What To Wear When It's Too Damn Hot Outside

The Cereal Aisle Substack writer teams up with La DoubleJ on an apron dress capsule

Martin and Medine Cohen at Cooperativa Alice — Photo: LA DOUBLEJ

By ALISON S. COHN - published 26 Jul 2023

Has your ability to put together a look atrophied in this record-setting summer heat? Masters of low-key maximalism Leandra Medine Cohen and JJ Martin, founder of the Milan, Italy–based fashion and homewares brand La DoubleJ, have you covered with their airy apron dressing capsule. The line features two apron dresses, an apron top, and two pairs of boot-cut trousers in three characteristically exuberant La DoubleJ prints with feather trims.

“An apron dress is so easy in the summer,” says Medine Cohen, author of fashion newsletter The Cereal Aisle. “It looks good, it’s airy, and it exposes enough skin to make you feel like you’re participating in the season.”

Medine Cohen got the idea to build a collection around aprons after a lunch she attended two years ago to celebrate La DoubleJ’s tabletop collaboration with Ladurée, for which the servers wore La DoubleJ kitchen aprons.

“I told JJ she should turn one into a dress,” Medine Cohen recalls. “She replied, ‘Why don’t we do it as a collaboration?’ and I said, ‘In that case, let’s add feather trim and make them in jacquard!’”

Martin and Medine Cohen at Cooperativa Alice.
Photo: LA DOUBLEJ

The capsule is the first of La DoubleJ’s Sisterhood Collections, a new collaborative series from which a portion of proceeds goes to a charitable cause. It will support Cooperativa Alice, a nonprofit devoted to the rehabilitation of incarcerated women at Milan’s San Vittore prison through job training in clothing production. The organization has previously partnered with Chloé and Emporio Armani.

Medine Cohen and Martin were completely aligned on hiring Coopertiva Alice women to sew the pieces, as well as donating a percentage of sales back to the organization. Medine had been talking with Cooperativa Alice about another project, and the NGO’s communications director’s sister happens to be a member of the La DoubleJ team. “The work they do to rehabilitate incarcerated women is so important and so undervalued,” Martin says. “And the fact that they’re preserving this Italian trade of hand-produced high-quality craftsmanship speaks to exactly what we talk about when we celebrate ‘Made in Italy’ magic.”

Medine Cohen has a few tips on how to style the collection the next time you decide to venture away from the AC. “I have been wearing the Palmetto Placée cotton apron dress and the micro floral Zia cotton apron top styled with pajama-style white pants,” she says. “Both are exactly the kind of special I am looking for on these days while it’s too hot for clothes but I still want to feel like I got dressed.”

As for when the weather finally cools down? “I love the apron dress in moonflower gold jacquard,” says Martin. “It’s in this beautiful metallic jacquard that makes it such a great transition piece for fall, layered over a T-shirt or button-down, which is how I’ll wear it. Leandra rocks it with nothing underneath, and it’s gorgeous.”