How La DoubleJ’s JJ Martin Created One of Fashion's Most Joyful Brands

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1:52this is the run through i'm nicole phelps today i'm in the studio with the one and only jj martin the founder and creative director of milan's fashion and lifestyle brand la double j hi cutie JJ. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to see you. This has been a longtime dream of mine to have you here. Oh my God, I'm honored. I love my title and my lead up. Really appreciated. The news peg, despite the fact that I've wanted you here for years, is that you have opened a townhouse, a store in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that is not just a store. Correct. We're calling it The Lighthouse, and it's five different floors all dedicated to some different aspect of what we're doing at Double J.

2:41But this is the first store that is a real flagship, let's say. All of the stores, since I started in making them in 2021, we were kind of late to the game with retail, to be perfectly honest. But I wanted each of them to be a Raise Your Vibration station because that's our company mission. And so each one of them takes a different form of that and gives people an opportunity to connect with something, hopefully, that's not just commerce. So tell us what you mean by Raise Your Vibration.

3:20it's an energetic thing it's truly i feel like the company is dedicated to just elevate energy elevating experiences so by that it's honestly making you feel good if we're going to just like simplify this and we don't need to go quantum and we don't need to like talk about spirituality it's literally how can we make you feel as good about yourself as radiant as connected to your life force as possible. And sometimes people come to us and they are just in it for the superficial thing. For the dress. For the dress or for the plates or for the Murano glass or whatever it is. But I think subliminally, the energy is already working on them because we're very intentional about the patterns and the prints that we create.

4:09A lot of them have sacred geometries. I'm super picky with when we're developing prints. It's always an energy test. I'm never really looking with my eyes. I'm feeling actually into the frequency of the patterns. And colors, as you may know, are connected with our chakras, which are energy system inside the body. And then I would just say that there's like the joy and the warmth and the openness that people resonate with the brand. So those are things that, like, I think anyone can relate to, and you don't really need to have a spiritual IQ to get that. You just know that when you're coming in our world, you're going to feel good about yourself, which is my aim.

4:53You do have a spiritual IQ. So one of the elements of the store is called the Light Temple. Is that right? Tell us what the Light Temple is. So this is a space that is—so we have two floors of store, and then above that is the Light Temple. And this was a space where I wanted to allow people to have firsthand experiences of raising their vibration that don't have to do with buying something. So we started this in 2020 when COVID hit, and we started having these gatherings for our community that we called the Sisterhood of people that wanted to come together to find other ways to raise their vibration.

5:37So whether it was meditating or energy healing or sound healing or channelings. And we started online. I went to one of those. I think you did. I'm pretty sure you came to Divine DNA Activation, if I'm not mistaken. So we started online. Then we moved it into the Divine Mother Cave in the basement of our Milan store. So that was another space. And then when we opened up our headquarters in Milan, we created a gong temple space. And we have about six classes a week there that are open to the public and they're open to our employees. And then we have visiting healers and teachers. So when we opened this flagship in New York a couple weeks ago, I wanted to have another space in America where our community can come and have these kinds of experiences.

6:31And so we partnered with these wonderful people, the Italians of Grotta Sonora, as well as their company in the U.S. that's called Gongmatic. And there are these wonderful people, Madava, Margarita, and this guy Simon who's an American with his beautiful songbird wife, Simone. And they are kind of curating the sound experience in the temple. And it's open to our community. And you can come in. They have gongs that they play, but then there's also a gong that plays itself, which might be good for you. You can just drop in when you want. And they have made gongs specially for this space. Yes. What goes into making a custom gong?

7:13I know. It's really, really intense, actually. The one that we have in Milan was made by a friend of mine that lives on the base of Mount Etna, and she was doing some really wacky stuff. I mean, the base, they're generally made of copper, and then they're like infused with, quote unquote, don't freak out, light codes. So this is just like an energy frequency that's happening. So, for example, the one in Milan was working with the codes from the volcano in Mount Etna and then submerged in the sulfuric waters outside of Volcano Island in the Aleolis. And these ones here have been made at Grotto Sonora's in their special cave.

