Over a year ago, J.J. Martin, founder of the Milan-based La DoubleJ ready-to-wear and home brand, was shown a townhouse at 18 East 69th Street in Manhattan, lifting her spirits following a terrible setback in Los Angeles.
“Our very first flagship in the United States was supposed to be in the Los Angeles Palisades neighborhood but it burned down a month before opening,” along with thousands of businesses and homes destroyed by the fires in 2025. “So our plans got sidetracked in a big way,” and shifted to New York City.
“The minute I saw the Manhattan townhouse, we knew we were going to get it. I dubbed it ‘The Lighthouse’ because I really wanted it to be a focal point and a vessel for all the energy work we do.”
The La DoubleJ flagship, dubbed The Lighthouse, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The 6,000-square-foot La DoubleJ flagship opened Saturday, which happened to be Martin’s birthday. “It was truly the unveiling of the mothership in America for us,” she said in an interview Tuesday from London, where she was decorating a garden at the five-star Dorchester hotel.
The flagship doubles as a setting for the brand’s maximalist fashion and home products and a center for La DoubleJ’s Sisterhood community, a spiritual platform serving about 50,000 global members and providing a program of wellness classes. The Sisterhood, Martin explained, “is not religious at all. It’s truly just a beautiful feeling of nurturing and caretaking and love and openness,” that can be taught and learned. “It’s literally like, how can I be nicer to myself today?”
Martin draws inspiration from New Age and ancient practices and philosophies, and archetypal figures such as the Egyptian goddess Isis, in shaping the brand’s products, spaces and approach to well-being.
“I was a total nonbeliever in any of this stuff,” Martin said. “I grew up Catholic, hating the church, but I had a series of issues, like an early death of a parent. I went through a lot of depressions, and I went through infertility. I wasn’t able to have children. I just hit this wall, and I started working with an energy healer 12 years ago, and that’s when suddenly all these doors opened to me, and I found all of this alternative medicine and holistic healing that was so beneficial to me, so I just love talking about it. I love sharing this. It genuinely lights me up, and it’s been beautiful.
“Our company’s mission is ‘raise your vibration,’” Martin explained. “There are many different ways that we can uplift people.”
Like through the bold product offerings, be it a brightly printed caftan, a silk twill swing dress, the 24-karat gold-plated portal necklace with red agate stone. Or on the home side, a “devotional” pillar candle or a thick, round zafu cushion, both of which support meditation. There are also T-shirts emblazoned with upbeat messages like “Divine,” “Joy,” and “Raise Your Vibration.”
Martin, who is adamant that what your wear can change your energy level, characterizes the La DoubleJ collection as “feel-good luxury at fair prices.” She said 99 percent of the line is made in Italy, with a few exceptions such as embroideries from India and raffia placemats from Mexico, and none of the merchandise is ever discounted. Ready-to-wear is the “workhorse” of the collection, which along with accessories and jewelry accounts for 90 percent of the business; home accounts for 10 percent.
“Each one of our stores has been conceived as ‘raise your vibration stations’ which means to raise your energy into a lighter, expansive, happier, higher frequency, and more open place,” said Martin. “Everything we do at La DoubleJ is meant to do that. We’ve got a sales staff trained in this whole art of raise your vibration. And colors have their frequencies. Stones have their frequencies. Patterns do too. All of those things can uplift you. When you’re with outside things that have a high frequency, your energy can go into kind of a symbiotic dance. That’s how ‘raise your vibration’ works.”
J.J. Martin at the Milan headquarters of La DoubleJ.
©DePasquale + Maffini
La DoubleJ also has freestanding stores in Dallas and Palm Beach, as well as in Capri and Milan, all of which are company-owned. There’s also a store in Istanbul that’s a partnership, and the brand wholesales its fashion and home products at Bloomingdale’s, Kirna Zabête, Mytheresa and Net-a-porter as well as Harvey Nichols in the U.K., La Rinascente in Italy, Luisa in Athens, and El Corte Inglés in Spain, among other stores around the world.
“We know that people are just coming to shop, and that’s great, and they’ll look around and they’ll see these representations that have been painted on the walls of the Divine Mothers, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s really pretty,’ but they won’t notice. But some people will sit down, want to hear the story, and want to connect, and that’s where we talk to them more about what’s offered.”
La DoubleJ offers workshops and classes in sound healing, crystal healing, yoga and meditation, at the flagship in a space called the “Light Temple” and online.
“We’re not commercializing this,” Martin said. “It’s an add-on, an extra way that we can introduce our beloved Divine Sisterhood community to practices that can radically change their lives. You have to be part of our community and sign up for this. It is open to all genders. We ask for a nominal fee just to cover the cost of the teachers. We’ve learned that when we gave these classes for free, some people would just bail at the last minute.”
The flagship is designed with a striking, two-and-a-half story tall chandelier with 150 illuminated hand-blown glass balls; semi-cylindrical walls of either mother-of-pearl or mirrors creating the illusion of completely circular rooms; hand-tufted custom-made patterned wool carpets, and brass-framed portals. Ceilings have large starburst-shaped brass light fixtures, wall cutouts are trimmed in brass, and there are 15 windows allowing light to pour in.
The first two floors display La DoubleJ’s ready-to-wear, accessories and jewelry. Home products are in a separate room with a custom-patterned skylight. The upper levels house offices, an earth-toned VIP lounge, and the Light Temple, the space dedicated to spiritual practices, meditations, workshops and sound baths led by healers, guides and teachers from around the world, and other gatherings for the La DoubleJ Sisterhood community. There’s also a chapel, a VIP room and storage area.
Martin said the Light Temple is inspired by sacred architecture “where a Romanesque church–like layout is reinterpreted through mirrored reflections, featuring walls adorned with a site-specific pattern by La DoubleJ, and windows shielded by a floor-to-ceiling curtain of mother of pearl petal.” The Light Temple’s two gongs — custom-made by Simon Morris of Gongmatic in collaboration with Madhava Carrara and Margherita Cioffi from Grotta Sonora — are self-playing, producing continuous sounds intended to “gently restore balance, presence and well-being.”
The gong in the Light Temple.
The entire store was designed and made in Italy, with the assistance of the B-arch architectural and interior design firm, and shipped in parts to New York
“We completely rebuilt the interiors. It was an enormous project,” Martin said. “I can safely tell you that we’re probably not going to be doing this again for a while, because it was a huge, huge project. It’s not just about selling. It’s so much more.”
Home products displayed under a colorful custom skylight at the La DoubleJ flagship.
