I finally got to sit down with Justin Strauss on a beautiful September day in McCarren Park in Brooklyn. Justin is a true NYC treasure, from his time with with his band Milk n’ Cookies in the 70s to DJing clubs all over the city (and globe) to remixing so many of our favorite songs and really so much more. We sat and chatted for over an hour and I didn’t even get to scratch the surface of all the cool things he’s witnessed/been a part of/created. I feel like I could easily do a part 2 or 3 and beyond! He’s also super stylish and it was great to pick his brain about jeans and fashion and his connection to both. I was delighted to get a pic of him in the TINA COMBOS. So. Good.

Merica Lee: Can you talk a little bit about your style? And I've noticed you wear jeans a lot and why?

Justin Strauss: My style hasn't changed much since I was coming into my teens really. My mom was very into clothes and fashion, always dressed us really well and we'd go shopping all the time. When I discovered music is when I discovered how I wanted to look - how bands like the Beatles and the Stones looked, all these groups that I was obsessed with as a kid, I wanted to be like them or try to be like them. So I would read all my music magazines and look at all the pictures and try to find the clothes, and jeans were always a part of the makeup. And they're easy, there's pictures of me wearing jeans all throughout my life. When Bowie and Glam and New York Dolls came along, that was a huge influence too.

I think the great thing about jeans is that you can make it your own thing, everyone wears them differently and has their own way of styling them and mixing them with other things.

It’s kind of a uniform in a way, everybody has a pair of jeans, and if you have a sense of style, you can wear them like no one else is wearing them.

Merica Lee: Yeah. Oh, I love that. Also, I'm glad you said uniform because I was going to say that you have a uniform. And I feel like I do too, you wear jeans and a tee and your boots or your saddle shoes.

Justin Strauss: There's times I like to not do that, but it’s true. It’s something I don’t have to think about much. You just put on a pair of jeans, wear them with a cool t-shirt, a jean jacket, and it looks great.

Merica Lee: Mm-hmm. Classic.

Justin Strauss: Classic.

Merica Lee: That’s funny, because my next question is what do you think about a uniform?

Justin Strauss: Well I think the idea of a uniform is cool, but then to also enhance it and make it personal. Jeans are a uniform. You wake up, throw them on, done. I mean, just the way you roll up your jeans or you don't roll up your jeans, it can change the whole look. So yeah, it's definitely a cool uniform that you can personalize.

They work in so many different situations. When I was growing up, “nicer” places didn't want you to come in with jeans, and now it’s the norm. Back in the day, there were basically three jean companies, Levi's, Wrangler and Lee, and that was it. Then designer jeans came along, not that I was ever really into those, except Fiorucci which was a different concept.

Merica Lee: Oh my gosh Sorry, this is so cool. This is exactly, exactly what I wanted to ask you about!

Justin Strauss: Fiorucci’s were modeled after the classic jean, but also fit skinny people really well, and I like my jeans kind of tight. It used to be hard to find tight classic jeans. Levi's also make great corduroys, with a great fit. I love corduroys.

Merica Lee: I’d like to ask if you could describe how your denim choices have changed throughout the years.

Justin Strauss: I mean, looking back at some older pictures, I was wearing basically tighter dark jeans, but maybe in the 80s, things got a little looser. I had a few pairs of regular fit jeans, which I look back now and go, "Oh, I don't think those were for me." But at the time they worked.

Merica Lee: Keep them tight.

Justin Strauss: Yes, with a few exceptions along the way, it was pretty much standard tight cut for me, and I didn't stray too much from that. I mean, just use what works for you or you feel comfortable in. Looser fit jeans look great on some people, and are very much back in style now.

Merica Lee: Oh, for sure.

Justin Strauss: So I just stick with what works.

Merica Lee: Yeah, yeah. A uniform, shall we say?

Justin Strauss: I like the stiff, kind of dark denim too, like really rigid.

Merica Lee: Oh, like a raw denim?

Justin Strauss: I have maybe one pair, one or two that are like that. They're fun when you want to change things up. More serious and severe.

Merica Lee: Mm-hmm. Did you ever get into the APC jeans where you wear them until they’re ya know, super worn?

Justin Strauss: I think I have a pair of gray ones from APC but, they were always really expensive and I found Levi's, extra slim fit 510s were good for me. I didn't need to spend $200 or whatever it was on the Petite Standards... They're nice, I have thought about it on a few occasions but I never went for it.

