Woo-Woo Fashion

Fashion People

Host Lauren Sherman interviews J.J. Martin, the founder of La DoubleJ, about her transition from a freelance fashion journalist to a success

Key takeaways

• J.J. Martin transitioned from a marketing role at Calvin Klein to fashion journalism before launching La DoubleJ in 2015.
• A key business strategy for LaDoubleJ was achieving profitability by year two, following advice from Martin's business partner.

Main topics

• Entrepreneurial journey in Milan
• Integrating spirituality into luxury business

Notable quotes

If you's not profitable by year two, you're never going to be profitable.

Conclusion

The episode provides a unique look at how personal belief systems and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is JJ Martin, founder of Le Double J. We talk about the evolution of Milan as a fashion capital, her move from freelance journalist to mid-sized business owner, bringing spirituality to the workplace, and I promise you, plenty more. Speaker 2 (0:30) Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun. Along with me, a subscription to puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of fashion, people get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join puck or start a free trial. Speaker 2 (1:14) Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. Mine was wild and wonderful, but I got very little sleep. Not the way I like to operate. Anyway, this week in line sheet, you can read my reporting on Pierre Paolo's future at Balenciaga. It's not as clear cut as we all think. It's pretty clear cut, but not totally clear cut. Anyway, also what happened at Vogue World, which... I think the Italian media kind of said it all, which is that. What is this thing? What I said is like, sure, if you're a musical theater geek, you probably loved it. It was amazing that they were able to secure the Galleria and also the Duomo area was empty. If anyone went to that big Montclair event there a few years ago, you'll understand how insane it is that they were able to secure all of that. So good on them. And I think a lot of the people that I spoke to who went said they had a great time. Obviously, the robots were really dumb and freaky and bad. And I think the unfortunate thing about this round of Vogue World is that the thing that everybody will remember are Mucha Prada and Alessandro Micheli's faces when the Speaker 3 (2:32) robots came out. But Speaker 1 (2:33) I just think like... Speaker 2 (2:36) I don't know. I think it's an interesting brand building mechanism. My assumption is they don't really make a lot of profit off of it, even if they are making, you know, 30 plus million in sales because they are supposed to be giving a lot of that money away to charities and also. It costs a lot of money to put this stuff on, even if, you know, one of the big, big things I hear is they ask everybody to do this for free. Like no one gets paid the models, that type of thing. But still, it costs a lot of money to produce these kinds of events. So it's just like manpower or whatever. So I don't know. I mean, I would love to know how profitable it is. And also, like from a brand building perspective, does it make sense? Because. Yeah, the people in the room might have a good time, but do people online watch it? Do they care? You can't see. One thing I noted was like, Victoria's wearing Prada. Obviously, we know this. The consumers don't know that. If the whole point is to promote the fashion industry, somehow you need to communicate what you're seeing. If you want to make a variety show about the fashion industry, sure, but how do you buy the stuff? Anyway, it's just weird. It's just weird. That's what it comes down to. It could be less weird and be a better brand builder, but you know, it is down to one person and their interests and whims and it is what it is. So. Best of luck to the whole team in San Francisco where it's going to be Speaker 3 (4:07) even trickier. Speaker 2 (4:08) Beggy Malinsky is my guest next week. So on next Tuesday, so we'll break down our favorite Milan shows and looks. But quickly, as of this writing, I would say Prada and Jill Sander have been the standouts. The skirt is the thing. I'm personally very happy because I love skirts, even though I'm often told. Why do you buy skirts? Where are you going to wear them? The use case outside of metropolitan cities is pretty narrow, but I'm a huge fan. I'm excited. I'll be buying more skirts for sure. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with JJ and we're able to make it to her show on Thursday. Speaker 2 (4:48) J.J. Martin, welcome to Fashion People. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy to be here. Hi. I'm so happy to have you. What'd you have for breakfast this morning? It's pretty, it's afternoon your time, but think back eight hours. I just got these really exciting matcha pockets that Speaker 3 (5:04) come pre-packaged with coconut milk and stevia. And I'm really into it because I gave up coffee a few months ago. And this is just like a low level lift rather than like crash and burn with caffeine. That's what I started the day with. And I had some cottage cheese. Speaker 2 (5:22) I love cottage cheese so much. Is cottage cheese regularly available in Milan? No, definitely not. Speaker 3 (5:29) They just got around to that recently. Speaker 2 (5:32) I was just thinking about that. We were back in LA for like a few weeks at the end of the summer. We, the cottage cheese from Whole Foods was back and the good, I think it's called like good or something. It's really, really delicious. But, and I grew up eating it. And then I was like, oh, we don't eat it in France. And then I thought, oh, do they have it? I don't, I don't know. It's one of those things Americans Speaker 3 (5:54) excel at. Speaker 2 (5:55) How do you feel about the internationalization of? Milan and and more America because you've been living there for what 25 years so you're Italian but there are so many Brits and Americans it feels like post-Brexit definitely France Paris is like that it's much more international how how does it feel to you are you happy to have have a mix of expats or does it feel like they're changing the culture in a not great way well Speaker 3 (6:27) On the one hand, it's amazing to see now that you can get coffee to go and there's like a few little things