7:56It's like an hour outside of Rome. When you go visit in Rome, maybe we can have you go and check it out if you want to see how these things are made. But there's a lot of intentionality with this, and it's not just a physical object. There's a lot of energy that the people who are working on them are transmitting through intention, through frequency, through sound. They're adjusting. They are sound experts. And it's just another way of working with your energy. And what's so powerful about these sound experiences is that it can kind of just swipe your mind and let all of your thoughts dump out.

8:36And you come into resonance with this sound and suddenly your vibration is up where the sound of the gong is. and it's electrifying. I mean, they can be quite psychedelic as well for those that are kind of into that or they might just be very relaxing, but it's super powerful. We're very excited because we actually have some sounds from the gong experience at the store that we're going to play for you. Oh my God, I love that. That's like a total treat, cherry on top that I was not aware of, but let's do it.

9:23Thank you.

9:48So you mentioned the early days of La Double J. I would like you to talk about that. You were a journalist. You went to Milan to write. No, I went to Milan for love. I quit my job. I was working in marketing at Calvin Klein. And I met this Italian guy at a party in New York. We started long-distance dating. And then I moved to Milan without a job because in 2001, there wasn't a single Milan fashion company that had a marketing department. I couldn't find a job. And then I met Godfrey Dini at a cocktail party, of course, and he was looking for stringer reporters for the world's first online fashion news service, which was Fashionwire Daily.

10:30And that's how I started. It was so funny. And it was so hilarious because in 2001, obviously, the Italians didn't have websites. They thought the online world was a total joke. I couldn't even get invitations to the shows that I was supposed to write about. When they did let me in, I was in like the 55th row standing, couldn't see anything above like the shoulders. So it was a real exercise in humility and perseverance. And no matter what's going on, you know how sort of judgy the fashion world is. And it's such a hierarchical, patriarchal system of the cools and the not cools and the haves and the have-nots, at least when we started, right?

11:16So it really forced me to stay in my center and believe in what I was doing. And it was really funny because after just like keeping my nose down and doing a great job, Susie Menkes was the only person probably reading my articles and she offered me a job. So I kind of went from like the world's sort of lowest in terms of standing in the Italian's mind to like their top paper. It was really funny. Susie was writing for the International Herald Tribune at the time. That was an incredible showcase. And from there, that's when Christina O 'Neill was reading the Tribune and saw it and said, oh, my gosh, come start writing for us at Harper's Bazaar.

11:57So that's how that journey started. I think that's when we met, when you were working at Harper's Bazaar. Yeah. Yeah. And as someone who's still a journalist, you know, 20 or more years later after meeting you, I find your journey so, so fascinating and so inspiring. So somewhere along the way, you, as you said, you started to sell vintage dresses. That's because? It was really funny. I was around this time. So the company launched in 2015. Around 2013 and 14, that's when my spiritual practice was like kind of coming together. And all of that had to do with an infertility sort of detour that was super traumatic.

12:44Okay. So I kind of reached out to these woo-woo people because I had tried everything else and a series of things that had happened to me during my life and was kind of let down by Western medicine. And it was so interesting because the spiritual practice was blossoming just at the time when I was thinking about this company. Now that I look back, I wasn't aware of it then. But when I look back, I think my like feelers were out. That's what's really cool about developing your quote-unquote spiritual practice is that you're just starting to understand that like your intelligence is not just right here.

13:24In your brain. It's not just in your head. It's not just in your head. There's so much happening in the body. There's so much happening in the heart, the belly, the womb for women especially. And these practices were, I think, opening up the eyeballs and the mouths of these like cellular receptors and energetic receptors that were getting a lot of intel. And what I had learned was that, you know, so first of all, I was getting sort of messages that the journalism just felt really low energy for me. I could not write another profile of Giorgio Armani. I just couldn't do it. It was like the same thing over and over again, the same designers, Dolce & Gabbana, Donatella, everyone.

14:09I loved all of them, but like the fifth round, the tenth round that you're doing this, I was just – I felt like it was Groundhog Day. So that was one thing. And on the other hand, I was getting real – I was just playing at home with all of the vintage that I'd been collecting for about 15 years. And there was such delight and excitement around it. and my husband at the time had started this company that was helping brands go online and he was the one who said to me, he was like, you know what, I think you can sell some of that vintage jewelry that you're collecting. And I was like, actually, well, if I sell the jewelry, I want to sell the clothes.