Merica Lee: Yeah, they fade really nice. I need to look at their jeans again because I feel like whatever denim they use, fades really nice.

Justin Strauss: I think that everyone kind of bases their jeans off the classic jean, off a Levi's 501 or the slim fit. So why not just get the original? I mean, unless they're like Fiorucci ha... they kind of jazzed it up a little and made them a little sexier, I would say.

Merica Lee: Yeah, yeah. I just did a blog post about the explosion of designer jeans, and I read about what inspired Fiorucci to make his jeans and literally like my eyes couldn't roll farther back in my head with his inspiration, but at the same time I love it and even though I know HE is Italian, Fiorucci as a brand is so quintessential in New York.

Justin Strauss: What was his inspiration?

Merica Lee: He talks about how he and his wife were driving through Ibiza in their car, and they saw a bunch of young women on the beach, just wearing jeans and no tops. And they were frolicking around in the water and he said that the way the jeans fit those young ladies when they were wet, was his inspiration for Fiorucci jeans.

Justin Strauss: Well yeah. A lot of the advertising and idea of the brand was based around the idea of freedom. Their graphic design department were insane and they worked a lot with this new at the time Italian photographer, Toscani, who later went on to do the Benetton ads, the United Nations of colors and stuff, and became very in demand. But he was just starting out then. It was a great collaboration.

I was a huge into Fiorucci and I collected all the posters, stickers, books, and clothes. I have a lot of things they produced.

Merica Lee: That's so cool. Maybe one day I'll see! Yeah, researching Fiorucci was really great, because actually... I learned so much about just the scene in New York in the mid 70s. Did you hang out in the shop?

Justin Strauss: Oh yeah. The shop was like a club basically. I had friends that worked there, it was the hangout. There was Studio 54, where people would go at night and then people hung out at Fiorucci during the day. It was quite a scene. Warhol and his crowd were always around, Joey Arias worked in the shop. The clothes were amazing and really fun and affordable. The graphics were next level, all the stuff they produced, it was a really incredible time. And it was in midtown, it was by Bloomingdale's, it was on 59th Street, which back then was one of the main parts of town people would go shopping.

Merica Lee: Did you hear of the Jean Shop?

Justin Strauss: The French Jean Store?

Merica Lee: Yes. Sorry, yeah.

Justin Strauss: Not only did I hear of it, I knew the owner.

It's a long story, but he was a music agent that opened the Electric Circus, which was a club on St. Mark's Place, that my dad was the painting contractor for. So there's the whole story with that.

And then he opened The Ritz and hired me as the DJ, not knowing that I had met him as a kid. And he also opened the French Jean Store.

He was quite the entrepreneur. Their gimmick was that the jeans were super tight, that you had to lay down to get them on. And so there was a bed basically in the middle of the store and people would just lay down squeeze into these jeans. They were like paint, basically.

Merica Lee: Yeah. I love that. That happens a lot when people come to try on my jeans, sometimes they have to lay on my bed and I pull the pockets together while they zip up.

Justin Strauss: It's like zipping a piece of luggage that's overstuffed.

Merica Lee: Yeah, exactly. I'm sitting on these poor folks like, "Can you zip it?" Oh my gosh.

Justin Strauss: Fiorucci was the first that I was aware of, and then soon after, maybe around the same time Calvin Klein got into the jean business in a big way, and Sassoon, and there was Gloria Vanderbilt, all these brands started coming out with designer jeans. And there were different Italian companies that tried to rip off Fiorucci. When someone does something, everyone follows. So yeah, I mean every fashion designer started making jeans.

Merica Lee: Yeah. It was such a big business, it was everyone’s opportunity to break into the denim world.

Justin Strauss: Rather than just workwear it became fashion. So that opened up a whole new world.

Merica Lee: So, did you get caught up in the tight Fiorucci jeans, lying on the bed?

Justin Strauss: No. I mean, I never lied on a bed, but I had Fiorucci jeans. I had all kinds of Fiorucci pants, shirts, everything, I was over the top with that.

Justin Strauss: A few years ago they relaunched with a store in London and online. Somebody bought the company or the rights to use it, and have done some nice things with it, trying to recreate some of the magic while also moving things forward.

Merica Lee: Sure yeah. Well also I think that the really great thing about Fiorucci is that their ads were so great and they're timeless, they still look amazing

Justin Strauss: For sure. Ahead of their time and still now look amazing.

