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Light Up the Night In a Sea(grass) of Blue A curated collection of luxury dinnerware Check out ourPinterest page!25% off select design objects. It's refreshing to learn that Jenna Lyons, creative force behind J.Crew, isn't immune to "bad clothes" days or impulse buys. "On my last trip to London I went to Dover Street Market and saw this Comme des Garçons trench coat, and I was just like: WOW! I was desperate to shop, and when I walked in I was feeling pretty good, and I thought… I'm gonna buy this thing! I put it on this morning and I said to myself: 'Oh Jenna, what were you thinking?'" It's impossible not to like Lyons, the 43-year-old president and executive creative director of J Crew, the woman who has turned around perception – and profits – of the once-staid American brand. She stands at more than 6ft tall and when we meet is dressed in faded jeans and a J.Crew printed blouse. She's warm, funny and self-deprecating, all qualities that belie her fancy title.
But her 12th-floor Manhattan office is an immediate giveaway of her success, with its large windows, huge Eero Saarinen oval marble meeting table and vintage Eames chairs. "Wait until you see my new office!" she gushes. "I'm moving up to the 15th floor next month – higher ceilings, bigger windows – and the views are incredible!" J Crew is also going places. The brand is enjoying a programme of global expansion. Furthermore, executives are already on the hunt for a store in London. It's Lyons who has reinvented the label into a powerhouse of (affordable) cool that everyone, from a housewife in Hampshire to America's first lady, can buy into. Yes, Michelle Obama, who inadvertently had a lot to do with its reinvigoration, actually buys J Crew – and for the record, without a discount. What a coup, too, that this former catalogue-only company which once sold preppy casuals now has its own slot on the official show calendar of New York Fashion Week. This season paisley-print midi skirts paired with Breton-stripe tees, languid sequin skirts with slouchy featherweight cashmere (knitted in the finest Italian yarn – J Crew's cashmere is a constant top seller and available all year round), sash-belted palazzo pants with colour-blocked sweaters, and other genius surprise pairings of red with pink, shine with chambray, nautical with leopard, were all in her repertoire.
Offbeat, shouldn't-work-but-do clashes are Lyons through and through, and it's her own irreverent style that shapes J Crew's collections. One of the models even looks like her, styled up with her signature spectacles. In addition to a now-flourishing menswear business (if you haven't checked out the Ludlow suit, do. It's made with Loro Piana wool and, priced from £540, it's a steal), there's Crewcuts for kids (Barack Obama's daughters Malia Ann and Natasha both wore it to their father's inauguration; Obama himself wore a J.Crew bowtie to the ball) and bridal and bridesmaid lines. Lyons renovated the stores, too. Walk into any J Crew in the US and you'll find wall space given over to artsy installations, shelves and tables decorated with glossy tomes and other knick-knacks arranged among the colourful stacks of cotton T-shirts. "I don't want to put a load of pictures of J Crew models up; people can look at the catalogue for that," she reasons. "You know where you are, hopefully: there's a label on everything.
We don't need to tell you about ourselves over and over again; we'd rather share how we feel about art, a movie poster or an installation. It's about trying to make customers feel like they're getting more." J Crew's transformation happened when ex-Gap CEO Millard "Mickey" Drexler came on board as chairman and CEO in 2003. "We had a lot of things to fix – financially, aesthetically, we needed an overhaul," explains Lyons. "Mickey wanted to nurture the brand and make it beautiful by elevating the product via better design, better fabrics. He was the one who really spearheaded this change in direction." You only have to cast an eye over the figures to see that it's working. Total sales in 2003 were just short of $690m; by 2011 that figure had soared to just under $2bn. At J Crew's headquarters, Drexler is everywhere – seriously, everywhere. Well, actually he's currently in Pennsylvania, but he radios in over the loudspeaker every few minutes for all of J Crew's 940 employees to hear.
