“We have a shared vision. Everything we say goes towards the same goal.”
Jarod John Leonard
fashion interview by Chance Goode
All images courtesy of Jarod John Leonard
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Jarod John Leonard: How This Cult Brand Is Redefining What It Means to Be a Designer
In today’s fashion climate, where everyone (myself included) is obsessed with Hedi Slimane and Tom Ford-era Gucci, it seems like no one is designing like this anymore. That’s where Jarod John Leonard comes in. If you haven’t heard of them yet, that’s okay, because this cult brand seemingly popped up overnight, with viral videos online reviewing their boots, comparing their quality to the likes of Hermès. The label was founded by Jarod John Leonard and Clark Reeve. The powerful duo has centered the brand around rock n’ roll excess and high-end luxury fabrics. Where major luxury brands are outsourcing cheaper materials from China, they refuse to settle for anything less than the best. The two designers made time the morning after their latest drop sold out within 24 hours to talk with me about the birth of their brand, their first collection, and what’s to come.
Chance Goode: Let’s start from the very beginning. Is it true that you two met through playing an Xbox game?
Jarod John Leonard: Yeah, we met playing Gears of War around 2013. We’ve never met in real life. We were playing Xbox, then started talking about fashion. We had a Discord community where we would archive and discuss other brands. After a while, we were a bit bored and thinking what’s next? We did an official sale with Grailed and made a little bit of money reselling. That was cool, but once I had run out of pieces and became bored with other designers, I thought, what can I do next?
So Clark and I began talking about starting a brand. I already had some pieces where I’d made samples for myself because I couldn’t find mohair sweaters anywhere. I showed Clark the designs I did, and he was really happy with them. We needed a name, and we decided on my name. I thought it was easy, and the abbreviation was good because JJL is pretty catchy.
Clark Reeve: I think it all stems from Jarod and me having confidence in ourselves. We always have these very grandiose ideas. We definitely were in over our heads when we made the brand and launched it. But I think that kind of pressure and the demand from people interested in the brand motivated us to work harder to make something we could release to the public for our first collection.
CG: Do either of you have any formal training?
JJL: Neither of us has formal training. I was just obsessed with archival garments and deconstructing them, figuring out how they’re made, where they were made, and which materials to use. I could go to school and learn the same things I learned online. We live in an age where you can literally go on Google, search for hours and hours, and after a couple of years, you can learn everything the school would have taught you. So I’d say I’m self-taught in that regard.
CR: I definitely agree with that sentiment. In terms of making clothes, no formal training. I attended FIT for fashion business and marketing. That’s the only kind of formal training you could say that applies to either of us. If I’m honest, neither of us has any professional background in the industry.
CG: It’s like you said, nowadays, it really doesn’t matter. The garments speak for themselves.
CR: Exactly.
CG: How would you describe the dynamic between you two? Do you agree with each other right away, or does it take time to find a common ground?
JJL: Honestly, I would say we agree with each other about 99.9% of the time. We have a shared vision. Everything we say goes towards the same goal. So it’s actually pretty hard to disagree. Even on creative things, we pretty much have the same aesthetic. It’s a conversation like, I think maybe we should use this material or maybe that design. So in general, we agree with each other.
CG: I wanted to talk about pieces from your first collection, “1974.” Let’s start with the leopard print scarf with the skull motif. Can you tell me the inspiration behind that?
JJL: I’m a big fan of Alexander McQueen, and I was looking through all of his old scarves. I think he first made the skull scarf in 2003, if I’m not mistaken. I was looking at different variations he did, and one was leopard print. I’ve never really liked the shape of his skull, but I loved his inspiration and mind. In my opinion, I perfected it, creating the perfect skull leopard scarf to pay homage to McQueen since he’s no longer here. We drew the skulls and leopard print ourselves.
CG: Your denim was recently worn by Fakemink. Can you tell me more about them?
