Drawing Attention

Fashion's favourite illustrator JUSTIN TEODORO chats to MAXIM about designing for BOSS, changing his career trajectory and dressing for confidence...

- REILLY SULLIVAN

New York-based artist Justin Teodoro is reviving the lost art of fashion illustration. Although he's not technically a native New Yorker (he was born and raised in Canada), Teodoro is very much in the tradition of Big Apple icons like Keith Haring, whose doodle-style aesthetic he shares. Something of a renaissance man, Justin shifted from designing clothing to focussing on fashion illustration about a decade ago. It was a gutsy move, but powered on by early support on Instagram and existing connections in the industry, Teodoro soon found himself carving out a niche as fashion's go-to illustrator.

His doodles have adorned everything from department store windows to tote bags and mugs, while his subjects have grown to include pop culture icons from David Bowie to Kylie. In 2020, Justin drew the attention of BOSS chief brand officer Ingo Wilts, who tapped Teodoro to create a global collection for the brand sold in stores from Sydney to Shanghai. Here, Justin sits down with us to talk the power of social media and expanding into new mediums.

Hi, Justin, where did your interest in fashion illustration start?

I discovered fashion and design through my mum's magazine collection. She had everything from Vogue to Harper's Bazaar and I think that's when my creative mind and eye really opened up. To an imaginative kid like me fashion was this amazing world of fantasy and glamour, like that next level up from my comics and cartoons. I would obsessively read every magazine I could get my hands on and watch anything and everything I could about fashion. I always say my drawing style went from Superheroes to Supermodels. I think I was the only kid in school whose sketchbook was filled with pages and pages of doodles of high fashion models.

How did you develop this special skill?