NYT's Critical Shopper Looks at How Well is Madewell

A big "thanks!" to Diane, Emily, Jessica, Erin, Disco George, & Cara who kindly shared the following article from the New York Times with us (click here to read in its entirety):

Madewell, but Remade How Well?
By Alexandra Jacobs
June 14, 2011

FOR about five years, the brand Madewell has been rattling like rusty ironworks around the edges of my consciousness, producing vague and somewhat conflicting associations, like “flannel shirt,” “rain boots” and “Alexa Chung.”

After further investigation, I suspect this is the exact impression that its owner (or should I say hijacker), Millard S. Drexler — the mass-retail wizard who injected pizazz and profit into first Gap, now J. Crew — wants to convey.

Around the turn of this millennium, Mr. Drexler, known as Mickey, presciently intuited a groundswell of consumer yearning for traditional American dry goods and bought the rights to, though not the physical remains of, Madewell, a brave little workwear manufacturer in New Bedford, Mass., that opened in 1937 and closed in 1989, bookended by economic bad times. He then superimposed its true-blue, ye olde time-y logo on a line that might be described as Skipper to J. Crew’s Barbie. Fewer sequins, more lanyards.

This made-over Madewell is connected by but the flimsiest of threads to its defunct namesake; indeed, as several forays to its new flagship on the Ladies’ Mile attest, the company is now producing clothes not for the working class, but for the class of young women who attend expensive private colleges and are taking a gap year to, you know, figure out what they want to do with their lives.

How about a road trip? Or if you don’t have the energy: how about a souvenir from someone else’s road trip? A collection of T-shirts ($78 each) printed with Big Sky images taken during a cross-country drive by Dylan Forsberg, a Manhattan photographer, is titled “Where I Want to Be.” This idea of carefree, slightly removed itinerancy (tumbleweed by way of Tumblr) is echoed in the store’s décor, a hodgepodge of rusty bicycle seats, battered viewfinders, wagon wheels, Stewart Warner radios and stacks of burlap suitcases.

Atop the last are several smaller bags in the rucksack category: a “dusty roads messenger” ($245), for those delivering urgent files to rural shacks, I guess; a $132 “backyard binocular bag” in the vein of the still-extant heritage brand J. W. Hulme (now sold at Barneys); and, for the crosstown bus, the so-called “scholar” ($148), a shameless imitation of Ms. Chung’s signature, much more expensive purse for Mulberry.

Ms. Chung is the winsome young British presenter-for-hire who has designed a few items derived from her personal style for Madewell (cropped fisherman-knit sweater, $140, available online) and who is quoted on the wall, alongside Lucky magazine editors, declaring this season’s omnipresent chambray “a no brainer” and concluding, “Long live tomboys.”

I applaud her determination not to be crushed by the frill juggernaut, as well as the good cheer of the Madewell sales maidens, who place no restrictions on the number of items you can carry into the dressing rooms. “You can try on the whole store,” one said generously, shoving aside a curtain made of mattress ticking so I could take a pair of cute gold linen-Lurex shorts ($88) for a spin.

Later she was gracious enough to return to me the pair of scratched sunglasses I’d worn in and accidentally left on a chair — lucky for sure, as it’s not inconceivable that otherwise they might have been appropriated by an eager stylist and sprinkled into the store’s stock. “Found. A one-of-a-kind discovery from us to you,” read the artfully crumpled, handwritten tag adorning a Wrangler denim shirt ($78) spattered with an unidentifiable dark red stain. (Rust? Blood?)

Madewell brass, lovingly tarnished I’m sure, also pride themselves on showcasing items from local partners, or so-called “hometown heroes,” including Other Music in the East Village, which provides indie CD’s to throw into the car for the imaginary road trip; and Love, Adorned in NoLIta, source of some (oh, for a simpler time) Alyssa Ettinger “NYC-themed” white ceramic dairy bottles ($40 to $50).

They are less forthcoming about the fact that most of their all-American looks, including “heritage premium” overalls in a faded “bighorn wash” ($200), are made in China. Now that’s distress of another stripe. “We started out as a workwear company in 1937, so we know a thing or two about denim,” smoothly elides Madewell’s marketing literature, suggesting that the urbane Mr. Drexler personally took lessons in rivets and topstitching from a union foreman in New Bedford.

LIKE every other jeans joint in town, Madewell offers a denim bar, as if it were serving cocktails instead of flares and skinnies. Here there is also a bracelet bar, with plastic bangles woven from used floor mats in Burkina Faso ($10.50) and rope cuffs like the ones girls exchange at summer camp ($5). Dangling from the rafters and enhancing the Etsy-ish, wayfaring milieu were a few brightly colored yarn pompoms.

Defying a longstanding personal rule against white pants, I tried a slim-cut version called the Switchyard ($69.50), with an ankle zipper. (When in doubt, Madewell designers throw in a zipper: up the back of a strappy wedge, $228; on the pockets of a delicate blush cardigan, $69.50.) The jeans didn’t electrify. But they were nicely oversize — engineered, perhaps, to give every mall walker in America the illusion that she is Alexa Chung.

Madewell | 115 Fifth Avenue (East 19th Street), (212) 228-5172; madewell.com.

TRADE WELL A subsidiary of J. Crew, the store, which also has a location in SoHo, juxtaposes in-house labels (Broadway & Broome pleated ikat dress, $245) with lumberjill classic brands like Penfield (olive anorak, $149) and Stetson (chambray fedora, $78). There’s also a smattering of pieces from nearby independent businesses.

PAID WELL Staff members are cheery and helpful, if a bit vague about the main stock, which — despite the brand’s tenuous roots in all-American manufacturing — is mostly outsourced overseas.

FRAYED WELL Mason jars, exposed light bulbs, stray ladders, zippers and spools create a rare, if obviously cultivated, “homemade” atmosphere on a rather generic shopping row.

Well said! I think the author did a great job summing up Madewell in her observations of the store. The store definitely tries to portray itself as one way (small, made well products, slightly lower price points than J.Crew), while it really is another (more expensive than J.Crew for many items in many categories).

Now in all fairness, I find the associates at Madewell very nice. Even though I am not their target customer, I still manage to find one or two items to crush on, like the Staircase Skirt (Item 41703; $168.00). ;)

What are your thoughts on this article? Do you agree with the author's take on Madewell? Any points you found interesting?