14:44But if I do this, I don't want to just have an e-commerce website. It really needs to be a magazine and I want to show all these incredible Italian women that I've met over the years that the magazines never wanted to profile, all the small ones, all the sort of cool women that had formed my education in Italy because it was really an education in aesthetics, in style, also a mentality education. It was like a psychological initiation being in Italy, unwinding the type A, go, go, go, do, do, do, New Yorker attitude that I had. And so all that to say, a long way of saying, I was just kind of following the joy rocket.

15:33And so Double J came forth as like a joy baby. And this is so funny because oftentimes people ask me like, how do you start a company? Honestly, follow the joy crumbs. because anything that you would do for free at night and on the weekends has value because that means that your internal heart center is like fully operational. And whenever you've got that going, whatever your creation is that's coming from that is supersized. So I have a second career as a hiking guide. Perfect.

16:11We'll be right back with JJ Martin after a quick break.

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17:36So I remember the early days of the website and you could find vintage pieces and then you started developing your own silhouettes, working with mills that made beautiful Italian fabrics, Italian silks, silk twills, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. I still have one in my closet. I'm so glad. You have an original. I do. Yeah, it was, you know, when you start a company, I think it's really important to have intention, objectives, business plans. I had all of that. And at the same time, as you start knocking up against the wall on things, you need to pivot. This is like such a practice in flexibility, versatility, resilience.

18:26My now ex-husband was and is my business partner, but we didn't have outside investment. Everything was like super scrappy all the time. And I was really mindful about not kind of like trying to run ahead of what we were doing and keeping it lean and also just like feeling into what was happening. And the vintage, we sold it. But what I didn't realize was that this was not the Real Real or Vestiaire Collective. This wasn't last season's Prada. My collection was 1960s, 70s pieces, you know, wonderful things from Valentino, Yves Saint Laurent that I had found. And you can't restock that overnight.

19:08So that's why we pivoted to the new merchandise. But I didn't start with a collection. I started with one dress, which you had, which was the swing dress. Really easy silhouette, T-shirt, short sleeve, A-line in the wonderful silk that's made by Mantero, a 120-year-old silk manufacturer on Lake Como. And it was really cool because they had been working for like the world's greatest fashion brands. You go there, they're printing Vuitton, they're printing Dior, Gucci, Silk Twill. They're specialized in this. But no one had ever really name-checked them. They'd always been behind the scenes. And so I was asking them to do me a favor, which was to get vintage prints from their archive.

19:50And in return, I was like, guys, I want to promote you. This is such a story. This is amazing that we're finding these old prints in your archive and bringing them back to life and recoloring them and repositioning them, etc. And it was really fun. And that – two things that were born early that I think served us really well were, number one, collaboration. I love to collaborate. Feels very – I love being in a circle. I love collaborating spiritually. I love collaborating commercially. It's really fun. Two or more is always better than one. Then the other thing was that first dress was very easy and it was very versatile.

20:29So it fit a lot of different women's body shapes and it was the kind of thing that you could wear to breakfast on a Sunday with sandals or you jazzed it up with the heels and the jewelry. You're kind of ready for like cocktails and it could go from summer or layered for winter. And that kind of became like this refrain in general. I just wanted really easy, accessible, approachable things that make women look great and feel great. Well, as you were alluding to before when you mentioned Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, and Donatella Versace, Milan is a bit of an insular fashion world. And I wonder what it was like to be a young American woman in Italy as an entrepreneur.

21:13Were there roadblocks? Okay, so the first thing that I noticed is when I told people I was leaving my journalism job to start my own company, people, Italian people told me, you're crazy, don't do this. This is the dumbest thing you could ever imagine because in Italy, they don't have that American mentality of like, let me just go off and do my own thing. They do not have that. There is an entrepreneurial spirit in Italy, but it's very generationally passed on. So if you're going to be owning your own business, it's because your dad did it, your grandparents did it, whatever, your grandma, whatever.

