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    collierLAKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:26pm

    “Wall Street takes at least three years to recognize that a once-popular retailer who made their name producing relatively affordable well-made basics will tank when they flip off their customer base and shift to weird unflattering trendoid pieces of shitty quality and astronomical prices.”

    Jenna Lyons would be better suited to a fast-fashion op like H&M or even Asos. Putting her at JCrew is only slightly less ill-fitting than installing Bjork as the creative director of LandsEnd.

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      BeaBull ApocalypsecollierLA
      12/07/15 7:36pm

      That would be fitting, Iceland being in much more of a Land’s End location.

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      BooBearSmashcollierLA
      12/07/15 7:46pm

      I might buy things from Land’s End if Bjork was its creative director....or I would at least be entertained.

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    The Ancient BooerKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:31pm

    Dear J. Crew,

    I used to occasionally shop in your store and almost always found something I liked: a cute dress, a fab sales rack, great work basics, etc. For the past couple years, all I have seen are $80 tissue tees, uninspired dresses, tops with weird bejeweled crystal bits, and boring sweaters. I bought one of those damned tissue tees (clearance rack) and a hole appeared after 3 washings.

    Stop selling overpriced cheaply made clothes. Start designing inspired clothes. Go back to the quality you had in the 1990s. Hell, I still own a J Crew pea coat I received as a gift when I was in high school in the mid-90s (yay for classic style).

    Signed, a former fan

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      yog-shoggothThe Ancient Booer
      12/07/15 7:46pm

      What is up with these mid-to-high end retailers and vastly overpriced, cheaply made t-shirts? I can get something of comparable cut and quality at target. Stuff like skirts and slacks are usually genuinely better made, but it’s like these stores assume that their clientele will just mindlessly by $70 dollar t-shirts that are clearly subpar.

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      acornThe Ancient Booer
      12/07/15 7:55pm

      Yes, I still have a houndstooth blazer from at least 15 years ago. It still looks great. Back then, the quality of the clothing was so much better and so the price point was worth it. They need to return to more quality construction. And I’m so mad that they changed the fit of some of their jeans, because they actually fit and looked good on me. I’m still wearing some of them that are now 7-8 years old.

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    lunchcomaKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:44pm

    I suspect I may be their intended customer (professional woman, mid-30s, fond enough of simple sweaters to have half The Limited in my wardrobe), and I never shop at J.Crew. It’s not one sweater. It’s that everything in the store seems incredibly overpriced for what it is, and the brand hasn’t done much to highlight any quality or ethical differences that might make the premium worthwhile. There are lots of stores in the mall. I don’t have to go to J.Crew because it’s the place people like me went a decade ago.

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      thisismy31stburnerlunchcoma
      12/07/15 7:47pm

      It used to be very high quality - you could buy something expensive there but it would last forever. Now the quality is terrible. I’m not spending $150 on a sweater that will fall apart or $60 on a tissue-thin t-shirt.

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      srhjnlunchcoma
      12/07/15 8:04pm

      One of the things they still have going for it is their petite sizing. It’s REALLY hard for my tiny 4’11” partner to find clothes that fit without extensive tailoring, and j-crew sweaters, jackets, etc. work really well in XXS petite. I never buy at full price because they’re obviously not worth it, but I hope they are able to figure their shit out because we would love to be good customers. (Other places with decent petites—nordstrom, loft, etc. have many of the same overpriced/low quality issues, though shopping final sale items solves a little bit of that.)

      Also—I love J. Crew swimsuits because they make high waisted bottoms, tops without padding, and matching rash guards.

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    Ara_RichardsKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:54pm

    The company believed that the influence of fashion bloggers mattered. No one cares what a bunch of rich kids online think about clothing, and this was proven by the continual decline of the company. They picked the wrong person to head the company and they won’t bounce back until they drop her.

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      EldritchAra_Richards
      12/07/15 8:29pm

      I think Anthropologie is having that exact same crisis right now too.

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      Claudettes dressingroomEldritch
      12/07/15 9:04pm

      Does anyone else like American EAGLE (not Apparel), or have I just 'stepped in it?'

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    deerlady83Kelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:22pm

    We’re waiting for winter to come because it's scary how warm it is.

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      Sqarrdeerlady83
      12/07/15 7:26pm

      Not just warm, but daaaaaaaaaaamp.

      GIF
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      deerlady83Sqarr
      12/07/15 7:39pm

      It looked like a horror movie all day because it was so foggy and wet.

