Going corporate

Based in Detroit's Eastern Market, a district half-flourishing with creative spirit and bootstrap entrepreneurship, you'll find the Hygienic Dress League, a legally registered corporation whose sole product is the promotion of ... the Hygienic Dress League.

There are three levels of Hygienic employees: Extractors sit on the lowest end of the totem pole, followed by mid-level management Transporters, and at the top we find the Executives. Each has its own uniform, from hazmat suit to boardroom wear. All employees cover their eyes, noses, mouths and hands in gold. And the pigeon is their sacred fowl.

Maybe you've seen their "billboards" around town, or the "No Vacancy" neon sign atop the dilapidated Roosevelt Hotel in Corktown.

Maybe you've no clue what I'm talking about.

You see, the Hygienic Dress League is the brainchild of artists Dorota and Steve Coy.

Steve Coy, 32, grew up in and around metro Detroit's northern suburbs; when he turned 18, he busted for Australia, then California, and finally Hawaii. Dorota, 32, was born in Poland; in her teens her parents moved the family to upstate New York. She bounced around from Vermont to Philadelphia, California and Hawaii.

In 2007, the two set up shop in downtown Detroit.

Soon Steve and Dorota started to blur the line of high- and low-brow art, bridging these communities in Detroit using "billboards" featuring stencil spray-painted "employees" as metaphors to comment on the tiers of class structure, but for many passers-by their work seems to be legitimately commercial, a promotion for a boutique that'll never open. Hell, the painting might not last weeks. But it might last two years.

The work is decidedly clever and playfully confusing. Sexy, highly designed, engaging and perhaps primed for the global stage.

Coming off a week that saw the Hygienic Dress League pop up outside of Detroit for the first time while they (or at least their fictitious employees) were featured in a gallery exhibition in town, we sat down in their Eastern Market workspace to get the lowdown on what brought them to Detroit, prodding them to dissect their design — including augmented reality art experiences. What is that, you ask? Keep reading.

Metro Times: Hygienic Dress League is really you two. How was it formed?

> Email Travis R. Wright