I found this great article in Vogue from 2006 where the author interview Jenna Lyons, the head designer at J.Crew. It offers great insight as to why the clothes at J.Crew work for so many different kinds of people.  They have a great head designer!

Update: Please click here to see the post, “A Day In The Life Of Jenna Lyons & Tracy Gardner” for an interview with Jenna Lyons, which aired December 2008.

Measure of success; As J.Crew’s fashion visionary, Jenna Lyons has dressed millions of American women by appreciating the value of proportions
by Mark Holgate

Early in December, while New York is still deep in a post-Thanksgiving daze, the J.Crew design team is feverishly thinking about the future. It is their big day to unveil their vision of fall 2006 to J.Crew’s Mr. Big, Millard “Mickey” Drexler. “Jenna, Jenna, where are you?” hollers Drexler. Out of the melee of publicists, buyers, marketing executives, and one guy whose job it is to capture all this on a camcorder steps Jenna Lyons, senior vice president of women’s design, who at six feet is way taller than just about everyone else in the room. She quickly goes through the collection’s key pieces-ruffled striped shirts, skinny gilt-button cardigans, nipped-waist polka-dot dresses-before the assembled multitude squeezes into a corridor that Drexler dubs “a trip down Wedding Lane.” On show are the latest versions of the bridal looks that Lyons has helped turn into one of J.Crew’s more lucrative successes of recent times. Drexler leaps onto a display stand and grapples with a mannequin, lifting up a pale-pink cashmere shell to get a better look at the proportions of a floor-length taffeta skirt, the waistband of which is near level with his chest. “Hey, Jenna!” he shouts out, simultaneously playing to the crowd and affectionately teasing Lyons. “This is where the waist sits? Well, I suppose that’s where your waist sits!”

When Jenna Lyons declares that “the DNA of J.Crew is in me,” you believe her. It is undoubtedly something to do with the way she looks. She’s tawny and athletic, with the kind of architecturally planed and angled beauty that recalls the era of models Tatjana Patitz and Cordula Reyer. It’s also the way she wears the label effortlessly, while always bringing something of her own to it. For today’s unveiling, Lyons, 37, is in a cream-and-brown horse-bit-print silk shirtdress stamped sample on the back (to her surprise it fit, so she thought, Why not?) and a pair of tan riding boots. The ensemble would be very collegiate, very classically J.Crew, were it not for those personal touches-a tangle of twisted necklaces; a hip, stacked heel on an otherwise straightforward boot.

But her fifteen-year career at J.Crew is about more than her ability to look the part. In the perilously risky, high-stakes world of mass-brand fashion, she has the ability to intuit where America’s ever-shifting fashion culture is going next and what women will want from it.

“Jenna really engages with matters of style at a cultural level, with how we live today,” says Debra Singer, director of the Kitchen Gallery, who met her through Lyons’s husband, artist Vincent Mazeau. “It’s one thing to observe a trend and quite another to communicate that to people.” Gayle Spannaus, who has worked with Lyons for twelve years, says, “She’s really the litmus test of what works for J.Crew. Her style is unique. It’s not Ralph Lauren or Abercrombie & Fitch, it’s totally her-feminine and modern and uncomplicated.” Drexler sensed those exact qualities when he promoted Lyons to her current role: “It’s like the difference between good music and bad music-you just can tell.”

Lyons has worked hard to bring J.Crew to its current status-fashion-forward but not so out there that it’s permanently stuck on fast-forward. “I know when we’ve made a wrong turn,” she says. “I mean, there was a time when we did one-shouldered tops! For J.Crew! I get it now that it doesn’t matter if asymmetry is the biggest trend in the world-it doesn’t belong here.” Despite a stint at Donna Karan when she first graduated from Parsons School of Design in 1990, she has no interest in being drawn into the mega-drama designer sphere. At J.Crew, Drexler has given Lyons and her team creative autonomy, and the chance to use Shameeza beading and Loro Piana cashmeres and Ratti silks, names usually associated with those who show their latest creations during the Paris haute couture, not in catalogs destined to be crammed into mailboxes across America. “I learned early on that what I wanted to do was something that was approachable and real and that a lot of people could afford,” says Lyons. “Exclusion is not interesting to me.”

One of the peculiar foibles of fashion is that many of those accorded insider status have often spent some deeply influential part of their life as an outsider looking in. Marc Jacobs experienced it. Alber Elbaz experienced it. And so, too, did Jenna Lyons, who struggled to come to terms with her height, which she says used to “make me feel like such an outcast.”

