J.Crew is Coming to Town (Canada & UK Edition)

A big "thanks!" to Leader Girl & HDNB, who shared the following article from the Guardian with us. (Click here to read it in its entirety.)

J.Crew Is Coming
By Jess Cartner-Morley
March 30, 2010

The preppy label beloved of Michelle Obama will soon be available to UK shoppers at net-a-porter.com – here's why we will learn to love this classic American brand

...Getting that American fashion fix is about to become a whole lot easier. J Crew – the jewel in the crown of the American high street – will at last be available to British shoppers on net-a-porter.com from early May. A 27-year-old brand currently riding high on the back of endorsement by Michelle Obama, who often dresses herself and her daughters in the label, J Crew has become a destination store for British fashion editors – no New York fashion week is complete without a visit. A year ago, I bought a collarless camel wool cropped jacket there. At around $200 it wasn't cheap – but the fabric is still good as new and it has been a staple of my wardrobe ever since, seeming to intuit the onset of the coming era of minimalism even before it had appeared on the Paris catwalks. It is almost boring, yet absolutely perfect: a classic J Crew purchase. ...

As Jenna Lyons, the creative director of J Crew, says: "The thing about preppy is it can be alienating to some people. It's very coastal and it leaves out a lot of Americans who aren't yachting or going to the beach club."

Michelle Obama may be the poster girl for J Crew, but Jenna Lyons is the woman in the director's chair. Over the last two decades, Lyons has worked her way up through the ranks of the company to become creative director. She has taken the colourful, classy-but-upbeat principles of American preppiness and – with a rolled-up trouser hem, a turned-up collar, kooky layering and an unexpected belt – brought them up to date. To the American casualwear basics (cashmere in great colours, crisp shirts) she has added new J Crew classics (vintage-look denim shorts, fantastic costume jewellery).

Lyons, who has become a fashion-industry girlcrush, has kept every copy of Vogue since August 1984 in her apartment, yet cites the New Yorker as her favourite magazine. She never wears flat shoes, but claims to be obsessed with Alexa Chung's tomboyish style. Derek Lam, feted American designer and a contemporary of Lyons at college, says she "brings a fashion editor's eye to an accessible brand".

For the spring collection, this means applying the principles of Céline-esque neutral-toned, narrow-but-boxy minimalism to the J Crew world to produce a slim oatmeal pencil skirt with (very flattering) black side panels. It means dreaming up the perfect chunky diamante and ribbon necklace, the kind you hope to find in vintage stores but never do. It means taking the sexy-military Balmain look and leavening the formula to produce the perfectly fitted-but-relaxed khaki weekend jacket, which also looks great over a cocktail dress. As Lyons told style.com recently: "That little cargo jacket that we would have shown 10 years ago with a polo shirt, we're now showing with a little sequin top and high heels."

Every country has a few fashion labels that occupy a space in the popular culture and seem to hold meaning even to those who don't shop there. Think Marks & Spencer and Burberry for us. J Crew has that kind of visibility in America, and with that comes a certain good-humoured lampooning, not dissimilar to that aimed at the Boden catalogue in the UK. NBC's fashion blog recently asked: "Do you ever live vicariously through the J Crew catalogue? Pretend you wear sweaters with bikinis with your blond children and geeky-hot husband?" The Jezebel bloggers run a page-by-page commentary every time the label sends out a new catalogue.

But the joy, for British shoppers, of bland American fashion – whether it's this season's perfect, washed-out Gap sweatshirt or the J Crew luxe T-shirt – is that it comes wrapped in plain white tissue paper, but gloriously free of baggage. Just the way we want it.

Also, a big "thanks!" to Get Fresh, who shared the following article from Toronto Life with us. (Click here to read it in its entirety.)

J.Crew looking for first Canadian location
By Carley Fortune
March 30, 2010

And J.Crew isn’t the only American retailer looking to open or expand in Canada. The Gap is opening 10 outlet stores, ... The reason: according to the Wall Street Journal, it’s because the U.S. market is over-saturated, and it’s too difficult to expand in Asia, where laws, shopping habits and body sizes are too different. ...

We were always told “slow and steady wins the race.” Despite our sluggishness, J.Crew will expand slowly north of the border and open 10 to 15 stores—a few of which, we assume, are sure to be in Toronto.

What are your thoughts on either article? Are you excited that the arrival in Canada and UK is becoming a reality? (I know I am!) Do you live vicariously through the J.Crew catalogs? ;)