The Story behind Jonah Jay

We had the pleasure to sit with Jilian Naiberg, founder and CEO of Jonah Jay. We wanted to learn more about the Toronto based label and the woman behind the faux leather collection that is meant to ‘amp up our daily life with style and a little extra attitude.’ 

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Jilian herself is a veteran in the fashion industry getting her start at Parsons School of Design in New York City. Before her education, she had no design experience and credits her Associate Design degree for her strong foundation. She explains that the two-year program really taught her the fundamentals of the industry to start up her career.

Apart from her schooling at Parsons, Jilian’s smarts and ambition lead her to internship roles in the various sectors of fashion. Over time through her work experience and education, she has become well versed in couture, ready to wear, styling, and marketing. It was important for Jilian to balance the design and business components as she knew it would be crucial in the future success of her career.  

After hearing about her life as a New Yorker and how much she loved the city, we wondered what brought her back to Toronto? It turns out staying in New York was never the plan. Jilian always knew that she would come home to start her career. She came back to Toronto to develop her business relationships and learn about the Canadian fashion industry. After completing several more internships and gaining job exposure, Jilian launched Jonah Jay in June of 2017.

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Jonah Jay is personal to Jilian as the brand is directly modeled after herself and her lifestyle. The name “Jonah” comes from Jilian’s Hebrew name, Yonah. She believed it was a less obvious way of naming her brand after herself. She felt the name needed a second part, so she played around with different sounds and syllables. She fixated on Jay. 

Jilian designs for people between the ages of 25-60, but her target demographic is not easily definable. Her clientele is from all walks of life but share the same affinity for a clean, classic look, and appreciate seamlessly transferable pieces that can go from day to night.  We couldn’t agree more, with the beautiful timeless pieces in her collection they are easy to dress up or down. 

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The ‘leather’ garments themselves are made of 100% polyurethane, produced locally in both Newmarket and Toronto. The main goal for Jilian was to use vegan materials. She is constantly researching for different textile technology and says, “as those things become more affordable and become a good option I will definitely look into being even more sustainable but I think right now that this is the best option for me.” 

With such a unique and socially responsible business model, we wondered whether it was bigger corporations or like-minded designers who she saw as direct competition? With price points between $98 – 232 CND would it be leather consumers looking for lower price points or vegan consumers wanting the “leather” look? 

Jilian explains that it is a little bit of both. The price point of genuine leather goods are significantly higher than faux leather, there is no comparison in the cost of the materials used. She does, however, need to compensate with her own price points for using a local manufacturer, where employees are paid fair wages and production batches are small. Though this increases the cost of her pieces, it also increases the quality and we think it is worth every penny!

When Jonah Jay launched there weren’t that many options for faux leather clothing and now it has become more mainstream. We think this is great, but for Jilian, the competition has increased. However, she isn’t concerned as she feels that by putting in hard work to prove herself and with some time her brand will become more established and well known. 

Aside from the humane choice to wear vegan leather, we wondered what other challenges Jonah Jay faces in convincing consumers to wear vegan over genuine leather? Jilian explains to us that this was never a huge problem for her. In today’s society, more people are aware of social and ethical issues. She believes that when you have a quality product and a great price point that it isn’t a difficult decision to choose vegan leather over genuine leather.  There is also an added benefit to her pieces as they are easy to maintain and clean.

“The best way for me to convince them is to have them feel it, if I can get it in someone’s hand then there’s no question that people are happy with the quality, that’s at least what the feedback has been so far.”

Jilian Naiberg

Jonah Jay is in the process of launching her Fall 2019 collection. We love the versatility of her current collection and we asked what we can expect from her new collection?

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“For the fall I’m pretty excited. The Mikki blazer has been my best seller since day one. I have gone through so many runs of production on it. So my fall collection is almost completely based on blazers and jackets. It’s going to be a small capsule collection of blazers and jackets.”  

Jilian Naiberg

Jilian is looking into extending her line with colour, neutral colours and create more options for office and evening wear. She intends on launching the collection sometime in August or September. 

We thank Jilian for taking the time to sit down with us and we cannot wait to see what is in store for the future of Jonah Jay! 

Psst… Shop Jonah Jay here.

All the looks were modeled by Teska Manning.

Written by: Bronwyn Vrabel

-YR