21:51So there was a lot of people being like, that's not going to work. So there was a lot of naysaying that way. Then I will say I didn't really get so much backlash from the Italian suppliers, let's say. But that's also because we stayed really narrow and deep with one supplier for as long as we could. So I think that's what a lot of young designers or companies make the mistake of trying to do a lot all at once. Then they can't make the minimums. They don't have the relationship. And you're not – so we really, like, anchored this baby. She had some, like, really deep roots from the beginning. And then suddenly when people saw what we were doing, I started getting all these phone calls from other silk manufacturers and Como who were like, what about our archive?

22:41What about our archive? You know, it was really cute. I will say that, you know, the fashion industry, I don't think anyone was like looking at what we were doing in terms of – I doubt Dolce & Gabbana and, you know, Misha Prada were up on what Double J was doing. But that's actually now changed a little bit. And it's really cute because we get all these messages oftentimes from our friends that work at other companies. And they're like, yeah, that double J or your project or whatever is on our mood board. And that is just so satisfying. We at Vogue often get asked who to recommend for various open positions.

23:19And I've told you over the years that when an Italian job comes open, I'm always recommending you call up JJ because you have, I mean, no offense to the Pucci's and the Etro's of the world, but you have built an Italian brand, you know, with its basis in prints and not unlike the Pucci's and the Etro's of the world that were founded, you know, in the middle part of the last century. Well, first of all, that's an honor and like I have so much respect for both of those brands. They are phenomenal. And I think maybe the print history of Italy is kind of unique because it really mimics the exuberance and the joy of the Italians themselves.

24:11Like these people know how to live. They know how to laugh. They know how to eat. They know how to rest. We have so much to learn from them. We really do. They know how to like regulate their nervous systems without it being like a prescription. You know, it's just happening naturally. So I think that a lot of the print history in Italy was happening just like as a natural geyser of inspiration coming off of the land. And to be honest, I just feel I really credit my spiritual practice with this because what was happening was that I was like really starting to open. My first 10 years of Italy, I was the crabbiest, bitchiest, most complaining person ever.

24:57I had a real like turnaround and the minute I sort of turned my attitude around and started seeing the beauty and the opportunity in every single thing including that waiter that never came to your table ever. More time to enjoy the surroundings which is probably gorgeous. My life like radically changed. And then I think being open, I started like sucking in the Italian juices. It was very natural that I kind of came into resonance with Italy. And it was a real love affair. I mean, I'm a super cheerleader. You remember the years when nobody wanted to come to Milan, right? Mm-hmm. I didn't really want to be in Milan for a while too.

25:47But I turned it around, and now it's like a popular place. Everyone wants to come. Talk about one of your most recent collections, because it's a good example, I think, of weaving your spiritual practice into your prints. Was it last time I was there? You're talking about the Book of Kells and this trip you made to Ireland. It was amazing. That was a very special collection. I've done a few collections that were really specifically taken from one particular sacred site tour. I love sacred site tours. If you need any recommendations, I'm your person. Like I love the kind of travel in which you're connecting to the indigenous people, the ancestral traditions, all of that kind of stuff.

26:32And one of those trips was to Ireland with a friend of mine called Dee Kennedy, who I was also co-hosting the trips to Egypt with. So she's trained in many different mystery schools, one of which is the Celtic tradition. and she brought a group of us and we were for 10 days in Ireland going inside dolmens, going to sacred stone circles, meditating, connecting with the ancestors of the land, the stories. It was just phenomenal. And we finished this trip in Dublin at Trinity College in Dublin. And I mean, I'd heard of it, but I'd never been there before. And we ended the tour, there was this illuminated manuscript.

27:23I can't remember the exact year, 500, something like this. These people had definitely taken mushrooms or ayahuasca. We were so on the same wavelength. I couldn't believe it. I was literally jumping out of my body. I could just feel it so much. And so I brought the picture. I bought all the catalogs, all the books, took all my pictures back, and we started the collection from there. And we've done a similar thing from my many trips to Egypt. And these are like my Wonder Woman cuff. That is kept free. So the scarab is such an important part of – these are not – these are real experiences that have shaped my spiritual practice.

28:08Like I am super connected to the ancient Egyptian mystery school. And the scarab has become also a symbol that we use, whether it's on prints or it's on buttons. There's just this like subtle transmission that you can give to customers, whether they're aware of it or not. I just love that there's intentionality. Like when we started doing the jewelry as well, that was another way to sort of open another door, let's say, a portal to energy. So I love doing that.