9 Things to Remember About the Jenna Lyons Era at J.Crew
On Monday, it was announced that Jenna Lyons is stepping down from her position as president of J.Crew after 26 years at the company. Her deputy Somsack Sikhounmuong will take over design duties, but Lyons’s impact will be long lasting. As the industry guesses where she’ll end up—at another New York brand . . . or heading up a European label, as rumor had it earlier this year—we’ve gathered nine talking points from her time in the driver’s seat at the all-American brand.
She made sequins for day a work-appropriate look . . .
“In the queendom of Jenna Lyons, sparkles are mandatory,” wrote Vogue’s Maya Singer about J.Crew’s Fall 2015 collection. During Lyons’s tenure, shine of all kinds became a daywear norm, from the crystals known to adorn the neckline of a J.Crew tee to the sequin trim along the hem of a pant. Even allover sequins, like the rainbow-hued skirts and blazers of Fall ’15, were normalized with chambray shirts and khaki trousers.
. . . and turned neons into J.Crew’s definitive color palette.
Lipstick, shoes, outerwear, swim—nearly everything that J.Crew sold was available in shocking pink or a pulse-stopping shade of coral. Bright colors appeared in J.Crew stores year-round, as a lemonade yellow blazer for winter or a neon green capri for summer, upending the idea that prepsters lived in New England pastels.
She sparked a cultural debate about gender identity.
In 2011, a J.Crew e-catalog featured a picture of then creative director Jenna Lyons and her young son enjoying some mommy-and-me time with a jar of nail polish. “Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink,” read the caption. “Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” Innocent enough, right? Not with the culture police watching. The catalog prompted outcries from socially conservative parties about “gender confusion,” “attacks on masculinity,” and “princess boys.” While the company made no official comment, it made its position clear when it produced another catalog featuring designer Somsack Sikhounmuong in a playful embrace with his boyfriend. As for the pink nail polish? It sold out.
She rewrote red carpet traditions.
Lyons was a fixture on the Met Gala red carpet, using the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps as a platform to redefine red carpet expectations. She wore a denim jacket to the gala in 2012 (long before Kanye showed up in jeans), turned her pajamas into eveningwear with a beaded overlay in 2014, and paired a beige cashmere V-neck with a feathered skirt in 2011. Her most memorable turn, however, might have been in 2016, when she showed up with Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham, all three wearing tuxedos and Lyons’s signature black frames.
She went Hollywood.
In fact, by 2014 Lyons’s chunky glasses had become so iconic, Dunham and Konner hired her to play the ultimate fashion insider, a Condé Nast editor, in a three-episode arc on season three of Girls. Lyons was familiar enough with the type to kill it, even if the Girls crew failed to get other details of life inside 4 Times Square right. (If only we had snack rooms like that!) Among the handful of other credits on Lyons’s IMDb page are a recurring role on The Fashion Fund docuseries and Jay Z’s “Picasso Baby” video, but outside of Girls, she’s only appeared as herself.
She defined J.Crew’s accessories offering with eclectic, oversize jewelry. The woman wearing the giant floral beaded earrings and chunky gold necklace? She surely got it from J.Crew. Lyons’s vision for jewelry was part estate sale and part art collector, fusing turquoise with tortoiseshell and enamel with crystals to typically charming results.
She never feared the nipple.
The Lyons era will forever be synonymous with sequins for day and cheeky neons. But her most radical contribution to fashion circa the twenty-teens might just be going braless. Nothing says liberated woman like a pantsuit sans shirt.
She made style icons of real women.
During Lyons’s tenure, J.Crew’s New York Fashion Week presentations were among the fashion crowd’s favorites because of their nontraditional casting. Recent seasons saw the brand pull from its own staff, industry insiders (Taylor Tomasi-Hill), children of celebrities (Julianne Moore’s daughter), and the rich and famous themselves (Sandra Bernhard). Drawing inspiration from real New Yorkers began even before the brand started peppering its presentations with It people—for Spring 2012, several models were dressed up as Lyons.
She was a champion of young talents.
As J.Crew’s spokeswoman in chief, Lyons used her influence to spotlight young talent in New York. She was a regular at New York Fashion Week, showing up to some of the earliest Altuzarra shows, for example, and using her street style moments to showcase new labels she loved.
This story originally appeared on Vogue.
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