His look? Totally rad

FASHION designer Johnson Hartig's dresser is a tableau fit for an FBI profiler. The top of his antique highboy sports an incense holder rimmed with tiny skulls, a padlock and a Victorian glass case containing a taxidermy chipmunk. Nearby, on a Taschen book catalog, lie a black twill bow tie, a packet of Listerine breath strips and a pair of steel handcuffs. Hmmm.

Suave and provocative, this casual collision of objects is pure Hartig. As the Los Angeles-based half of the red-hot clothing line Libertine, he brings 19th century English eccentricity and 21st century California skater style to the label's apparel.

In just six years, Hartig and design partner Cindy Greene have enchanted Vogue grande dame Anna Wintour, "It" girl Scarlett Johansson and British artist Damien Hirst with deconstructed tailoring, Old World silk-screen prints and Swarovski spider webs and skulls. Chanel's Karl Lagerfeld bought much of Libertine's crystal-embellished spring 2006 collection for himself.

On Sunday, Libertine launches its first mass-market women's collection at Target stores. With clothes that cost under $40, about one-tenth of Libertine's one-of-a-kind creations, the new mass-market line dials down Goth glamour in favor of Edwardian dandyism and preppy punk.

In much the same way, Hartig's recently renovated 1920s home in the Hancock Park area has become an exuberant collage of places, periods, preoccupations and prices. There are family hand-me-downs, such as an English Regency chest flanked by a pair of silvery Italian grotto chairs with seashell legs and dolphin arms. Other acquisitions include a midcentury chair by Mies van der Rohe, antique wood-spindle lollipop seats, and side tables scored for chump change at an L.A. estate sale.

"I don't care where things come from or how much they cost," Hartig says, "as long as they are chic and fit in."

The designer, who favors T-shirts and the word "rad," feels perfectly at home flopping onto a pricey whiteslip-covered sofa by Ralph Lauren and propping his bare feet up on an inexpensive white Parsons table from West Elm.

Hartig thrives on juxtaposition, be it of cost, style, material or era. He tosses a Union Jack pillow on a French Louis-style sofa, places a crystal candelabra on an oversized Lucite table and perches cute vinyl Japanese toys near a Hirst sculpture of a dagger piercing a sheep's heart.

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