Everyone assumes they’re twins – but they’re not

Sisters Jess (right) and Stef Dadon, 31 and 35, are co-founders of an environmentally friendly footwear brand. Although they’re not twins, they’re so alike that sometimes even their own mum can’t tell them apart.

Jess (right) and Stef Dadon: “Sometimes she [Stef] sees my biggest weaknesses as strengths,” Jess says.Credit: Paul Harris

Jess: When I was little, I was obsessed with Stef. I thought she was so smart, creative and interesting – and fun. By the time we were teenagers, we were best friends. She let me hang out with her friends and took me clubbing when I was 14. I was as tall as her and we looked alike, so people often asked us if we were twins, and we’d say we were – it made us feel special. It’s weird that we look so alike and that our mannerisms and speech are so similar. We’ve been told by healers that we’re on a twin soul journey – that we fit together in a perfect way.

From 2012 to 2016, we had a fashion blog, How Two Live. We posted a lot on Instagram, and people were quite cruel. Once, we did a post for a friend using her coffee scrub on our legs; the photos weren’t very good and people posted that we looked like dead people.

I struggled with my mental health from about 21 to 25. I had low self-esteem and an eating disorder, which I was in denial about until Stef sat me down and said, “You have an eating disorder and we need to talk about it.” I remember saying, “I feel so weak. I can’t believe I’ve allowed this to happen.” She said, “No, this has happened because your mind is so strong. It has put you in a place and is keeping you there.” Sometimes she sees my biggest weaknesses as strengths.

Stef is so savvy. When she was teaching me to drive, I was in a lane with about 15 cars in front of me. She told me to change lanes and I got ahead of them all. When I asked her how she knew to do that, she said, “People always do what other people are doing. We can always find another way.” She has instilled that in me in business, too. If people tell us “No”, we just find another way to get there.

“I said, ‘I feel so weak. I can’t believe I allowed this to happen.’ She said, ‘No, this has happened because your mind is so strong.’ ”

Jess Dadon

I’m creative with my hands, but Stef’s the creative thinker. Just look at the FAQs on our website [twoobs.com]. FAQs are usually boring, but Stef’s are laugh-out-loud funny. She’s detail-oriented, dedicated to making everything better. I’m the opposite: I like to get things done quickly. If we’re planning an event and the team asks if everything is okay, I’ll say yes and she’ll say, “No, it needs to be done like this.”

Our values are the same: family is everything and we’re obsessed with animals. We also like to nurture our spiritual selves. I teach yoga, she teaches meditation. For breakfast, she drinks lemon water, then celery juice, then eats porridge. It can take until midday to get her out the door.

Stef gives a lot of time to the people she loves; it fills her up. For our grandfather’s funeral, she contacted all our cousins to get their stories, then gave a speech that was so full of heart.

Our relationship enriches my life in every way. I’m so lucky that I was born into a family alongside my soulmate. We didn’t have to find each other, it’s never hard and we’ll always be here. For that, I’m deeply grateful.

Jess (left) with her partner Elliot and Stef with her partner Ronen, who are asked if they are brothers. Credit: Courtesy of Jess and Stef Dadon

Stef: I was so excited to have a baby sister: I just knew she was going to be my best friend and partner in life. When I was 12, I saw the scary Bruce Willis movie The Sixth Sense, where Haley Joel Osment says, “I see dead people.” I was so scared there were going to be dead people in my room that I made Jess sleep in my spare bed for weeks.

Our love of fashion started from an early age. We got it from our stylish grandmother, who had an amazing wardrobe. She’d sometimes let us pick a piece to take home, so we had some beautiful bags and vintage pieces. We started sharing clothes when Jess was 12; she’s always had a great eye. She’d be like, “This looks cool” and I’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.” We were obsessed with the Olsen twins [Mary-Kate and Ashley]; they were our fashion inspiration.

The twinning thing happened by accident. When we started How Two Live in 2012, we picked matching outfits from our favourite Australian designers, such as Tigerlily, to wear to Paris Fashion Week. In Paris, the fashion editor of Grazia UK stopped us in the street and asked to interview us. We ended up headlining this article about a twinning trend we’d never heard of! I love twinning, though: it’s so much fun. When we look at family photos, we often can’t tell who’s who – and nor can our mum.

“I was so scared there were going to be dead people in my room that I made Jess sleep in my spare bed for weeks.”

Stef Dadon

Working together for 12 years has made our relationship stronger. We complement each other. Jess loves responding to Instagram comments, which I don’t like doing. Once someone wrote, “Your shoes look like something my dad would wear” and Jess responded, “It sounds as if your dad has awesome taste.”

We both struggled with our mental health while we were doing the blog. People would come up to us and want a photo with us because they recognised us. I hated being looked at all the time; we certainly didn’t set out expecting that to happen. I found that invasive – it made me anxious and quite depressed. I’d have panic attacks and feel like I couldn’t breathe. Jess would help to calm me down. She’d found stability in yoga which allowed her to support me and I learnt how to meditate.

It was tough seeing Jess deal with her eating disorder. When she did open up, I said, “Okay, let’s not be in front of a camera. We shouldn’t be doing things that make us both feel horrible.” We went from not talking at all about things that felt shameful to speaking openly.

We’re both introverted extroverts. We’ll happily spend the morning meditating and journalling and we get energy from being in nature, but we also love being around people – going out for dinner or hanging out with friends.

We’ve never dated similar guys, but our partners, whom we’ve both been with for 12 years, have somehow morphed into looking alike. People often stop us in the street to ask if they’re brothers.

My relationship with Jess is loving, supportive, equal – and easy. Without her, my life would be incomplete. I’d just be a half.

For help with eating disorders call the Butterfly National Helpline 1800 ED HOPE

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