Tod Waters and Giuliana Mayo "I'm a bit more clean and Tod's a bit dirtier," Giuliana Mayo begins, speaking about her Junker Designs business partner of more than five years, Tod Waters. Dirty's good, especially when it comes to their latest project, creating tour designs for Mötley Crüe.

Mayo and Waters, who both moved to L.A. in 2000, say fashion was an accident (Waters was a tattooist for a decade in Houston, and Mayo studied theater in Florida.) Their motus operandi is making custom-fitted leather and denim, and their vibe is Mad Max with a vintage twist. "Our stuff is super, super dirty," says Waters. "We mutilate most of it. We sand it, we do lots of treatments on it. … Each piece definitely has a life and a story."

Some of the recurring images that set their clothing apart from other like-minded designers, such as old airplanes and bombs, stem from Waters' obsession with World War II. "The Germans had these Stuka dive bombers that used to annihilate the Pols, and they called these airplanes Junkers," he explains. Enter the name.

"We want to expand, but not hugely," says Mayo. "We don't want to become Von Dutch or Affliction, or, God forbid, Ed Hardy. In this time of mass production, we want to keep things made in America, and keep our quality. … We have plenty of competitors who [manufacture] their stuff in Bali, but it doesn't have the soul." Waters adds a refreshing twist to Mayo's ethos: "When you die, you're not taking your money with you. The greed that we see here in L.A. knows no bounds. It's really messed up. In Texas, … people put you in your place."

Of this ethically minded twosome, Waters is the tattooed one. "I have a lot of bad ones," he says. "On my bicep, there's something that's supposed to be mufflers, but it looks like something out of Looney Tunes … And I have some crappy skulls. The good ones are done by Richard Stell, who I worked with in Houston at a place called Scorpion Tattoos."


"We were both always into stuff that wasn't mainstream," says Mayo. "Everything from the subcultures we were attracted to has gone into our clothes. Our jeans? They don't look like Levi's, that's for sure."