The stylish J Crew creative director, with her colourful personal life and famous fans, is behind the rise of one of America's most influential brands. But will the UK love her look when her first shop opens here?
It is Memorial Day weekend in America, the unofficial start of summer, and my friend and her teenage daughter are in the Hamptons, having scored an invitation to stay at the beachside mansion of one of New York's wealthiest families.
"What are you going to wear?" I asked my friend, before she set off, mindful of the grey and drizzly weather and the fact that grand-style entertaining isn't her usual milieu. "Oh, I'm not worried," she replied breezily. "We went to J Crew."
A mother and daughter both buying clothes from the same retailer could be rather odd, but J Crew is a revered American fashion brand that manages to cater to the tastes of different generations. The clothes are affordable and stylish and wildly popular in the US. Last week, British shoppers got the chance to buy a limited J Crew collection at a pop-up shop in London's King's Cross, before the American retailer's high-profile and much-flagged first British shop opens in London's Regent Street in November.
Overseeing this foray into Britain is J Crew's president and creative director, Jenna Lyons, widely credited with transforming the company from a fashion retailer that had lost its way into a cult brand. The company has more than 300 branches in the US, a growing presence abroad and revenue of more than $2.2bn. The 44-year-old is currently the most high-profile woman in consumer fashion. This year, she was ranked in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People list.
Lyons has been with the brand for her entire career, having joined as a junior designer in 1990. When former Gap CEO Mickey Drexler took the reins of the struggling brand a decade ago, Lyons said that both she and the company were burned out by a corporate strategy that had lost interest in creativity and was simply trying to hold on to the bottom line. "We were lost soldiers, working away, following orders," she remembers of the era when J Crew lost its mojo. "I was shell-shocked… fried."
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2013/may/26/profile-jenna-lyons-j-crew
No comments:
Post a Comment