Looking forward to listening to the article later.
As many of you know ad nauseum, J. Crew is my brand and I was so sad to see it leave Canada....I'd been ordering from their catalogues since the 90s, from before you could do it online! (Rollneck sweaters, anyone? -- making a comeback now, of course.) They were pricey for me then, but I could just about manage a few pieces a year.
Later I shopped online and then in store, and a good third of my wardrobe came from there (recently retired some items so don't have quite as many).
Why? Not because I want to emulate the "upper crust." Because it fits! And because I crave colour. I have to be careful of the colours, though -- they skew a bit too "spring" and bright for me (more Angie's colours) but when they are right, they are so right and even when wrong, they give me joy.
My parents are from the east coast of Canada and I spent a lot of summers as a child in the northeastern US. Maybe that influenced my personal style more deeply than I know?
I don't like full on prep -- that's not me, either. But if you told me that in the future, I could only ever shop at one retailer, I would probably choose J. Crew because I would know I could get dressed in complete outfits.
This is just what's in the current closet! You should see the stuff I've worn out/ retired! Note that some of these items are a decade old and still going strong.
Ordering from them now is kind of awful. The prices are outrageous in CAD. The quality is less reliable than it was even five years ago (some items are fabulous, some, not so great). Returns are expensive and a hassle. In future, I'll probably shop only their sales in Canada, and if I want a current item pronto, will order to the US and go down and pick it up at earliest convenience.
