How I Curate My Space: JJ Martin’s Maximalist Kitchen in Milan

“It all came together by serendipity,” says La DoubleJ founder JJ Martin of the kitchen in her Milan home. The designer, known for her exuberant love of vivid prints across her fashion and homeware collections, moved into the completely bare apartment just before the first lockdown in 2020 and “had a lot of time to be in that empty space and think about what I wanted”.

However, her home’s backdrop proved the initial draw for Martin. “When you first walk in, your eye is actually drawn to the window that looks onto Via Alberta da Giussano, which is one of Milan’s most beautiful tree-lined streets,” she says. “I’m lucky enough to have the most gorgeous late 19th-century palazzo outside, so it looks like I’m in old-school Vienna.”

She soon injected the vibrant “mix of styles” that now make up the aesthetic of her kitchen. “It’s the perfect fusion of tastes and my creative process – one side of the room is 19th century, the other side is slick ’90s Italian modernist design and, in the middle, you have a mid-century table with Thonet chairs I bought on a vintage site and covered with La DoubleJ fabric.

“The mix of eras is very me,” she continues. “In every room I’m mixing different centuries, generations, styles, colors and patterns.”

Martin describes her design process as “extremely intuitive [and] in the moment. It’ll be a conversation I have, or one piece in the room will speak to another in an organic, evolving way,” she says. One such conversation resulted in the sourcing of her ’90s bordeaux-colored cabinet set.

“I had called Raimondo Garau, who is an incredible antiques dealer in Milan, letting him know that I had bought a new apartment to see if he had anything fabulous for me,” she says. “Like a lot of Italians, he’s just one of those people whose brain I pick because he has such great style.” Garau told Martin he had just been in the home of an elderly woman who was looking to get rid of her Poliform kitchen – a “beautiful wine-colored [set, comprising] matte laminate and marble tabletops,” she says. “I’ve always kind of had magic luck when it comes to vintage finds.”

The rest of the room followed naturally, adds Martin. “I knew I wanted to mix the slick design of that side of the kitchen with something a little more whimsical and romantic,” and the color palette is one of her favorite elements. “I haven’t seen many pink kitchens, and this is a very particular, very dusty, almost dirty pink. But even though it’s been cut from all of its sweetness, it provides so much warmth. I love being in rooms in which the color doesn’t end. There are no white walls or white ceilings in my apartment. The color goes from the walls and over the ceilings, so you feel like you’re candy-wrapped.”

The overall effect is a space that feels like a “cozy womb or cocoon”, she says. “Since I live alone, this is where I come after work. I come home, I sit down in the kitchen, have my dinner, and I do my reading here. The rest of the house is really quite spacious so, when you’re by yourself, it’s nice to be in the coziest room.”