Before the pandemic, LaDoubleJ was on a roll. Creative commander in chief JJ Martin was ready to embark on a world tour of fabulous events—a Sotheby’s takeover in London; a big social dinner in Paris to fete a collaboration with Fabrizio Viti; and the rollout of a just-launched partnership with Acqua di Parma, plus a schedule of personal appearances in Los Angeles and at Bergdorf Goodman in New York. But then the outbreak hit. “Everything we had worked for so hard was canceled. Lost. Gone. Pouf!” she said, sipping a safe-distanced cappuccino at her headquarters in Milan. “Canceled orders were also very tough to take. People stopped paying our bills, we were having in-season merchandise already ordered sent back by department stores and retailers. There was a lot of disappointment and pain around that. I felt very destabilized.” What helped her to hold on, confronting the moment and calming her fears was her spiritual practice. “I started doing chakra cleansings and energy meditation for people remotely; I was holding weekly meditation sessions on Zoom for my team during the lockdown,” said Martin. “I had the most incredible time of flowering and grounding in silence—I really look at this time as one of the most magical of my life.”
During the confinement, the business “miraculously flourished online,” clearly pointing to a new way forward. “Queen Corona decided that we have to build a direct-to-consumer business as much as possible,” she said. So according to the indications given by The Boss, as she jokingly calls the coronavirus, she’s reframing LaDoubleJ’s operations around a tighter set of rules. In the future, she’d like to focus more on capsules than on huge collections, creating offers “with more purpose”: an evening kit for resort, a beach kit for summer. And she’s on the lookout to increase collaborations, around which LaDoubleJ has revolved since its 2015 beginnings.
Resort is the byproduct of a chance encounter with art gallerist Miki von Bartha, a Hungarian aristocrat based in Basel whose family traces its roots to 17th century Transylvania. Von Bartha is the owner of a personal archive of unique textiles and ceramic treasures from his home country, whose discovery fascinated Martin. She visited Hungary for immersive research on its culture, and came back telling of “mind-opening experiences.” Carpathian and Hungarian patterns, embroideries, and decorative motifs found their way into the LaDoubleJ repertoire, translated into a new portfolio of original prints. Silhouettes were worked around the shapes of folkloric costumes of that region—roomy and flounced, in fresh cotton, with an upbeat bohemian flair energized by blown-up prints.
Along with the Transylvanian-inspired collaboration, and in keeping with her vision of a more focused and purposeful offer, Martin and her team, eager as the rest of us to go back to parties and celebrations, worked on a dedicated occasion-based, evening collection called Roman Palazzo. If your post-quarantine dreams bring you to decadent, candlelit salons in an aristocratic Italian residence, LaDoubleJ will have you covered with sexy new styles in sumptuous printed lamés and brocades complete with glamorous feather trimmings. It’s an optimistic take on the future: “Come November, I’m sure I’d like to put on a party dress,” enthused Martin. “We’re ready to resurrect!”
