J.Crew is Hoping Heritage Will Help Its Sales

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J.Crew's CEO Mickey Drexler has been saying for months that the company needs to course correct and go back to its "iconic classics" in order to combat slipping sales. At the end of August, he said in an earnings report: "Entering fall, we feel good about the assortments in stores and online, which reflect more emphasis on the key product categories that our customers love J.Crew for." Maybe he was thinking of the new J.Crew Style Guide, which launches today and features what the brand is calling "heritage" looks.

Fashionista reports that J.Crew is reissuing classic items, like a blazer from 1993, to go along with the trench coat J.Crew's sold for the past 10 years, the circa-2007 "Tissue Turtleneck," and similar pieces that have been revived from the archives. The Style Guide is online and will be in print. It's broken into categories like tailored blazers, classic coats, and comfy button-ups.

"Nothing can change the simplicity and timelessness of a perfect blazer—it is at once familiar and made fresh by changing the context," J.Crew's creative director Jenna Lyons told Vogue in an interview about the Style Guide.

The brand recruited top talent for the style guide, too. J.Crew assembled Lauren Hutton, Joan Smalls, Carolyn Murphy, Amber Valletta, Liya Kebede and Erin Wasson, who've all covered a J.Crew catalog in the past 24 years. "The casting was easy. All of these women have graced the pages of our Style Guide over the years—and all of them share that unfettered beauty and warmth," Lyons told Vogue.