Haute and Freddy get the pop carnival started

They used to write for Britney Spears and Katy Perry. Now, they're having fun blurring centuries and breaking rules

- TOMÁS MIER

IF YOU HAD been one of the two other shoppers browsing the trinkets at the empty Sherman Oaks Antique Mall in California in early April, you probably would have seen a couple who looked like they'd time-travelled from the Renaissance. They were staring at a two-headed, taxidermied rodent with a cowboy hat.

“How do you ethically source a two-headed rat?” asks Lance Shipp, reading a disclaimer above the dressed-up dead animals. “They can’t be real, right?”

“I don’t know how to feel about this,” says his partner, Michelle Buzz, looking at a two-headed rabbit wearing a ruffled clown collar just like the one she has on right now. (Buzz is also wearing powder-blue tights and bloomers. She’s hard to miss.)

Despite our pit stop at this booth, we’re not here looking for dead-animal decorations. Buzz and Shipp, who make music as Haute and Freddy, are on the lookout for a nice parasol for Buzz, and they wouldn’t mind finding a fun prop or an accessory for their shows.

Since their song ‘Scantily Clad’ came out last year, the duo have built a solid group of fans, who have been drawn to Haute and Freddy’s baroque, 18th-century-inspired fashion and 80s-synth sound. But even if they’re just at the start of this project, it’s been a whirlwind getting to this point.