Merica Lee: I mean, it feels so quintessential New York, is what I was going to say. Even though I know he's not from here.

Justin Strauss: He really caught the spirit of the times for sure.

Merica Lee: The ads for Calvin Klein and Fiorucci compared to Gloria Vanderbilt ads are so different. Do you remember any of those ads, the Gloria Vanderbilt ads are so terrible and awkward and I think her taglines are so weird. One of them is, "Fits like the skin on a grape." She wasn’t cool.

Justin Strauss: She wasn't cool. But you had Calvin Klein with Brooke Shields, which was really pushing the envelope with their advertising.

Merica Lee: Yeah. I mean, they look so modern, they just were done so well.

Justin Strauss: There was a lot of controversy about those ads obviously, as she was so young and the nature of the ads being so sexualized.

Merica Lee: That's true. It's funny because I feel so conflicted about it because they look so great

Justin Strauss: Of course, I think most people felt the same. The campaign shot by Richard Avedon certainly changed the way brands went on to market their products.

I’m not sure how she feels about it all now, but when Raf Simons was designing the Calvin Klein brand a few years ago he asked Brooke if he could use one of the images from those ads for some new pieces he was producing and she agreed. Love it or hate it got everyone talking about Calvin Klein jeans at the time.

Merica Lee: Did the trick.

Justin Strauss: And then in the 90s Calvin Klein did it again with the campaign featuring Kate Moss and Marky Mark. Again very sexual and provocative. But looking back on it now through today’s lens , where everything is under a microscope, I don’t know if it would fly. Cancel culture has changed the way we look at things.

Merica Lee: I think also with music, it's the same thing. I think about Rick James and what a terrible human being he is, but what great music he made and how cool he looked.

Justin Strauss: Can you love an artist or more specifically love their art and not love the human being? It's like Phil Spector, there's so many people who have strayed or done terrible things. It’s a question we all struggle with or I have at times.

Merica Lee: Well, since you brought up Phil Spector, can we talk a little bit about your night at his house?

Justin Strauss: Yeah. I mean, I was friends with the Ramones and they were in LA and I was living in LA with my band, Milk 'N' Cookies at the time. I was pretty friendly with Joey and I had a girlfriend at the time, Linda who worked actually at Fiorucci's for a while, and became my girlfriend after I had broken up with my first and long time girlfriend Abbijane.

Linda came out to L.A. to stay with me, and while I was back on a trip to New York, she ended up starting a relationship with Joey.

Merica Lee: Oh. Damn it, heartbreak.

Justin Strauss: Rock n Roll heartbreak. But at that point they weren't officially together, and I was a bit in the dark about it all. And so Joey knew I loved Phil Spector and he said, "Listen, we're going to meet Phil Spector, do you want to come?" And I was like, "Hell yeah."

Merica Lee: Hell yeah.

Justin Strauss: So I was there the night the Ramones met Phil Spector, which was a legendary night. And by the way, The Ramones knew something about how to wear a pair of jeans.

Merica Lee: I know this. I can't believe this. There's a gazillion of these stories that I can't wait to hear.

Justin Strauss: We went to the Ramones van, they had a driver, they had a van that drove them around. And we went up to the house, a huge, massive house in the Hollywood Hills, and we went in. Phil's there with bodyguards and all kinds of weirdness ensued. Let’s just say it was a long night with many unexpected twists and turns. It ended up with Phil asking me and a writer from the NME magazine who was along to stay and listen to the new music he was in the middle of producing. It was an evening I’ll never forget.

Merica Lee: At least he wasn't boring.

Justin Strauss: No, it was not boring. There was nothing boring about that night.

Merica Lee: I mean, because it's a pretty iconic moment.

Justin Strauss: Yes, that night that Phil met the Ramones is a pretty legendary one.

Merica Lee: I know, oh my God. I feel like this is a common thing, like it's a thread where Justin Strauss was there. I mean, honestly.

Justin Strauss: Ha, well kind of sometimes I was. There's a thing of being in the right place at the right time and also making the most of it. I don't know, I just feel very fortunate to have been witness to a lot of greatness. Sometimes if I’m part of a conversation and something comes up and I have some first hand story to tell and I’m thinking "Maybe I should..I'll just shut up."

Merica Lee: No, never shut up. It's so amazing.