'What is fashion? I don't know': meet J Crew's main man Mickey Drexler

Mickey Drexler is the Steve Jobs of retail, a man who knows what we want before we want it. John Arlidge meets him as he and his right-hand woman, Jenna Lyons, bring some East Coast cool to London
John Arlidge29 November 2013

Horrible! Horrible!’ Mickey Drexler is driving through Mayfair in a silver BMW 7 Series and he spots the new Berluti menswear store. It’s not its clothes that bother him, it’s the prices. A single coat or jacket by the brand owned by the richest man in France, LVMH boss Bernard Arnault, can cost more than £20,000. ‘Maybe he thinks everyone is as rich as he is,’ Drexler frowns.

Money matters to Drexler, more than most fashion fellas. Not making money, although he’s done plenty of that — he’s a multi-millionaire with seven homes. No, he’s more concerned with making style affordable for the masses. He did it first with Gap, creating the most sought-after casual brand of the 1990s. He went on to invent Gap Kids and Old Navy and revamp Banana Republic. Next, he made J Crew the hottest name in good-value style. He has spent his life (under)dressing North America and now he’s bringing his chinos over here.

It’s a rainy November afternoon and Drexler walks into his new flagship 17,000sq ft London store on Regent Street, which opened earlier this month. He is ‘pissed off’. Why? It’s ‘too dark, not impactful enough, not quirky enough, there’s not enough colour, not enough socks. And where’s the sign to Crewcuts [J Crew’s kids’ line]?’ All around him staff jump to it, rearranging walls of shirts, tables of folded cashmere V-necks, rails of jackets and cabinets of socks and organising a sign to be hastily erected.

He may be 70 next birthday but Drexler, dressed in brown suede brogues, red-tipped socks, jeans and white shirt all from J Crew, topped off with a navy wool Hermès blazer, is not ‘knocking on heaven’s door’, as he puts it. He’s opening his doors to a whole new world. J Crew is going global in a multimillion-dollar expansion. ‘London is our first overseas outpost,’ he grins. ‘Hong Kong is next and, after that, who knows?’

Why London first and why now? ‘Britons are our third biggest global customer base in our US stores and online. So, it’s commonsense business-wise. But it’s also instinct. We feel the needs of our kind of consumer are not being met here.’ It helps that he is a closet Anglophile. ‘The British invented the classic look. Men’s apparel was created in London, the great English style. You have to respect this country’s suits, shirts, shoes, luggage.’ Many of J Crew’s suits, shoes and socks are made here.

For newcomers to the brand, what exactly is J Crew and why do our overcrowded high streets ‘need’ it? Perhaps it’s easier to say what it’s not, because Drexler has built his 300-plus store and factory outlet empire with sales of $2.2 billion a year by breaking the rules. J Crew, which is majority-owned by US private equity firms, is not fashion. ‘What is fashion? I don’t know,’ he says.

It’s not ‘designer’ because there is no single designer, far less a unified J Crew ‘look’. J Crew sells style — lots of different styles. For men, there are spiffy tweed jackets, tailored dinner suits and smart brogues, but also T-shirts and jeans. Women can buy everything from a button-down shirt to a wedding dress. The look is not American, not European, but somewhere in between. And it’s not just about clothes. J Crew does costume jewellery, watches and beauty products, too.

Drexler has no truck with celebrities — so beloved of other labels, who shower them with free clothes in the hope that they will wear them and get photographed. ‘Celebrities have nothing to do with style,’ he frowns. J Crew does not advertise on TV. There is no shouty branding. J Crew doesn’t even have a logo. ‘Logos are over,’ he sniffs.

The brand does not take itself too seriously. ‘Look at our London telephone box made of confetti! And the tinsel Beefeater hats. I want you to come in and smile,’ Drexler says. The name

‘J Crew’ does not mean anything (it’s made up and the J does not stand for anything). And while the stores and website sell great designs, the prices are a bit more expensive than the likes of M&S — a pair of jewel-toed pumps for £398 and a men’s lambswool sweater for £70 — but a whole lot cheaper than the likes of Gucci. ‘Designer clothes are all overpriced. £1,000 for a blouse? Crazy.’

Most important of all, J Crew doesn’t do the key thing most labels do: tell you how to wear its wares. Through natty window displays, its website and old-fashioned printed lookbooks and catalogues, it merely invites you to come in and work it out for yourself, safe in the knowledge that when you get it right, you will come back for more because, by then, it will feel like your store, not Mickey’s.

