Skingraft

Skingraft was founded in Los Angeles in 2006 by brothers Jonny Cota and Christopher Cota. Its origins lay in performance art and costume, with Jonny’s work for an underground troupe leading him to dismantle vintage leather jackets and remake the pieces into stage clothing. The label’s name grew from that process of taking apart and recombining material.

Ready-to-wear brought those experiments into a wardrobe shaped by music and the subcultures around it. Leather became an important material, while draped layers and elongated proportions gave the clothes a recognizable silhouette. The results connected the impact of a performance costume with the more practical demands of something worn in daily life.

Christopher brought business experience to the partnership, helping develop the label from its Los Angeles base. Its dark palette and sculptural shapes offered an alternative to the city’s better-known casual wardrobe, making room for a more theatrical kind of streetwear.

After Jonny won the first season of Making the Cut in 2020, the business relaunched under the Jonny Cota name. The current brand describes Skingraft as its former identity, preserving a connection between the original label and the subsequent studio. Skingraft’s archive records the performance-led experiments that established that design language.