Negotiating her emotions about her stature explains why she has proved to be so good at satisfying the demands of her role at J.Crew; she has to empathize with a multitude of different body types. In her typically modest manner, she admits she hasn’t always got it right. “When I started, our coats were too long,” she recalls, “our pants were too long-they had the inseam I take, which is a 36.” Now J.Crew offers trousers in various leg lengths, and there are shirts for women who are bustier, as well as narrower versions for those, says Lyons, “who, like me, don’t have so much going on there; I’ve always had the height, but not that.”

Lyons, who was born in Boston and moved to Rancho Palos Verdes in California when she was four, reached the six-foot mark early in life: at age twelve. She comes from a lofty family-her father is six feet seven, her mother five feet ten, her various siblings and half-siblings are all around six feet-and yet. . . . “I always felt like a giant,” Lyons says. “My dad would say, ‘One day you’ll love it, you’ll be so proud’-and all I thought was, You’re a guy; what do you know!?” There were various humiliations to be endured, including being the first in line during the July 4 parades not only because she was the tallest but because, says Lyons, “my mother was a piano teacher, and I actually had some rhythm.” Toughest by far, though, was reaching adolescence and realizing that she was exempt, on height grounds, from joining the clique of girls who could pull off the sloppily big sweatshirt and supershort skirt combo, which on her was clumsy, not cool. “I had a boyfriend who asked me,” says Lyons, ” ‘Why can’t you look like all the other girls?’ ”

She tells me this over lunch on a sunny January Saturday in one of her West Chelsea neighborhood restaurants, Cookshop, which she and Mazeau frequent. That morning she’d seen her trainer, Ray Scalvino, who is helping with what she calls her “thutt” problem: “He’s trying to separate my thighs from my butt,” she says, laughing. Lyons likes to eat, and she and Scalvino have worked out the terms of their relationship: As long as her weight stays the same, he has accepted that his client will continue to drink Monsordo Ceretto and indulge in Ciao Bella espresso gelato, and occasionally savor some of the ripe, odorous Reblochon cheese she loves so much. Yet there are other reasons Lyons is committed to her trainer. It is a way for her to deal with the body-image issues that stem from a rare and serious genetic disorder, incontinentia pigmenti, which means, among other things, that her skin is patchy. “It was too easy to fall back on looking good in clothes because I was tall,” she says. “I wanted to feel better about my body without them. It will never look perfect, but I’d like there to be a shape under my clothes.”

The acceptance of the possibilities that her height, and fashion, offered to her came in the form of Manhattan, Parsons, and Toronto’s Guild Electric company, in that order. She arrived in New York to study, and her roommate, Amy Lengyel, whose father ran said company, offered to let her borrow an Azzedine Alaia dress. Until that point, Lyons had had the dysmorphia that many tall yet slim women experience, buying a size 14 because only that would be long enough to fit.

“I had always just thought I was this big lump of a girl,” says Lyons, who actually takes a 6, “and that Alaia dress was the first time I had ever worn something close to my body, and I was staggered, just staggered, by the reaction.” Lyons observed something else about New York, though: Regardless of height, women wore heels. “Suddenly, I saw that if I wanted to wear six-inch stilettos, then people would think that was cool and interesting, that it was OK to look different, to accentuate what’s positive. I remember thinking, Moving to New York was the best thing that could have happened to me, and I am never going home.”

New York has become home to Lyons so much that David Maupin, co-owner of the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Manhattan, says that “if you had to caricature a New York fashion person, it would be a drawing of Jenna. She’s someone who touches every part of contemporary culture.” With her current living situation, Lyons can’t escape culture. She and Mazeau are temporarily decamped at his studio while waiting for their two-year Park Slope brownstone renovation to wrap up, and are sharing the limited space with Mazeau’s artist colleagues Paul Myoda, Julian LaVerdiere, and Aida Ruilova, who is currently preparing a short film based on Jean Rollin’s French vampire erotica movies of the 1960s (it will be shown at the fourth Berlin Biennale this spring). It would be surprising to find a major player at J.Crew living in this anything-but-bourgeois environment, if that player weren’t Lyons. “The thing with Jenna,” says Singer, “is that she is immersed in the art world, the design world, not just the fashion scene. It’s why she is able to draw on all sorts of wonderfully arcane references.”

