The New York Cool Of Dao-Yi Chow And Maxwell Osborne

Nothing is more of a buzz wrecker when you’re talking about cool than talking about cool. It is not, after all, a quality one can anatomize or acquire. People possess it inherently or not at all, and those who have it are typically too smart to claim it. Those who lack it are well advised to find other virtues to cultivate. That Dao-Yi Chow, 42, and Maxwell Osborne, 34, the designers who made their names with the streetwise label Public School, are cool has never been called into question. It is almost as much of a calling card as their skills at design. They grew up in New York — Jackson Heights, Queens, for Mr. Chow; Kensington, Brooklyn, for Mr. Osborne — and met in the early aughts at Sean Combs’s streetwear label Sean John, where Mr. Chow was a senior executive and the younger Mr. Osborne an intern with no background or particular interest in design. The two hit it off, though, and when in 2005 Mr. Chow opened a fashion boutique in Miami called Arrive, he brought in his former colleague to help him start a private label for the store. Read more at The New York Times.