Duran Duran’s John Taylor Launches Athleisure Collection Designed With Fans in Mind

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Duran Duran’s influence on fashion is as enduring as the band’s place in music history. After helping define the look of the 1980s, they’re still shaping style in surprising ways four decades on. In March, the group — comprised of founding members Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor and Roger Taylor — teamed up with Italian fragrance house Xerjoff to launch two perfumes, NeoRio and Black Moonlight. Last year, bassist and longtime fashion icon John Taylor introduced JT x PM, a collaborative capsule line with designer Patty Palazzo.

Palazzo, who founded the T-shirt label Punk Masters in 2003, has been part of Taylor’s creative orbit since the mid-’90s. A versatile designer, she’s worked with Taylor across web, merchandise and packaging projects and even helped build the branding for Juicy Couture — co-founded by Taylor’s wife, Gela Nash-Taylor — along with its men’s line, Dirty English. She’s also been a regular contributor to Duran Duran’s visual aesthetic for more than 20 years.

With JT x PM, Palazzo and Taylor have ramped up their creative partnership. The first collection launched in spring 2024, with the second rolling out in late 2024 and continuing into this year. It features cozy, graphic-heavy basics: T-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, joggers, caps and even pieces for young kids — inspired by Taylor’s 4-year-old grandson and 2-year-old granddaughter. Taylor’s irreverent aesthetic runs through it: a loopy script spells out “Chic as Fuck”; poop emojis outline the phrase “Shit Show”; and the Dada art movement collides with punk stylings in prints inspired by Rap Tees, a book Taylor gave to Palazzo. The criteria, according to Taylor, is simple: “I just do what I want and what I’d like to see.”

Each piece is hand-screened by Palazzo in her apartment, which keeps the brand in near-constant pre-order mode. A portion of every sale, from the first drop onward, is donated to organizations aiding victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires in Los Angeles.

New items are added to the second collection regularly, with the next release dropping on May 7. “One is another retro JT design, those prove very popular, so we like to have a bit of fun with that,” Palazzo reveals. “The other is based on an image of what we’ll call ‘a legend in Duran Duran history.’ And there might be one more that’s still in progress.”

When he logs into Zoom from the west of England to speak to The Hollywood Reporter about JT x PM, Taylor is, naturally, wearing the “Chic as Fuck” sweatshirt — and, of course, wearing it well.

Duran Duran and fashion have always gone hand-in-hand, haven’t they?

Nick and I, we’re the fashion victims; the fashion queens. I’ve always been into it. I can change clothes five times during the course of the day. I’m ridiculous. I’ve always loved clothes for activities. I’m doing Pilates, that means I have to change into my Pilates outfit. After that, I’m going on my bike, and I can change for that. I’ve got my bass practice coming up. What’s the best thing to wear? I’m fucking insane. I need a lot of clothes, is what I’m saying.

JT x PM leans into comfort clothes. Is that a reflection of how people dress today?

Well, except you, clearly. I’m a fancy dresser too. I think my time spent in Los Angeles, and being around Juicy and the Juicy aesthetic, I saw my dress sense move away. When I would go back to the boys in the band and see how they would dress, I could see, “Uh-oh, I’m getting a bit L.A. here.” I was probably the first band member to wear a hoodie. I’ve always liked high/low fashion. I’ve always liked mixing stuff up. I can’t wear proper shoes so a sports thing works for me. It’s a palette that is fun to work with.

Your enthusiasm for the Dada movement found its way into this collection.

We definitely riffed on the Dada thing, but I don’t like to get too literal. I’m a slave to my enthusiasms. With art, music, culture, I’m constantly grazing. I’m that really irritating friend that is going on about something, who when you come back to them and say, “Oh yeah, I listened to that album you were talking about,” they say, “Oh yeah, I’ve moved on.”

There’s a classic picture of you and Robert Palmer in the collection. What’s the story there?

Patty likes every collection to have a moment with JT in it, something from my 20s when I was cute and drunk. I was a big fan of [Palmer’s]. A friend of ours brought him to see us play the Peppermint Lounge in New York. We kind of charmed each other and became really good friends. He was a lot of fun and incredibly talented. I always say this about Robert, and then I feel a bit conceited, but he had impeccable taste in the people he worked with. But if you look at Robert’s history, it’s an incredible arc. I was really fucking lucky to hang with him and have the experience I had with him.

The quality is exceptional.

Patty sources the stuff and I road test it. we’re kind of always on the lookout for color and where do we want to go? It’s a fun process. It might get a little less fun with Asian import tariffs, but we don’t need to go there right now. At the moment, we’re seeing how far we can push it. We’re adding things all the time. Patty comes from a fan’s perspective — she’s that generation, and she’s all about value. She’s not about gouging. She’s about “What’s the lowest we can sell this for?” We try to keep it reasonable for everybody.

What’s next for JT x PM?

We’re working towards a complete look. We started doing two-piece suits with sweats and pants. That’s been a breakthrough because we’ve been doing tops forever. It’s a really comfortable, very livable suit. It’s chic in the city. It’s cool in the country. You can wear it anywhere. We don’t have socks. I love socks. Hopefully the ship stays in the water long enough that we can keep doing it.