Human, Creative Director and Styling: Juka | Guadalajara, Mexico

Hat: LeatherGear @myleathergear | Necklace: Hoemo World @hoemo.worldLeather jacket: AYCH | Belt: ERRESIE7E @ERRESIE7E | Leather pants: Diesel @diesel | Gloves: Manuel Díaz @manueldiazbrand

For Juka, image was never only about clothes. It was always about recognition. When he first came out, the urgency was external. “I wanted everyone to know I was gay,” he says. Dressing became a way of announcing the self before language had to do the work. It was visibility as instinct - direct, loud, and necessary.

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But that first relationship to image was also built around resistance. Not resistance to the outside world, but to his own body. The beard, the physical changes, the signs of masculinity that arrived naturally, all felt at first like things to manage or avoid. They did not fit the version of queerness he understood himself through at the time. Then his references shifted. Through a friend, he discovered Tom of Finland, and something aligned. “It was like a click,” he says. “I thought, of course, this does connect with me.”

That recognition did not lead to imitation. It led to translation. Not Tom of Finland, but Juka from Mexico. The difference matters. Tom’s world carries a specific visual mythology: sailors, cowboys, policemen, hyper-masculine bodies drawn with erotic certainty. Juka takes those codes and moves them through his own context, his own body, his own eye. “I tropicalized it and took it to more Mexican codes…” he explains, “something that felt truly mine.”

The result is not a copy. It is a re-routing. The cowboy becomes more mexa. The sailor shifts when placed beside a cowboy boot. The archetype remains visible, but it no longer belongs to the same geography. It has been pulled south, restyled, exaggerated, and made personal. What begins as reference becomes character.

Hat: REGIA | Necklace: VINTAGE | Tanktop: Rinbros @rinbros_mx | Belt: REGIA | Jeans: Rolando Bracho @rolandobrachoficial | Boots: LLuxxe Mx @luxxemx

Hat: REGIA | Earrings: ERRESIE7E @ERRESIE7E | Necklace: EME DE A para Aldo EK @eme_de_a @__ekhair__ | Bracelet: UNOde50 @unode50

That idea of character sits at the center of Juka’s work. As a stylist, he is not interested in simply dressing someone. He is interested in constructing an image that can be understood, remembered, and held. “What interests me most is building characters” he says. That impulse began early. As a child, he wanted to design the Spice Girls’ boots. When his mother told him fashion was not a career for men, the statement passed through him without consequence. He kept drawing shoes.

Later, styling gave him something design could not. A clothing brand required consistency, one universe repeated long enough to become legible. Styling offered multiplicity. One day, a bride. Another, a singer. Another, a sneaker campaign. It allowed him to move between worlds without belonging permanently to only one. That freedom became the method.

“I wanted everyone to know I was gay.”

With himself, the process is sharper. His current image feels almost like an illustration made flesh: moustache, muscle, posture, costume, masculinity pushed until it becomes readable as a symbol. But that construction is not superficial. “Juka is a character, but not from something false…” he says, “it is a conscious version of me”. The distinction is important. Performance does not cancel truth. It concentrates it.

There is a camp precision in the way he handles masculinity. The cowboy, the sailor, the policeman, the cartoon macho - all appear as familiar codes, but none of them are left untouched. He amplifies them until masculinity becomes both object and costume, both desire and joke, both fantasy and strategy. “I like building a very defined image,” he says, “almost like a drawing or a caricature of what I am.” In that exaggeration, the image becomes easier to read, but not simpler.

“It was like a click. I thought, of course, this does connect with me.”

That same approach shapes the way he works with others. Juka’s styling has entered spaces of Mexican pop culture and LGBTQIA+ visibility, including the historic Playboy México cover of Victoria Volkova as the magazine’s first trans woman cover star. For him, the responsibility is not only aesthetic. “There is a connection that is not just about image, but also about identity,” he says. Especially with trans clients, the task is not to impose a fantasy, but to help construct a version of the self that feels dignified, strong, and real.

Hat: LeatherGear @myleathergearGloves: Manuel Díaz @manueldiazbrand | Harness: ANOESES @anoeses.co | Belt: ERRESIE7E @ERRESIE7E | Pants: RUFSKIN @RUFSKIN

Hat: LeatherGear @myleathergear | Sunglasses: Gucci @gucci | Dick necklace: Hoemo World @hoemo.world | Gloves: Manuel Díaz @manueldiazbrand

Hat: LeatherGear @myleathergear | Necklace: Hoemo World @hoemo.world | Leather jacket: AYCH | Belt: REGIA | Leather pants: Diesel @diesel | Boots: Mojika

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This is where Juka’s work becomes more than styling. It becomes accompaniment. Image is not treated as surface, but as a negotiation between desire and recognition. To dress someone is to help make them legible on their own terms.

His own relationship to erotic visibility has also shifted. During the pandemic, he explored OnlyFans with a partner, first through curiosity, then as a temporary extension of self-image. He does not reject that period. He simply no longer needs it. When styling returned to the center of his life, that chapter became something he could release without shame.

“Juka is a character, but not from something false. It is a conscious version of me.”

What remains is a more precise form of authorship. Juka is not trying to disappear behind references, nor to reproduce a fantasy built elsewhere. He is building a universe where masculinity can be Mexican, camp, erotic, strategic, and self-aware. A universe where the body is not resisted, but used. Where exaggeration becomes clarity. Where the character is not a mask, but a tool for becoming more visible.

“From the title, it is already clear,” he says. “It is not Tom of Finland, it is Juka from Mexico.” That sentence is not a rejection of influence. It is a claim of authorship. A way of saying that the archive can be touched, translated, contaminated, and returned with a different accent.

Juka from Mexico is not an answer. It is a direction. A universe still being built, one character at a time.

Hat: Manuel Díaz @manueldiazbrand | Necklace: Jean Paul Gaultier @jeanpaulgaultier | Tanktop: Effenberger Couture @effenberger_couture | Pants: Infante @infante.ift

Credits

Story: Tom Pipol Escobar @tompipol

Human, Creative Director and Styling: Juka @jukajukajuka @jukafashionstylist

Photo: Ivan Aguirre @ivanaguirrefotografo

Not Tom of Finland but Juka from Mexico

Human, Creative Director and Styling: Juka | Guadalajara, Mexico

“I wanted everyone to know I was gay.”

“It was like a click. I thought, of course, this does connect with me.”

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“Juka is a character, but not from something false. It is a conscious version of me.”

Credits

ICONIQA: Horror couture on October 31

The Art of Unapologetic Self-Expression

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