J.Crew's Creative Director Jenna Lyons

A big "thanks!" to Anonymous at 4:39 PM in the "Mickey Drexler = AWESOME!" post who shared with us the following two links about Jenna Lyons, J.Crew's Creative Director, and her recent coverage in InStyle Magazine (the May 2008 Issue): Page 1 and Page 2.

There is also a great article about her which I selected portions of below. (For the article in its entirety, click here.)

The Designers Behind J. Crew
By Marc Karimzadeh
April 06, 2005

J. Crew’s current bestseller is a pair of jeweled sandals for $190. “One-hundred and ninety dollars,” gushed Jenna Lyons, the retailer’s senior vice president of women’s design, throwing her hands in the air for emphasis. “We never would have given the real estate to a $200 sandal before. The customer has been ready for it, but J. Crew just hasn’t been there for her. We didn’t know if we could sell it. And that is what’s been great about Mickey [Drexler, J. Crew’s chairman and chief executive officer]. He’s been pushing us to push the envelope.” ...

Where some incoming executives would have come in with an ax and cleared out the existing design team, Drexler relied on Lyons, a J. Crew veteran who has been with the brand for 15 years, to oversee the design makeover.

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Lyons is a downtown type who appears a little disheveled, but in a studied way. She mixes and matches new pieces with vintage ones that are a little frayed around the edges. On this day, for instance, she wears torn faded jeans adorned with pins she must have used while tweaking a sample. In many ways, she is the perfect incarnation of the J. Crew woman for whom she designs. “I like things that get better with age,” she said. “We have always focused on something that is going to look good even after you have had it a little bit. Maybe it is frayed a little on the edges, maybe it is starting to wash down a little too much. I actually think that that looks good. That, to me, is classic.”

Lyons joined J. Crew’s women’s design department as an assistant after studying at Parsons School of Design and interning at Donna Karan. At J. Crew, she worked closely with original founder and then-president Emily Woods, and in her years at the company worked in several different departments, learning about accessories, apparel and denim. That, she said, is very helpful now that she oversees the design of all women’s products.

Lyons credited J. Crew’s renewed energy and focus to Drexler’s and Pfeifle’s management style. “The company had been more merchandising-driven over the past few years,” she said. “Now, it is the complete opposite. Design is really where everything starts, and that’s what we go back to when we talk about the floor, the colors for the walls. It all goes back to the original inspiration as opposed to it being a directive of the merchandising side." ...

What do you think of Jenna Lyons? Do you think she is visionary genius when it comes to clothes (like I do)?