The communal living is coming to an end, though: Lyons and Mazeau will move to Brooklyn this month, all being well. She has worked hard to come up with a space that will be mentally and physically conducive, which means tall-friendly, as Mazeau is also six feet. There has been the matter of raising the bathroom units five inches higher so she doesn’t have to stoop to clean her teeth; the sourcing of higher toilets, which are forties Deco, and a vintage seven-foot claw tub, from DEA Bathroom Machineries in Murphys, California. Lyons hasn’t quite decided on the color of the George Sherlock sofa she wants, which will replace the Zanotta couch that was “so low I couldn’t get out of it.”

The move will also mean that Lyons can have her beloved collection of clothes back under one roof, as they are currently housed at Mazeau’s studio as well as at three units at Manhattan Mini Storage. En masse, it will be quite a treasure trove: a J.Crew fur-lined trench (“My favorite thing ever”); a Chanel tweed jacket (fastenings lowered to match her waist); a Balenciaga peacoat from one of Ghesquiere’s earliest collections (“See? The labels were still written by hand”); a plunging, floor-length Etro dress (“I can do dramatic sexy; not cute sexy”); the 38-inseam Okura jeans (sourced in Japan, of all places); heels in size 81/2 from Gucci, Louboutin, Proenza Schouler (“Stores always assume that I’m an 11. My dad has small feet too; it’s a hereditary thing”); the Chloe that she snapped up on eBay (the lacy, ruffly tops will go with her-the fringed leather jacket that saw her design team play Cher’s “Half Breed” at her last birthday party will not); and her ever-growing collection of Derek Lam. The Lyons-Lam connection goes way back to Parsons. “She’s moved from the very casual Californian thing to this very polished, sophisticated look,” Lam says. “I bumped into Jenna at the Air France lounge in Paris a few years ago, and she had all these Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent shopping bags. Sometimes, with fashion people, you never quite know why they’re buying the clothes, but with Jenna, you just know she’s going to love wearing them.”

Lam’s fall 2006 show is, in fact, the backdrop for my final meeting with Jenna. She’s thrilled to be there (“It’s not like I get asked to a lot of fashion shows”) and also more than happy to provide a running commentary on what she will-and what she won’t-be ordering next season. She gives a nod to a camel coat with huge fur cuffs (“Someone needs to see me running down the street in that”), a smoke-gray ruffled shirt (“So chic”), a green-and-black fitted dress (“It will mean more crunches and sit-ups”). She stops for a moment, rapt in the models flitting by on the runway. A vivid emerald trench appears. There’s a sharp intake of breath, and then she dissolves into laughter as she renders a mental image of herself wearing it. “I don’t think the world’s ready for all six feet of me in that.”

The following excerpts are from InStyle’s May 2008 interview with Jenna Lyons.

I have been eyeing up the the Metallic Giraffe Day Coat ever since its arrival onto the website.  The coat is available online only so I can not try it on in the stores.

Because it is only August, I can not justify ordering it yet, even with the free shipping code.  For now, I can only admire it on the website through the pictures they have posted.

$425.00, Item 96171

So what do you think of the coat?  Do you love it enough to purchase at the store or would you just leave it on the website?

The media coverage of J.Crew’s apology has been overwhelming.  Check it out below.

On Women’s Wear Daily: Drexler Apologizes for J. Crew Web Site Glitches by David Moin

On The Washington Post: J.Crew says sorry by Ylan Mui

On Internet Retailer: J.Crew devotes its home page to apologizing for web site glitches

On The Boston Globe: Clothing seller apologizes for problem-plagued order system by Bloomberg News

The last article is posted below.  I just wonder if the “inconvenience is so unacceptable,” why they don’t consider taking the site down while they fix the problems?  There’s no sense in angering customers when they place orders for items they will not receive.

NEW YORK – J.Crew Group Inc., the clothing retailer run by former Gap Inc. chief executive Millard Drexler, has apologized to customers, asking shoppers to excuse problems with Internet and phone orders in the past few weeks.

“We know we’ve let you down,” Drexler and president Tracy Gardner said in the apology, sent to customers by e-mail yesterday and posted on the company’s Internet site. J.Crew is making “enhancements” to its site and call center and “unfortunately, encountered some bumps along the way,” they wrote.

“We’ve made some mistakes (too many in our mind),” the executives wrote. “Please bear with us as we work through these issues.”