      GIF
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    peasandriceKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 9:06pm

    Where do you go to buy good basics? I remember the Gap and J.Crew being places you could pick up t-shirts and jeans or cute dresses and cardigans or work clothes without paying an absurd amount of money, but now it’s all weirdly cut and cheaply made and overpriced. So where do you when you just want a nice, fucking normal black dress that you can wear to wear to work and maybe out for a drink afterward? I’m clinging to the shit in my closet I’ve had forever.

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      mollymlf05peasandrice
      12/07/15 9:20pm

      Uniqlo! Not sure about a LBD from them, but they have awesome sweaters and t-shirts in a million colors for a reasonable price.

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      tmctpeasandrice
      12/07/15 9:31pm

      Land’s End, actually. Sweaters and t’s that don't shrink or lose their shape. Everything washes great.

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    seeemmteeKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:19pm

    Plus their clothing falls apart if you look at it wrong.

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      fiercelyfeministseeemmtee
      12/07/15 7:52pm

      That's the thing. I'm a broke grad student, but I would rather pay more for a sweater that will last a while than a cheap one that will fall apart after one season. So I bought a j crew sweater last winter (cost $80, I got it on sale for less) because the j crew sweaters I had in high school lasted forever. It had a hole in the under arm after maybe 2 months. And I washed/cared for it properly. Fuck that noise.

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      the present king of franceseeemmtee
      12/07/15 8:44pm

      This just didn’t used to be true. It used to be that their clothes lasted fucking FOREVER. It was worth paying twice as much as the gap or whatever for clothes that lasted 100x as long. When did they start thinking that people weren’t buying their products BECAUSE they were made of great materials and lasted forever. The downfall of J. Crew is like one of the saddest things that has happened in my life over the last 5-7 years lol.

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    aquietpanicKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 10:09pm

    Switch to Boden for all of your sweater needs. A thousand times better quality and things regularly go on sale.

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      kitty in the cityaquietpanic
      12/07/15 10:36pm

      I love love love Boden, although their skirt selection does not ten to have the cute details that they used to :( However, I bought one of their rainy day macks with a cute pattern and get compliments on it almost everyday.

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      aquietpanickitty in the city
      12/08/15 3:31pm

      I haven’t bought any of their skirts, but I have several dresses, tunics, shirts, it’s all been great!

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    RooKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:38pm

    I feel like another thing holding Jcrew back is that it still hugely ignores their black demographic. They do have an occasional black model but they’re never on the cover of their catalogue. ( the mailman mysteriously keeps giving me the jcrew monthly catalogue). Sticking with a majority of white models to me makes the brand seem likes it’s still trying to make this waspy preppy thing happen, but that’s not really in style anymore.most of my co workers are black men and women between the ages of 27 and 32 they wear a lot of jcrew and pull off outfits that would make me (white female) look like a the queen suburban wasps. I think if jcrew worked on their sizing/pricing issuesand increased the diversity of their ads they could reinvent the brand in a cooler more positive way.

    This is similar to what gap did a few years ago. They that white people wearing jeans and white tshirts thing was getting a little old and have put a lot more focus into the diversity of their ads.

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      JugendImpressionistRoo
      12/07/15 8:08pm

      Wait - wasn’t Liya Kebede essentially the face of their marketing for at least a few seasons in a row? I don’t think that was too long ago at all.

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      RooJugendImpressionist
      12/07/15 8:29pm

      Could be. from the monthly catalogues I’ve been getting for the last year( seriously I have no idea why I keep getting them!) I haven’t seen much in the way of diversity. There is a black woman with natural hair and a little girl, as well as black male model in several spreads. jcrew does seem to stick to a small handful of models for awhile, however the black models have far fewer photos featured. They had a recent English countryside theme catalogue and used only white models except for one picture in the bridal sections.

      I’m now realizing that I’ve clearly spent too much time looking the 2015 jcrew catalogues and I’m a little disturbed.

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    ladyshanksalotKelly Faircloth
    12/07/15 7:26pm

    I saw a pair of $200 socks at J. Crew and laughed my way out of the store and into an outdoors shop where you can buy hefty, adorable merino wool socks that I’ll wear to my grave for $20-30

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      audenladyshanksalot
      12/07/15 7:37pm

      What were these $200 socks made from, the fur of an endangered breed of alpine goat?

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      FIGJAMladyshanksalot
      12/07/15 8:16pm

      200 bucks for socks? What are they thinking?

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