Specializing in butter-soft pullovers and chunky knitwear in eye-catching hues and unorthodox patterns, Judy Turner isn’t just a menswear label. It’s genderfluid, as the brand’s designer and founder Conley Averett intended. Averett crafts pieces that range from simple, like a silk knit tank-top with a playful pectoral reveal, to complex, like a Popsicle-green thick knit sweater that only a man or woman with a certain je nais se quoi can wear.

Judy Turner’s nomenclature can be traced to Averett’s love for Judy Garland and Lana Turner. Before launching the brand in 2019, Averett, an Alabama native, and Parson’s graduate, was working on knitwear for Khaite, Brock Collection, and Creatures of the Wind. Averett was trained by a Russian émigré with a résumé that includes Oscar de la Renta and Ralph Lauren. Averett continues to work with Brooklyn-based knitters who hail from the post-Soviet Union. Along with his interest in vintage celebrities, Averett has always been drawn to knitwear and the democratic quality he says it possesses. “It’s gender-less, without you having to specify that. And it’s malleable and flexible, and different people with different identities can wear it. You can style it in ways that you can’t with woven and stiff cuts.”

For Judy Turner’s Spring/Summer 2020 collection, Averett took cues from American vacation clichés and laid back lifestyles, which can be seen in the colors, silhouettes, and textures of each of the garments. Averett used American vacationing and the acclaimed actresses which the brand was named after as the inspiration for his latest collection. A knit silver shirt and short set were inspired by a “B-List infomercial-style documentary” on Ava Gardner. In order to produce this piece, Averett took a picture of the top Gardner was wearing, scanned it, and used it as the basis of the stitching pattern for the shirt and shorts.

For his Spring/Summer 21 preview, Averett took to a small candle shop in the West Village where he took one-on-one appointments. His clothes are already being worn and sought-after by women, so for this collection to chose to make the clothes even more unisex. “A lot of it was sitting by my window at night when it was dead quiet,” he says. “It was really fantasizing about these creatures. It was what I saw moving in the night when the streets were super still.”

Judy Turner’s Fall/Winter 20 collection is available now on their site and stockists like DPTO.LA and SSENSE and their Spring/Summer 2021 collection is available to view on Vogue Runway.