JOHNY DAR
THE ONLY WAY IS
ALL-IN.
A LIFE IN WORK · 1986 — 2026
From a confiscated pen under the bed to gold-leaf on silk in Dubai. Each year, a new room. Each room, the same line.
Los Angeles.
Moves to LA on a football scholarship. A motorbike crash ends the sport; painting becomes a recovery.
Fashion →
Top Designer.
Nominated West Coast's top designer while still a student. Dresses P!nk, Eva Longoria, Shakira. Stocked at Barneys, Fred Segal, Henri Bendel.
Fashion →
Burning luxury logos.
Places an ad in Women's Wear Daily — burning luxury logos. Shown alongside Calvin Klein and Donna Karan. Refuses a BCBG offer. Leaves LA.
Fashion →
DAR the BOOK.
Retreats to remote places to complete the sketches that become the first DAR the BOOK volume — six years of hand-drawn geometric work.
Art →
Johny Dar. Rankin. Tuuli.
Founds the eponymous brand with himself as the face. Collaborates with Rankin on the Tuuli by Dar calendar; reviewed by Franca Sozzani.
Fashion →
Berlin. Dubai. Gaga.
Body-paints seventeen models in a day for Berlin Fashion Week. Body-paints an Arabian stallion in Dubai — the Horse Whispers series begins. Collaborates with Lady Gaga on G.U.Y.
Fashion →
Berlin gallery. Beijing.
Opens a gallery in Berlin. Horse Whispers exhibited at MOCA Beijing. Launches the Love Your Body campaign.
Art →
Jeans for Refugees.
Hand-paints one hundred celebrity-donated denim jackets — Elton John, Woody Allen, and more. Shown at the Saatchi Gallery.
Fashion →
Dardelica.
Founds Dardelica — original electronic music in his own invented language. Introduces Dar-Time, a 32-hour day designed to reduce stress.
Music & Books →
Liquid Gold.
Completes Liquid Gold — forty minutes of his invented language pressed into a meditative soundscape. Body-paints twelve horses for Horse Whispers 2.
Music & Books →
AOI.
AOI — the light-and-sound chamber — expands to Dubai, Berlin, Ibiza, Austria, Costa Rica. Wim Hof leads a session. Four-hour lines form.
Experience →
CONTINUE INTO THE PRACTICE
Four disciplines.
One hand.
01
Art.
Hand-drawn line work, gold-leaf canvases, and sculpture — two decades of marks made once, on purpose.
02
Fashion.
Body-painted horses, couture on the runway, one hundred hand-painted denim jackets — worn, walked, exhibited.
03
Music.
Liquid Gold — forty minutes of an invented language pressed to 180g vinyl. The studio, in sound.
04
Experience.
AOI — the light-and-sound chamber. Step inside; sixty minutes later you walk out reset.
CURRENTLY · 2026
Liquid Gold.
Original ambient compositions on 180g vinyl. Forty minutes of meditation on the line, pressed once, signed by hand.
SINCE 1999
Twenty-six years
at the line.
Under the bed first. Then Saatchi, Beijing, Berlin. A motorbike crash that ended one life and began another. Seventeen models, an Arabian stallion, one hundred denim jackets — and a record pressed in gold. The whole story is one scroll away.
Read the Story →AN ALTERNATIVE WAY TO BROWSE
The Gallery.
Wander an endless gallery of every work for sale — paintings, sculptures, couture, prints, sold-out editions. Find what's still here.