The retailer’s website wasn’t accessible as of 1:47 p.m. and showed a “Be back soon” note. As of 2:30 p.m., the site worked and had the apology note on the home page.

On Wall Street, J.Crew, a men’s and women’s clothing retailer known for khaki shorts, chinos, and cashmere sweaters, fell $1.11, or 3.7 percent, to $28.98. The stock has dropped 40 percent this year through yesterday.

In the first quarter, Internet and catalog sales made up 30 percent, or $100.9 million, of New York-based J.Crew’s total revenue.

A recent upgrade to search and zoom functions online has caused some issues when shoppers place orders, J.Crew spokeswoman Margot Fooshee said in an e-mail, without elaborating.

“In our eyes, any inconvenience to our customers is unacceptable,” she said.

As retailers start gearing up for the fall and holiday seasons, it could be a good idea to buy their stock while they are selling low.  The fall and winter seasons are usually when retailers do their best causing the stock price to rise.  After reading this article, I might consider purchasing some J.Crew stock.  What do you think?

J.Crew: A Smart Outfit? by Alyce Lomax

The current economic climate in the U.S. is a sore spot for retailers, forcing many to make tough business decisions. In the face of this challenge, J. Crew (NYSE: JCG) seems set on some serious strategizing this year.

J. Crew has it made?
According to The Associated Press, J. Crew CFO Jim Scully spoke about the company’s nascent Madewell concept at the Wachovia Nantucket Equity Conference. The retailer will reach a “‘go or no go’ decision” on Madewell in the second half of this year, and Scully vowed that the concept won’t lose $15 million a year going forward. (That’s the amount J. Crew will lose in fiscal 2008 as it invests in Madewell stores and its new e-commerce site.) If it’s a “go,” Scully said, a ramp-up of Madewell wouldn’t occur until 2010, given real estate issues.

Madewell was launched in 2006, and it’s thus far had a conservative rollout, remaining firmly in R&D territory. According to last quarter’s J. Crew conference call, it caters to hip younger women, although some teens shop there, too.

There were eight total Madewell stores last quarter, and J. Crew plans two new ones in 2008. Madewell offers lower price points than its J. Crew concept, which might spell trouble for companies like Gap (NYSE: GPS), Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF), and American Eagle Outfitters (NYSE: AEO) if J. Crew pursues an expansion. The new e-commerce site could theoretically threaten rivals, too, since its reach extends beyond a mere geographical footprint.

Some rivals may hope Madewell’s growth will be a “no go,” but I doubt they’ll be so lucky. After all, last quarter J. Crew said it was pleased with the concept’s performance. Management also mentioned that it’s particularly happy with Madewell’s performance in the $100 jeans business, even though that hardly seems like an ideal pursuit at present.

In other news, J. Crew’s expanding its yoga apparel — possibly bad news for lululemon athletica (Nasdaq: LULU), prAna (which Liz Claiborne (NYSE: LIZ) decided to sell several months ago), and VF’s (NYSE: VFC) Lucy — and testing jewelry.

Lookin’ good, J. Crew
When it first went public, I thought J. Crew stock was too pricey for my blood. However, it dropped 20% on the day it reported first-quarter earnings, and it’s fallen 33% over the last 12 months. Perhaps J. Crew stores’ limitation to the currently moribund U.S. market, at a time when international exposure is most retailers’ sole bright spot, may explain the company’s sagging shares.

Worse yet, even with its stock’s drubbing, J. Crew’s still trading at 20 times earnings. Compared to the price-to-earnings ratios of retail stocks like Gap and American Eagle, investors may find that a reason to balk.

Then again, J. Crew is a high-quality retailer, and investors should not underestimate its managers’ potential to unleash innovations. After all, former Gap wunderkind Millard “Mickey” Drexler, renowned for his fashion savvy, is currently at the helm, and it’s entirely possible he’s learned his lesson after overseeing Gap’s ill-fated over expansion back in the ’90s.

Hardcore value investors may scoff that J. Crew remains too pricey, but at the very least, I suspect it’s a good time to put this growth-oriented retail stock on your Foolish watch list.

This video gives great insight into the designing at J.Crew.  The fit model used is a healthy looking woman, unlike many models in the industry.  She’s in a great position.  She gets to speak to the design team directly about the fit, style and shape of the different items she is fitted for.  I can only wish they would hear my concerns from time to time.

