“We imagined ourselves traveling this season for a high-summer wedding weekend in Sardinia,” said J.J. Martin, Zooming in from a retreat in a remote village in the Swiss Alps. “I’m officiating,” she casually added, as if her already extensive résumé of journalist turned designer-cum-spiritual-leader wasn’t enough.
What Martin wears in her role as high-style priestess at the wedding ceremony, staged for her pre-fall look book with a posse of friends and family, is one of the hero pieces in La DoubleJ’s ever-expanding collection: a vast square-cut caftan printed in one of her swirling, mood-boosting motifs. “It’s like a ginormous tent—you can wear it unbelted so you look like a floating goddess, or you can belt it in the back or in the front, changing its shape,” she said. The broad spectrum of imaginative, playfully versatile options Martin offers her many clients is surely one of the reasons for LDJ’s gangbuster growth.
Post-pandemic, weddings are on the rise. Should you be invited to glamorous destination nuptials later this year, Martin and her design team have concocted a collection to make you look at your most radiantly cool from the minute you jump on a plane through the ceremony, dance party, and morning-after yoga class on the beach.
Flowing, lace-corseted ’70s dresses in sumptuous velvet dévoré will make you look like an Ossie Clark–ish fairy. What Martin calls “soul-leisure kits”—comprising bell-bottom “meditation pants,” ponchos, unitards, jumpers, and reversible bombers in soft stretchy jerseys—will keep you warm and elastic for morning sun salutations, and beachwear separates seamlessly transform into layerable daywear solutions. Every single item is offered in new variations of LDJ’s trippy, psychedelic prints; Martin’s favorites this season are the goddess-inspired motifs created by Romanian artist Heliana Aitch, who’s also responsible for the murals adorning the Sacred Grotto located in the belly of LDJ’s store in Milan’s Via Sant’Andrea—a calm, quiet space where Martin hosts healing seminars and meditation sessions.
Martin’s spiritual practice is what feeds and sustains her creativity and the particular form of energy that seems to propel her inexhaustibly forward. To further amplify the reach of her transformational activations and, as she puts it, “raise our community vibration,” she’s just launched Spirit Tickle, a free bimonthly newsletter of spiritual news. It introduces tools, tips, insights, and “wisdom nuggets” shared by the best soul workers Martin has come in contact with while traveling her yearslong energy-awakening path. “It’s in response to the hundreds of emails and inquiries from people on Instagram I received during lockdowns, asking me to guide them in their spiritual journey,” she explained. “Look, I’m doing LDJ, and I love it. It’s a creation of mine, and I love it deeply, but there’s something much bigger than this I’m after. At its core, LDJ swirls around the idea of joy and its power to uplift,” she explained. “I’m using it as a stage and a forum to reach women on a deeper level. We grab them by our Magnifico dress or our third-eye prints, and they stay a little longer for a little piece of soul pie.”