Jenna Lyons, 44, who joined J Crew as an assistant 23 years ago, having trained at New York’s Parsons School, and is now president, creative director and Drexler’s right-hand woman, explains: ‘We don’t prescribe a sense of style. You have the style, not the clothes.’

That might sound like the usual ‘look at us, we’re different’ marketing twaddle but the funny thing is, she’s right. In a world of look-alike, cookie-cutter stores, J Crew has staked out genuinely new territory. The Regent Street flagship — fittingly enough, halfway between Bond Street and Oxford Street — is a hip, mid-price mini department store that has no real competitors. ‘A lot of people try to copy us. I don’t want to mention any names. But they don’t have our creativity,’ says Drexler.

Drexler may be a new name on this side of the Atlantic but he’s been in our wardrobes for years. He is one of the three most influential fashion guys of modern times. If Giorgio Armani took modern European style global and Ralph Lauren created the world’s first fashion lifestyle brand encompassing everything from pants to furniture, Drexler is the guy who made ‘casual’ aspirational.

It’s hard to credit it now that it has become such a ho-hum retailer, but San Francisco-based Gap transformed the way we all dress. Without Gap there would be no chinos, no cargo pants, no simple affordable grey T-shirts, no hoodies and no dress-down Friday. Drexler is the only CEO to be photographed for the US business ‘bibles’ Forbes and Fortune with his shirt hanging out, and he has been thrown out of the Connaught hotel for — gasp! — wearing jeans. Small wonder the hero of California style has been nicknamed ‘the Steve Jobs of fashion’. He serves on the board of Apple.

The secret of his success? He was born on the wrong side of the tracks. ‘I grew up in the Bronx. I used to remember going to all these fancy stores in Manhattan to run errands or whatever and I felt intimidated, like they did not talk to me because I was from the Bronx. I never want anyone to be intimidated by fashion. Fashion is fun or, at least, should be.’

By rights, Gap should still be top of the pile and J Crew should not have happened. But in 2002 Gap inexplicably fired Drexler after 19 years at the helm, during which time the company’s sales rose from $400 million to $14 billion a year. He needed a job and J Crew, which had been founded in 1983, needed help, and lots of it. It sold preppy duds and had embarked on a tacky franchise expansion in Asia. Drexler closed all the Asian stores, promoted Lyons from head of womenswear to creative director and hired Dutch menswear designer Frank Muytjens, and the trio started afresh.

A new edge emerged. Collaborations with brands such as New Balance, Vans, Timex and Globe-Trotter followed. Soon, J Crew was on the fashion wishlist. Its most famous customers are the Obamas: the first family shop at the store in their hometown, Chicago. Michelle Obama has also confessed to a habit of jcrew.com surfing.

Drexler, who is married with two children, prefers working with women to men. ‘The numbers do not lie. I employ more women. Women have greater emotional intelligence than men and this is an emotional business.’ But in London it’s menswear that he’s most excited about.

He has given guys a separate entrance in Regent Street that leads to their collection. ‘Men don’t want to walk into a women’s store,’ he says. There’s a room devoted to J Crew’s signature slim-cut Ludlow suit (from £425). A new suit silhouette is on the way for men, Drexler says, who need ‘a more generous cut’ because he is too polite to say ‘lumpy lard-arses’. There are walls of shirts. ‘If a guy comes in here and can’t find a shirt he likes, it does not exist.’ There are more socks than in Paul Smith and shoes galore. Drexler has even opened an edited men’s boutique in Lamb’s Conduit Street for serious menswear hounds. A two-storey shop for women has also just opened a stone’s throw from Stella McCartney in Brompton Cross.

‘Men are the new women in shopping,’ he announces. ‘They like style. They like fashion. They want newness, not the same old dumb stuff. The men’s market is moving at lightning speed.’

For a man who is five years past retirement age, Drexler has never been more active. In fact, he’s in such a hurry he confesses he only hires people ‘who walk fast. It’s about energy.’ Like Armani, ten years his senior, he shows no sign of giving up. ‘I’m gonna go on as long as I’m having fun, as long as the customer likes what I do, and as long as the team and the investors like it. I have no plan other than to continue to create.’

Starting right now, it turns out. He leaps up and dives back on to the shop floor, frustrated that the sign directing customers to Crewcuts is still not on the wall. ‘Laydeez!’ he drawls at the sales team. ‘What’s happenin’?’ The merchant in the middle has work to do.

Photographs by David Yeo

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