CR: When we first did the collection “1974”, we had a mood board for the collection to create the concepts and overall vibe that we wanted to curate. There was this one photo of Bruce Springsteen, which I have up on my wall. In the photo, he is wearing the perfect pair of denim. I really admired the way they fit him. We basically wanted to recreate that silhouette but make it feel more luxurious. We had to go through a few different samples to make sure we got the perfect flare because if they’re too exaggerated, they look a little too wacky. If they’re not exaggerated enough, you can barely tell it’s there. So we wanted to strike that perfect balance. We love that silhouette so much that we want it to be a recurring staple in other collections.
JJL: The fabric we chose was Italian denim. We have a custom button with a YKK zip and a custom leather suede patch with the music note and Jarod John Leonard script logo, in a very nice full-grain calf leather, very soft to the touch. In my opinion, they’re the perfect denim silhouette with luxury manufacturing. That’s what you want to wear when you wake up in the morning, you know. Sometimes you don’t want this maximized bullshit that’s happening in fashion. You want a nice pair of soft, well-fitting denim.
CG: I love that this photo of Bruce Springsteen inspired them. I actually took a pair of leather pants to my tailor, showed them a photo of the leather pants from the movie Christiane F., and had them mimic the silhouette.
CR: It’s really interesting how you can take garments that were worn from the late seventies and modernize them. Almost fifty or sixty years later, people can still resonate with them.
CG: Your boots have gone viral on Instagram. I’ve seen them compared to Hermès in terms of quality. Was it difficult to achieve such high quality for your first collection?
JJL: Honestly, I’d say it’s nearly impossible. It’s quite hard to reach that level of high fashion quality. You need to have researched the top tanneries. Most of them you can’t simply buy. Sometimes you have to buy thousands and thousands of square feet of leather, which isn’t accessible for every brand. But luckily, I found a factory in Montagranaro, Italy’s luxury footwear capital. I spoke to nearly 30 manufacturers there. This one tannery was perfect because the leather had a sheen. It’s very soft and full-grain. It gets softer with time and was everything we were looking for. We did the flick stitching and the leather heel with detailed embroidery. It was like a dream come true in terms of design. I think the first sample we made was pretty much perfect.
CG: You threw a party and collaborated with Post Party for New York Fashion Week with the likes of Slolphia and Perto. It seems like you’re already gathering the coolest kids on the scene to have around the brand. Is this the ideal JJL customer?
Slolphia and Perto at the JJL x Post Party NYFW party
JJL: We want to target that whole crowd. We also attract the Chrome Hearts and Enfants Richés Deprimes consumers. They’re some of our main customers. Obviously, we’re digital at the moment, so that’s how we attract them. But we do have another type of customer: someone between the ages of 25 and 70, who loves classic menswear. They probably grew up on rock and roll, so the aesthetic isn’t too alienating towards them.
CR: I definitely think for JJL, our ambitions are to be the kind of brand that an older individual can purchase and justify spending a good amount of their money on because of the quality. We want to be respected, not just cater to online hype. If somebody goes to the store looking for Tom Ford or Stefano Ricci, we want them to buy Jarod John Leonard instead. We want to be involved in those decisions for the consumer.
CG: Do you see yourselves throwing runway shows in the future?
JJL: In the future, it’s attractive to us, but I feel like we’re more focused on making this timeless menswear wardrobe, world-building, making conceptual collections, and having limited distribution, choosing the right people to wear it. Maybe in a few years, when the time comes, we might do a runway, but I don’t think we’d be on the calendar throwing runway shows season after season, doing resort, and all these other bullshit collections. I’d rather surprise people. That’s kind of the strategy I’m doing with JJL.
CG: What’s the next collection going to look like?
JJL: So the next collection is called English Gardens. It’s based on the decadence of the English countryside, the manor houses, and the oriental-style interiors. It’s also about the nature, such as the flowers and animals. That loneliness contrasted with the richness. It also has the spirit of New York because Clark’s from New York. The brand is very New York-inspired, but not in a Western feel. It’s more so the spirit of New York, combined with a quiet country English lifestyle.
CR: Jared described it beautifully. That’s exactly what the concept behind the collection is. It’s going to feature a much broader range of what we want to do with JJL. With the 1974 collection, I was really happy with how it turned out, but now we have a little more time to work on really cool concepts and visuals that we didn’t get to convey in the original collection.