Retailers advance, J.Crew gets upgrade by Matt Andrewjczak

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Retail stocks rose early Monday, with an analyst upgrade lifting shares of clothing retailer J Crew Group Inc.

Citigroup dropped its sell rating on J Crew (JCG):

JCG 32.15, +1.77, +5.8%) , upgrading the company to hold. In a research note, analyst Kimberly Greenberger said J Crew’s improving sales and conservative profit forecast for the second quarter could lead to “slight” earnings upside.

J.Crew, which faced slowing sales in April and May, has pegged earnings between 31 cents and 33 cents a share. Its stock rose 1.7% to $32.65 in early trading. The shares are down 32% so far this year, compared with a 13% decline for the S&P Retail Index.

This interview with Mickey Drexler gives great insight into the inner workings of J.Crew.

I visited my local J.Crew store today and tried on the Penelope Mary Janes.  They are so super cute.  The shoes very just like the the Leather Mary Janes from last fall and the Distressed metallic-leather Mary Janes from last winter.

$235.00, Item 94670, Fall 2008

$198.00, Item 8617, Fall 2007

$198.00, Item 86176, Winter 2007

So what do you think?  Do you love the new Mary Janes?  Or would you just leave them at the store?

*All photos are courtesy of Jcrew.com.

Friendship Bracelets Not Just For Kids, by Amy Scattergood.

They’re an artifact of summer camps and sleepovers — bands of brightly colored and knotted threads that encircle wrists or ankles, softened by sunlight and ocean swims, durable as best friends and childhood.

Now friendship bracelets have grown-up panache too.

Jewelry designer Scosha Woolridge is weaving natural-colored linen with diamonds and rubies and anchoring the ends with 18-karat gold buttons. This fall, J.Crew is featuring striped friendship bracelets — inspired by ’30s-era club ties — in its men’s collection, each hand-made in London with hand-dyed linen and secured with an elegant metal buckle.

Of course, this is friendship bought and paid for: The J. Crew bracelet will be $150 (at jcrew.com), and Wooldridge’s pieces start at $270 (scoshanyc.com). But in the true spirit of friendship, Woolridge showed us how to make a bracelet.

With a few skeins of embroidery floss and a pretty button or coin, you can knot your own stylish band — for less than $5. Preppy and nautical or bling-studded and chic, these are hardly the bracelets you wore in fourth grade. But they’re still woven with the same happy nostalgia.

Woolridge, an Australian who lives in New York, started making the bracelets while traveling in Brazil, where she gave them to newfound friends. Her bracelets aren’t much different from the ones you made as a kid, though she adds a button or a buckle, so that you can actually take them off. The original conceit was that you tied the ends together and wore the bracelet until it — or your friendship — disintegrated.

“I like to call them travel bracelets, because they feel closely connected to the beauty of traveling,” she says. “We travel every day of our lives.”

The first step: Take a long double length of embroidery floss, loop it (the loop forms the buttonhole) and tape the loop down on a work area. Then tie six more double lengths to the loop (this makes a nice thick bracelet) and start knotting.

In about two hours (about the duration of a movie or a series of campfire stories), your bracelet will be done. Stop when it’s the circumference of your wrist or ankle. Tie a few extra knots to even up the bottom, and anchor a button with the loose strings.

You can get fancy and add extra buttons or coins (try a vintage leather or Scandinavian metal button, an antique ring or charm, an old earring, even a Chinese coin with a hole in the middle).

You can keep going (use longer threads) to form a double bracelet.

Or you can just tie off the ends for a pretty tassel and present your friend with the stunning results.

It’s the perfect accessory for a grown-up camping trip with your new BFF.

Will you be purchasing the friendship bracelet?  I love the idea.  It’s just such a shame that none of the bracelets at J.Crew fit my 5-inch wrist.

Guess Goes Upmarket, by John Clarke Jr.

Following a trend set by J Crew and Banana Republic, Guess is slipping into the high-end retail market with its new Guess by Marciano Black Label for men. What can you expect? Well, for one thing, higher prices — the line will be 30% to 40% higher than the brand’s regular men’s togs. The dressier line will launch in September and include slim-fitting runway-inspired tailored clothing, blazers, vests, and woven dress shirts, shoes, cufflinks, and ties. They’ll even have tie clips. TIE CLIPS!

It seems many retailers are heading in this direction.  The success of the J.Crew Collection has shown that shoppers, myself included, are willing to pay for those quality, limited item pieces.