Marcel Winatschek

It Was Always Going to Happen

You know Lisa and Lena if you’re twelve or if YouTube has decided to recommend something. The Stuttgart twins got famous on Musical.ly, the app where kids lip-synced pop songs in their bedrooms and sometimes made it look easy. Lisa and Lena were the ones who made it look easy.

And then, inevitably, a fashion line. JIMO. They say it means twins in Haitian. Maybe it does. The whole thing is separate from them but connected to them, which is the whole move—you build an audience on one platform, you sell them something on another. No one even questions it anymore. It’s just what happens.

I never actually looked at the clothes. Doesn’t matter. They’re probably fine. Probably exactly what their audience wants to wear. The transformation from person to product happens so smoothly now that the specific product almost doesn’t matter—what matters is that two girls turned being famous into something you can buy. That’s the system.