out of polyester.”

Aja: It is sort of just a process of educating the customer so that they realize what they’re paying for and what quality is. We were talking to someone who couldn’t understand why her blazer was $450 when she bought one from H&M that was $100.

Anna: This person probably didn’t open her vent. That kills me: When we see a girl on the train who has the vent closed, because they haven’t opened it at the store. I really want to snip it for people!

Aja: In that [70-pattern piece] blazer, we actually piped the entire inside and we did a pocket that fit a passport. We did contrast sleeves and we did silk jacquard houndstooth sleeves, so when you flipped it up, you saw black jacquard houndstooth. It was so sexy. Buyers were like, “Take this out and make it $10 cheaper!” But I think people are slowly getting it and appreciating it.

Renata: Do you feel pressure to keep up with the New York fashion scene, like you need to be going out to be the cute, young designer at the party, or do you feel like you don’t have to worry about that right now?

Anna: Sometimes we’re sad because we don’t do any of that, at all…

Aja: …because we’re working.

Anna: This is one of our favorite discussions: “How come we never see so-and-so in the Garment District? How is so-and-so DJ-ing again tonight?”

Aja: Yeah, that just hasn’t been our experience. But there definitely is that side of the industry that’s important—and exciting and fun.

Anna: Right, because people get to know your company if you’re out having drinks, wearing stuff. People will be like, “So what part of you is Alex & Eli?” and I’ll be like, “We can’t afford our own clothes just yet.” (Laughs). We work hard. That’s all I’ll say about that. We are schlepping in the Garment District and we don’t necessarily want to be wearing our suiting.