Why is J Crew so Popular? Bloomberg Businessweek gets it wrong

This article came out a week ago but I've only just discovered it and it has made me grumpy. So J Crew has just opened its first store outside the US in good ol' London-town. As a lover of overpriced preppy clothing, this was pretty exciting for me. Bloomberg Businessweek's magazine covered J Crew's London opening as its cover story for this week and I think it's pretty poor.

The first paragraph describes the store's opening night party and the people seen perusing the bejewelled cashmere and velvet loafers. In describing the British shop patrons, Emma Rosenblum comments that everyone's hair "is chicly disheveled, as are their teeth." Oh, how amusing! It's a joke about British dental care! Well that's original... Once Rosenblum has got the obligatory, 'hilarious' national stereotype joke out of the way, she can move on to discuss fashion while demonstrating no understanding of the history or context of the fashion industry. 

Rosenblum goes on and on about J Crew's 'American Style' and how grateful Londoners should be now that J Crew has decided to export its 'American Style' to the fashion deprived shores of Europe. This is obviously madness. J Crew's style is so British it's utterly ridiculous to suggest that J Crew is bringing a new style of American garb to London. What typifies the J Crew style? Generally - tweed jackets, leather boat shoes, Oxford shirts, cable-knit jumpers and schoolboy satchels. Essentially, J Crew shoppers want to dress like they attend a British boarding school. So how is this an American style? Rosenblum even mentions hand-knit Fair Isle sweaters as a staple of the J Crew style; she realises that Fair Isle is in the UK right?


What also annoyed me, and which shows a worrying lack of market research from a company planning on embarking on a sizeable expansion in the UK, is the suggestion that J Crew is bringing a better shopping experience to the UK. According to the article, J Crew suffered 'staffing issues' with their new UK stores. J Crew prides itself on the 'store experience' and, apparently, it has been hard to find the right salespeople in the UK. In the Bloomberg article, Jenna Lyons (J Crew's Executive Creative Director) elaborates on these issues by saying that for a superior store experience, sales assistants need to be more proactive. Assistants can't just stand around; they need to suggest alternative items and encourage shoppers to check out stock online. Therefore the team has imported staff from America to train British employees how to be more engaging with the customer. I find this frustrating because American salespeople are unbearably irritating. It's impossible to go into a shop in the US without being immediately surrounded by pushy, chattering, grinning shop assistants. No, I don't want you to "set up a dressing room" for me. No, I don't need help with sizing. Just bugger off and let me shop in peace! And I don't know a single other British person who doesn't find American shop assistants clingy and invasive. So I'm sorry J Crew but you do not offer a superior store experience, at least not to grumpy Brits who like their personal space and strongly dislike talking to strangers.

I don't want to belittle the amazing success of J Crew. I love J Crew and it has unquestionably become incredibly successful over recent years. But this article doesn't really explore what actually makes J Crew so popular. The article suggests that J Crew's success comes from the fact that it's selling a style that is completely new and American. J Crew is actually selling a fun, modern twist on old-fashioned European classics. J Crew sells traditional European garb (British and Scandinavian knitwear, Oxford shirts, British Saville Row suit tailoring, Italian leather shoes) but with quirky, modern touches. So you have your tweed jacket that looks like you just stepped off a Norfolk farm, but it has fluorescent pink piping and jazzy buttons. You have your Oxford blouse, but it has a jewelled collar. America is currently having an Anglophile moment. The raging popularity of Downton Abbey, Benedict Cumberbatch and pretty much anything produced by the BBC shows a definite trend in American culture of idolising Britishness. The article even compares J Crew to Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren, two other labels that use an olde English aesthetic as their main selling point. I'm sure this trend will pass but for now, brands like J Crew are capitalising from America's yearning for a a whimsical interpretation of British heritage.

Greenwich Fun Day

I took a few days off work this week to see some exhibitions that I've been wanting to see for awhile. This meant spending a lovely (though chilly) day wondering the streets of historic Greenwich.

 The beautiful Greenwich University. 

First destination was the Nelson, Navy, Nation exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. I thought this was a beautifully done exhibition. There was a lovely range of objects from uniforms to musical instruments, books, weapons and illustrations. There were some amazing paintings - the kind of massive canvasses where you have to step way back to take everything in. The light fixtures on the ceiling looked like sails which was a nice touch. While I thought this was a great exhibition, if you're not that into naval history or war, you should probably give this one a miss.

