Originally from Hurt, Virginia (population: 1,235), Johnson moved to New York in 2017 to attend NYU’s Gallatin School, where he created his own major focusing on how fashion influences race. As a kid stuck in a small country town, he had big dreams of becoming a designer and later a fashion journalist. His grandmother, or his “Sasha,” as he calls her, encouraged his passion, buying him fabric so that he could learn to sew, and Barbies to dress up. “But on my mom’s side, they’re very religious, and they were not a fan of that at all,” Johnson recalls.

Johnson’s early memories of JCPenney were followed by less pleasant ones related to fashion. “I have a distinct memory of my mother telling me I could not be a designer because only gay men were designers, and that wasn’t allowed,” he says. He was forced to put fashion on the back-burner for a while and started telling people he wanted to be a divorce lawyer instead. (“Purely because I noticed that divorce lawyers got so much air time [on television],” he laughs. “I just wanted to dress fabulously and meet with clients.”)

It was the 2015 September issue of Vogue featuring Beyoncé on the cover that changed everything for Johnson, who was in high school at the time. “I bought it with the money I was making at the YMCA,” he says. Flipping through it, he couldn’t deny his passion any longer and eventually decided to move to New York.

When Johnson finally got to NYU, Anderson Cooper came to visit his very first class (“he looked amazing”) and told students that they didn’t need a degree to be a journalist anymore. So Johnson decided to get some real-life work experience instead, interning at public relations agencies, magazines, and brands and assisting various stylists. In 2021, around the same time that he graduated, Johnson got a job as the fashion office coordinator at Saks Fifth Avenue, where he worked for three years.

“I got an education in merchandising and how to tell the full story of a collection and translate that for a customer,” Johnson said of the experience. It’s something he still thinks about today when putting together his Substack, which he launched in 2023. Originally, he used it purely as a creative outlet, but it has since grown to become a source of income as well, thanks to the early support of fellow writers like Leandra Medine Cohen. “Substack has been great because it’s allowed me to tap into so many different things that I’m interested in—not just fashion, but the world in general,” Johnson says. He can write, flex his journalism muscles, and work as a stylist as well.

About a year after Johnson launched his Substack, he was approached by At Present to curate an edit for them. It went so well that they asked him to come on board and design a collection. “It’s an amazing opportunity to be working alongside them,” he says. “I feel like I’ve grown so much in my knowledge of jewelry.”

For the collection, he designed the pieces he’s always wanted in his own wardrobe, including a hefty cigar ring and bracelet. He was particularly inspired by Victorian acrostic jewelry, which spells out hidden messages with the first letters of the gemstones used. He knew that he wanted the word to have an L and a D because he loves lapis stones and diamonds, and the word BOLD came into focus, along with blue sapphire and opal. “I feel like it defines not only my jewelry style but also my outlook on fashion and how I try to exist in the world,” Johnson says. “I always try to be bold.”