JJ Martin took over the sprawling rooms of the Palazzo Clerici, one of 18th century Milan’s most opulent palaces, complete with a ceiling fresco by Tiepolo, for her La DoubleJ presentation. Her brand is still a baby by Italian fashion standards, but it’s “going like gangbusters,” she said, and she just opened a flagship off Madison Avenue in New York to prove it.
The first room was devoted to Martin’s collaboration for the resort season, a hookup with her friend, the model Carolyn Murphy. “We wanted to see how someone more minimal would do La DoubleJ,” she said. Martin and co. have developed a colorful, more-is-more formula over the years to match her exuberant personality, though she’s sure to remind anybody who asks that “we’re more than just prints.” In addition to the flora and fauna motifs you usually see here, she also did stripes, a black and white baby polka dot pattern, even solids for spring. Maybe the collab with Murphy has rubbed off on her.
Martin has built (good) vibrations into her business plan—the New York store has an entire floor devoted to a gong room, for example—but this time she didn’t have a backstory about a spiritual retreat or vision quest to prop it all up. “This was more about: how do we explore lightness?” she said. “Sometimes I have collections that are very pointed and very inspired by something, and then sometimes we don’t, and the frequency is just: beauty.”
Beauty is enough, but the environment may have something to do with the subtle shift. Europe has just emerged from months of heat waves, and when it’s 40 degrees Celsius-sticky you want something simple and effortless. The feathers that adorned many of her fall pieces were replaced by feather prints; the tassels and fringe were gone too, and the collection’s airy shapes included capes. “Older women wear them to weddings, and their daughters wear them with jeans,” Martin said with a smile. The only place the stripped down, streamlined rule didn’t apply was with a lineup of fabulous drawstring pochettes, each one embroidered to be unique. Once a maximalist, always a maximalist.
