What kind of style is j crew

Crew have fallen for two years. The company is two billion dollars in debt, putting it in danger of bankruptcy. A few months ago, J. Crew shuttered its bridal business; earlier this month, Jenna Lyons, its president and creative director, announced that she would be stepping down; and, last week, J.

Crew laid off a hundred and fifty employees and eliminated a hundred open positions. Frank Muytjens, its head of menswear, is also leaving. In an attempt to boost revenue, the company has started selling its clothes through Nordstrom.

What happened? Part of the answer has to do with design. In the mid-aughts, J. Today, the sensible version of the Jenna Lyons uniform—nerdy glasses, nice blazer, lived-in jeans, heels or sneakers—is omnipresent. Over time, however, J. As one J. There were quality-control problems, too, and missteps with fit. And yet J. Crew has also faced fundamental problems beyond its control. The Limited filed for Chapter 11 in January, and has closed all of its stores.

The short answer is the Internet. Millennials tend to spend money on gadgets, rather than clothes, and rarely go to the mall; savvier customers have learned to wait for coupon codes. Sometimes, that spice comes from aesthetic cues, like an offbeat graphic woven into cable knit or a color-blocked loafer styled with track pants.

Other times, it can be attributed to something more intangible that builds brand loyalty. Babenzien's Noah, which he first introduced in , has incubated a community around both pillars.

Aesthetically, it animates prep's drowsier staples with youthful elements more regularly acknowledged across fringe categories, like skatewear, surfwear and punk fashion. But it's also done so without losing its way ethically. As GQ pointed out in a recent profile , Noah gives one percent of its annual sales to grassroots environmental groups and releases collaborations to support social causes throughout the year.

The brand itself will admit it's not perfect. They know the brand stands for something — anything — and that's what matters when building a business for the TikTok generation. The real question is: Can Babenzien plant those magic beans into a mall brand? I'm a little bit skeptical that he'll be able to build that culture on the same scale at J. This is not to say that companies of J. Just look at Patagonia , the star student. In fact, J. Crew was once the greatest thing a brand could be, commercially speaking: "J.

That was high-quality basics, and that's what their market should be," says Clemente, the historian and curator. The audience J. Crew is trying to get is going to pay an extra 50 bucks for good-quality cashmere. Devotees of the J. Crew catalog era know that to be true — Clemente certainly does.

But she found the brand faltering in the early- to mid-aughts, two whole decades before it found itself in bankruptcy proceedings.

She references J. Crew's bridal line, which launched in as a wallet-conscious, taffeta-free alternative to multi-thousand-dollar wedding gowns and offensive bridesmaid attire; the range was a hit, but it shuttered in for reasons The New York Times speculated "came down to numbers. Crew's fatal flaw was not launching bridal, however. It wasn't Jenna Lyons' departure, either. And it certainly wasn't launching the sub-brands it quickly scrapped, like Playa and Nevereven.

Instead, it was an age-old tale of overextension. Or am I able to get a great sweater set from you that I can pass on to my kid? Crew needs to get back to the core of what it is, and that is a prep brand," says marketing professional Springer.

It's just about how you showcase it. For Springer, this is as much about the clothes themselves as it is about how they're sold — and who's buying them: "I would hope J.

Crew takes a moment to lean into what the world looks like. I think what someone like Jenna Lyons did well is she diversified the brand. You saw a lot more models of color during her era in both women's and men's collections. That opened up the conversation for the brand to be cool because Black people are pop culture.

If we're not wearing it, then no one's going to wear it. Crew turnaround isn't an impossible task. Wadle, J. Crew Group's new CEO, has a years-long track record of scaling Madewell into the company's crown jewel. She's also realistic about where the brand can go from here, which may entail going back to where it started: tousled pullovers you can wear at a Nantucket bonfire or on a crowded subway car while running errands.

Crew love story," Wadle told Fortune in a June interview, "but more and more people, I think, have had a J. Galleries Lists J. Crew Style Guide. Share This Story. Sign up for Complex notifications for breaking news and stories.