COUPLE OF METS

PHOTOS / RYAN SLACK
STYLING / KRISTINE SOUZA
HAIR / JON MICHAEL HALL
MAKEUP / MARK DE LOS REYES
DIGITAL TECH / BILLY MANCHUCK
PROP STYLING / KELLY MAYHUGH
STORY / MEA COHEN

 
“If it involves the Mets, we’re there,” says Gordon Stevenson, 34, one half of the orange and blue tie dye duo @coupleofmets. The other half, Samantha Flynn, 26, sits beside him nodding her head emphatically. “Anything Mets related at all,” she adds.
 
They aren’t joking. Just scroll through their Instagram page. Gordon and Samantha take this team pretty seriously. You might recognize these two from their personal accounts: @baronvonfancy, and @samikitty. Gordon is widely known online for his clever, colorful, and commercial multimedia artwork. Instagram beauty Samantha is no stranger to the art world herself, she’s the assistant to photographer Richard Kern.
 
Fittingly, the couple actually met through Instagram.
 
“We started dating long distance, I was still living in Miami,” Samantha recalls. She was born and raised in Miami Beach. “Initially, I would’ve been embarrassed to say that we met on the internet… even as an internet artist,” says Gordon. “A decade ago I would’ve looked down upon it, but now the world is just a different place.” Samantha agrees, “I feel like it’s so normal now to meet someone on Instagram.”
 
The couple shares an apartment in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. They both love the city for its art scene,  never-ending list of what to do, and, of course, the Amazin’ Mets.
 

 
Both Gordon and Samantha came of age following the Mets. Gordon, a New York native, fell in love with baseball around the age of twelve. “There was this place where I would go to buy baseball cards. I would just sort of hang out there.” He found himself spending more and more time in this shop, studying baseball cards and lending a hand to the shop owner. “He had season tickets. He would take me, almost like his son, to Mets games. And we would watch games in the store every day. That’s sort of where my obsession began.”
 
Although Samantha was also exposed to the Mets at an early age, she wasn’t quite so passionate about the team. Her excitement for the Mets was reinvigorated by nostalgia and her new dedication to all things baseball when she started dating Gordon. “My parents are New Yorkers, my dad has always been a Mets fan. As a little girl, I would always watch Mets games. I never really appreciated it… I wish I appreciated watching with my dad as much as I do now with Gordon… When he got season tickets, we just started going to every game. And once I learned the intricacies of baseball…it just became so real and I love it.”
 
So how did @coupleofmets start? In a psychedelic swirl of orange and blue.
 
Gordon has always dressed in tie dye. Check out the majority of his press photos and you’ll get a good sense of his everyday wardrobe. He’s been sporting the twist of Mets hues to games for years. But it wasn’t until Samantha began accompanying him, decked out in matching ensembles, that fellow fans really started to take notice.
 
“They stop and ask us, ‘Where did you guys get those outfits?’” Samantha mentions just one of the reactions she and Gordon receive when they sport their unconventional looks. “When he would walk around like this, in full tie dye, no one would ever say anything to him, and all of the sudden, when we’re doing it together, people really come up to us in a way that’s crazy,” she says.
 

 
Gordon and Samantha note how much @coupleofmets has allowed them to expand their connection with the baseball community. Before the account, they had established a small cluster of “baseball friends,” their standout attire acting as an icebreaker between the couple and other never-miss-a-game goers and stadium employees. Since their platform has begun to gain some traction, their community has certainly inflated. “We really interact with a large network of people who love the Mets. In certain situations, people want to meet us and want to take pictures with us,” says Gordon. “Which is not even necessarily what it’s all about,” Samantha jumps in. “That’s just a byproduct,’ Gordon agrees. “I don’t really like attention,” he adds. “But we love that if you’re there, and if you love the Mets just as much as we love the Mets, and you love what we do, then we definitely appreciate you,” says Samantha warmly, emanating a sense of comradery reserved for fellow fans.   
 
“The tie dye is something that we make. People always ask if we sell it, but I like that it’s our thing. This isn’t really about having a business,” Gordon says. “This is about a love of something that goes beyond fandom.”
 
Gordon will regularly bring hand-drawn signs to games which Samantha will hold up, often depicting phrases only other Mets devotees or the players themselves will understand.  Although @coupleofmets may not be intended for business, Gordon has leveraged some fun work out of his growing popularity as an artist and a Mets aficionado. He recently collaborated with the team, designing a t-shirt for their Free Shirt Friday promotion (to be released on the 28th of September). “If you told me when I was a little kid that I was going to be doing a stadium giveaway with the Mets, I would’ve said ‘That’s going to be the greatest day of my life.’” Gordon remarks. “Working with the Mets for me is so exciting. I definitely don’t think that would’ve happened without doing our @coupleofmets Instagram.”
 
Gordon was also invited to Citi Field to take place in a home run derby with other creatives. The event was sponsored by New Balance as a part of their #inthegame campaign. “We didn’t have any expectations when we started the account. We just did it,” Samantha says. “It’s definitely growing, and people are taking notice. It’s kind of crazy. I don’t know what’s going to come of it or where it’s going to go but it’s cool to see how fast things have come in one year. There’s definitely exciting things to come.”