that have adjusted that are really convenient. And I actually love going to my local supermarket and now hearing French and English spoken in the aisles, which never happened. I mean, I never saw anyone who wasn't Italian at my supermarket. That's been fun. But, you know, Milan has become such a tax haven. for all the billionaires because there's like this really convenient tax now, a flat tax in Italy. And because of that, the property prices and the rents in Milan have gone through the roof, which sucks. And the other thing that I noticed is that a lot of the sort of, there's a little bit of this attitude of people coming in and being like, oh, I don't want to go to that local small. bodega or frutti d'andalo or whoever it is. Oh, he's always closed, et cetera, which is really the culture here, which drove me nuts, by the way, for the first five years. But then once you kind of surrender to this entire way of life, you really see how beautiful that is and how much it's giving to you. So I am starting to see a few cracks in that, which is kind of a bummer. Speaker 2 (7:40) Yeah, it's interesting. relocating to Paris at this moment in time. So we did a chunk of time there in 2019. And back then I felt much more alienated because of language and all that stuff. And this time, not only do I know a gazillion Americans who have moved there in the last two years, but also it's just so international. There's so many Brits and Italians. Germans or whatever. And in a way, it's really nice because it feels more open. And yes, I love being able to get coffee at 7 a.m. And Speaker 3 (8:18) I have to just say Speaker 2 (8:19) the Speaker 3 (8:19) greatest part about the internationalization of Milan is that literally every taxi you step into has air conditioning, which was not the case a Speaker 1 (8:28) while ago. That's Speaker 2 (8:29) very Speaker 3 (8:29) nice. Speaker 2 (8:31) France is still behind on that. But I do think the thing that you're right about is like in In America, I order everything online. And we just, we get our groceries delivered online. We do everything online. And I think the... The remembering that you don't need to live and die by AI. Yeah. And like, it's nice. Of course, like I was driving back from JFK, I'm in New York and I ordered a bunch of stuff on Instacart to my hotel and was like, oh, it's so nice to be able to do this. But like, did I really need any of it? No. Totally. Speaker 3 (9:15) It's just, Italy is all about relationship. And you develop a relationship with the guy that is selling you vegetables. And there's something so soothing and relaxing and weirdly fulfilling about that. I just had the best experience yesterday picking up vegetables before I went home. You know, they know your dog. They're excited. They remember what, you know, you like the long skinny zucchini that are thrombete. Like, it's just very, very personal. It feels like a large family. And that's just something that I hope never disappears from this culture. Speaker 2 (9:49) Yeah. Well, let's talk about how your brand developed out of Middle East culture and how you ended up there. And maybe you can give the sort of elevator pitch of the inception. Speaker 3 (10:07) So I moved to Milan exactly 25 years ago. And I had come from marketing in New York, working at Calvin Klein. And when I arrived in Milan in 2001, there was not a single fashion company, not a single one that had a marketing department. So I had to reinvent myself. And that's when I got into the writing. Started at the bottom of the barrel with Godfrey Deeney at Fashion Wear Daily, like 25th Row and all the fashion shows, nobody paying attention to what was going on online. But then just... you know, slowly worked myself up and got a couple really great breaks and really learned everything that I know today about fashion, about style, about entertaining, about design, about decorating from my job, you know, being an editor for a long time at Harper's Bazaar, being an editor for a long time at Wallpaper, and constantly going into all these people's homes. And so when it was time to start the company. I mean, this, I always talk about Double J as a love child because she was so, it's like a baby. It's a real entity. It's a being, it has so much energy and it was really born from my obsession, twin passion of the Italians who I had finally fallen in love with after being so frustrated with them for so many years. I finally fell in love with them. And vintage. So that's how the company started. I had a huge collection of vintage that I had started while I was in New York, and carried it over. It was just this thing I could not get enough of, and started selling it online, but using all of these incredible creative women that I had met as my models and muses and then taking the opportunity to step into these homes and to show how they're styling themselves, how they're decorating, and how everything is just incredibly flawless from a style and taste and sophistication, but also from just this relaxed way that the Italians are so easy and warm. So that's actually how the company was conceived. Speaker 2 (12:17) That's interesting. It's funny. I worked at Lucky Magazine for Brandon Hawley, and I remember you... I don't know if you were friends with Brandon, but you would write for us. And you were like the hottest freelance writer. Maybe it was Alexander Marshall. There was like a couple people in Paris. She was in Paris, yeah. You were a big deal. Like to get you to do stuff for us, it meant something, especially because Lucky was all about personal style and color. And you were associated with Harper's Bazaar and it was so glamorous. And you were such a kind of force. So that's just a comment. Speaker 1 (12:58) I mean, it also Speaker 2 (12:59) may be due to the fact that I was probably the only freelance writer here. But it was cool. And then on top of it, like the vintage thing. Do you still thrift? Like, do you still go vintage shopping? I was just reminded of Shop the Story. And I think she does such an amazing job in Milan. But there's so few places that have that sort of passion anymore because there's so much Speaker 3 (13:24) of Speaker 2 (13:25) it. Speaker 3 (13:25) There's so much of it. I honestly, when I tell you I was doing this every weekend for 15 years, I'm not exaggerating. I mean, it was my life. It slowly