Fashion is a canvas for the designer behind the namesake fashion brand. Her handcrafted works are expressions of her desire to make something beautiful.
It’s been eight hours and Juliet Johnstone, designer of the namesake fashion brand, hasn’t stopped painting in her downtown L.A. studio. Lush brushstrokes blossom into flowers and hummingbirds, their wings and petals stretching across cargo pants and baby tees. The designs are combinations of her mother’s elaborate flower bouquets that decorated Johnstone’s childhood home, the Malibu canyons, and vintage botany illustrations. They hover over words like “love” or “hate” that slink down pant legs.
The sweeps of deep color transform her favorite staples of ’90s and Y2K fashion into something one of a kind. These aren’t the velour jumpsuits that once splayed rhinestones across celebrities’ backsides, but Johnstone’s own version of SoCal casual luxury and escapism.
“I don’t make anything serious — it’s supposed to be fun,” she says. “It’s supposed to be absurd that there’s a butterfly on your ass.”
Johnstone first painted flowers and butterflies on thrifted cargo pants because she needed to paint something joyful and uninhibited. Broke and getting by as a studio assistant in New York, her work pants were a low-stakes canvas. It was a way to get around the halting pressure she felt fresh out of art school in 2017 to make art that was politically charged and “life changing,” she says.
Three years later, getting by doing the same work in Los Angeles, Johnstone put her first pair of hand-painted pants for sale on Instagram as an experiment. It was soon after that a post from Bella Hadid rocking her cargos helped skyrocket the now 28-year-old painter into a fashion designer with product drops that sell out in minutes. Her work has been featured in Vogue and worn by Dua Lipa and Kendall Jenner, not to mention garnered a loyal online following dubbed “JJ’s girls.” She’s done pop-up sales in L.A. and Paris, and partnered with Levi’s. Turns out the work was life changing.
Creative stimulation was never far for Johnstone. She grew up in a house of musicians — her six brothers followed in her father’s footsteps, who was Elton John’s guitarist. Her mother, a former fashion designer, stayed home with the kids but was always making her own art too. There was a craft room at the house in Calabasas where Johnstone first dabbled with painting in between playing drums, guitar and piano. It was just what you did in her family.
While visiting her dad at work, Johnstone got a glimpse of John’s glam rock wardrobe, which, looking back, may have inspired her. But it is her parents’ style that’s more evident in the designer’s product blocks today.
“Everything I’ve made now has been a reference to something my mom owns,” she says. “Whether it be just a sick pair of sweatpants or a cool blouse.”
Think Uggs and shorts. Diesel pants.