"Oh, he's always here in spirit," Lyons smiles, gesturing up to the sound piece above her head just as his Bronx drawl interrupts again to announce J Crew's Pennsylvanian bestsellers. "When he was installing the system, I was like: are you kidding me with this?" Lyons was informed of her boss's arrival on a Sunday night and was called to meet with him at 8am Monday morning. "I came down after the meeting and the guys were stringing the cord already," she recalls. Drexler calls in with anything, from questions to sound bites and inspirations. Most recently he blasted over a series of Bruce Springsteen anthems after he went to the rocker's concert four times in as many days. "He even checks in from holiday – he's like: 'Hey, I'm in Saint-Tropez; Anyway, I'm having lunch at Club 55 and you should see all these people wearing white! We should do more white, it's summer, do we have enough white?' It's hilarious – I love it." Lyons's love of fashion started when she was young. She was born in Boston and moved to California aged four.
She had a hard time at school – long; an insecure misfit, which made her easy prey for the other kids. "It made me introverted, but it was also the reason I loved fashion, because it can change who you are and how you feel, and that can be magical." She took a home economics class, learned how to sew, and made a long, narrow skirt printed in watermelons. It was a breakthrough moment. One Christmas her grandmother bought her a sewing machine and a subscription to Vogue. "That was when I knew I wanted to be a part of it in some way." After graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York (Derek Lam was a classmate and her college friend Tom Mora now works alongside her as vice president of women's design) she returned to California to waitress. Before she left, she had an interview with J Crew. She thought nothing more of it until a headhunter called a few months later and asked her to meet with Emily Cinader Woods, J Crew founder and designer. Lyons was hired on the spot and she began work that same afternoon.
Her first big gig arrived shortly after, when she was asked to design rugby shirts. "If you look back at a 1993 catalogue, they were a huge part of the business." "No!" she fires back. I was an assistant to someone else's assistant who, like, sat out in the hall…" That was more than 20 years ago and she's stayed ever since: "Well… you know," she shrugs, "I obviously started here when I was six…" Lyons lives and breathes clothes. She loves designing them, making them, trying them on, shopping for them. There isn't a day that goes by when she doesn't wear an element of J Crew – but she mixes it up with her other go-to's: Dries van Noten, Marni and Céline. "Arnault, the sales assistant in the Paris Céline shop, is so sad ever since a store opened in New York because, before, whenever I was in Paris I'd always have a moment with Arnault…" But regardless of gradual world domination and all the Céline she can lay her hands on, she can't quite shake that inner dork with the am-I-good-enough feeling.
On a recent visit to the White House – surprisingly, she's still to meet the first lady, "Ugh, it kills me!" she despairs – she was asked if there was any metal in her body before going through the detectors. "I have braces in my mouth, so I'm like: really? Do we have to talk about this right now? OK, I guess we do…" Even though there are currently 13 independent blogs dedicated to J Crew (Jcrewing, Jcrewaholics, Jcrewaficionada – the list goes on, and Lyons can reel off most of them) she's still coming to terms with her newfound celebrity status. "I was in Westfield in London and a girl comes up to me and says: 'Are you Jenna Lyons?' My father is British, so I was thinking: are you a long-lost relative? Was I nice to you when we were kids; did I give you some of my Kipling cakes? And she just said she was a huge J Crew fan. I was so taken aback." Lyons is currently going through a transitional period. She's in the middle of a divorce from her artist husband, Vincent Mazeau.
The $4m Brooklyn family house which, as a result of her impeccable taste in interiors, has probably featured in more magazines than all of J Crew's café capri pants combined, has just sold to Depeche Mode's Vince Clarke. She's moved to Tribeca with her five-year-old son Beckett, and is now, according to reports in the New York Post, in a relationship with a woman. "I'm adjusting," she reveals, pausing to consider what to say next (it feels pertinent because it must be the first pause she's taken all day). "It has been hard, you know?" she continues gingerly, "but I will say, through everything, I realise how incredibly fortunate I am. Everyone has been so supportive and understanding; my friends and colleagues have all been amazing. It's certainly been one of the more confusing times of my life, but I'm getting through it." One can easily see her living out another 20 years at J Crew, and it's a suggestion she doesn't dispute. "I'm incredibly grateful for this opportunity that I've been given.