Special relationship or no special relationship, there are some things we will always need the Americans for. I'm talking about really well-cut chinos that are flattering enough to wear with plimsolls or heels. Linen blazers with sufficient structure to make the grade at work but just enough scrunch to take them into weekend wear. Kids' clothes that have exactly the right mix of nostalgia and sass. These are the days when the pick'n'mix charm of the British fast-
fashion high-street stores, brilliant though they are, doesn't cut it, and we are drawn toward Gap and Banana Republic for their easy-on-the-eye, easy-to-wear vanilla appeal.
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.
The love-in between Obama and J Crew began in October 2008, when she wore a Pembridge dot pencil skirt, an Italian deco silk tank and a sunshine-yellow cardigan for an appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. The choice of J Crew semaphored two important messages. In the week when details of Sarah Palin's $150,000 campaign wardrobe broke, the price tag – around $500 for the whole outfit – scored an instant win without being so bargain-basement as to look like point-scoring. And the solidly all-American image of J Crew was balm to those still twitchy about the not-yet first lady's perceived lack of patriotism.
The Jay Leno outfit went down so well, in fact, that the label became an Obama family staple. On the day of the inauguration, J Crew issued a proud announcement: "Malia featured a deep periwinkle blue coat, while her equally chic sister wore a deep coral dress under her sweet guava coat, vivid orange scarf and glove set, each tied with a velvet ribbon belt around the waist." When the first lady wore a crystal-flecked cardigan for a visit to 10 Downing Street in April, the sweater sold out in all New York stores by 10am East Coast time.
"Michelle Obama is the best thing that ever happened to J Crew," the New York Daily News announced. But even more valuable than the sell-out was the shift in the label's image. When Michelle Obama wore capri pants with plimsolls to tour her vegetable patch, it blew the cobwebs off a label that had seemed a little dusty. 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."
Boyfriend fatigue jacket, £98, organza dress, £530. By J Crew from net-a-porter.com, available in May. Photograph: PR company handout
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.
I love the organza dress with the boyfriend fatigue jacket! More military chic and fem/masculine pairings! Will we tire of this any time soon?