 Giant Palmier makes me happy...

 There were a lot of these lovely old naval lamps at the museum - it was a hipster dream!

 The tulip staircase at the Queen's House at the National Maritime Museum

After the Nelson exhibition, my flatmate and I went to the Turner exhibition. I was amazed at how wonderfully quiet this exhibition was; there was hardly anyone there which meant I got to wonder around in my own little world, surrounded by these huge Turner masterpieces. A large part of the exhibition was dedicated to Turner's watercolours which was a bit underwhelming since most of them were on loan from the Tate Britain so I'd already seen them there. The large canvasses were amazing of course. There wasn't much of his later work which I thought was unusual since those tend to be his most popular pieces.

 Beautiful painted ceiling in the Queen's House at the National Maritime Museum.

I also went to the Georgian Britain exhibition at the British Library. This exhibition was beautiful. I'm a big map nerd and there were some beautiful old maps of London. Opera music was being played throughout the exhibition which I thought was a nice touch; I don't know why more exhibitions don't have atmospheric music. And, of course, I can't possibly go to the British Museum without buying cupcakes from Peyton and Byrne.

If I had to choose one of the three exhibitions to recommend - I'd probably go for the Turner exhibition. Greenwich might be a bit of a trek but some of the paintings on display are some of the most stunning paintings ever made by man. A lot of the paintings there were also from private collections which means that this is probably you're only chance to see them before they're secreted away.

St Augustine

I haven't done a picture post in a while.

The family and I recently visited St Augustine, the oldest city in America. St Augustine was founded in 1565 by the Spanish navy and subsequently served as the capital of Spanish Florida for 200 years. It repeatedly switched between Spanish and British hands until the Spanish, broke, sold Florida to the Americans in 1819. Yay history!

 The St Augustine lighthouse was built in 1874. This is the second St Augustine lighthouse; the first fell into the sea.

 

 The view up to the top of the lighthouse. There are about 170 steps to the top; this is about half the number of steps as Hampstead tube station which, at 190 feet below ground level, is the deepest tube station in London. Yay for random, useless facts! The next time you go to a pub quiz there will blatantly be a question about the deepest tube station - you're welcome.

  The view from the top - it was pretty stormy

 Me in the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental US. There were jaunty people in dubiously period costumes, leading me to the conclusion that all historical sites should have jaunty costumed folk.

 I bloody love a good canon... 

Petrified wood at the Lightner Museum. 

The Lightner Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever been to. The building was beautiful but the rooms were just crowded with the oddest assortments of things. There was one room devoted to some guy's toaster collection. In fact the whole museum, with its large rooms of random items, reminded me of this creepy scene at the end of Return to Oz (which, to be honest, is pretty creepy from start to finish).

The Rise and Fall of World Powers

Last week David Cameron had what a lot of people are calling a ‘Love Actually’ moment. Dmitry Peskov, a Putin press aide, purportedly dismissed Britain as a small island that no one pays any attention to and, in response, David Cameron launched into a passionate defence, citing One Direction and Shakespeare as evidence of Britain’s past and present glory.  This has resulted in a bit of soul searching on the part of the British media and a reflection on where Britain really stands on the international stage.

Despite Cameron’s florid prose, it’s a pretty undeniable fact that Britain’s importance and influence as an international power has significantly waned since the World Wars. During the Second World War, Britain accumulated huge debts while maintaining an imperial policy that was well beyond its means. Keeping large-scale military presences in the Middle and Far East pushed Britain into economic disaster domestically, increasing Britain’s dependence on the economic juggernaut that was the US. The Suez Crisis, an Anglo-French intervention in response to Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, is often cited as a key indication of how delicate Britain’s financial situation had become and how much Britain depended on US support. The US was against action in Egypt and Britain was pushed to the brink of financial collapse as a result of the intervention.

Britain’s decline is, of course, in no way unique. The Mongol Empire, the largest contiguous land empire in human history, crumbled due to wars of succession between the grandchildren of Genghis Khan. In the 14^th century, China was the world forerunner in science, mathematics and engineering. Yet by the early Ming period a form of technical stagnation had set in. China abandoned maritime ventures in the 1420s, just when the European powers were starting to explore the world and establish the empires that still shape the world today.

So if Dmitry Peskov’s comments sting, at least we can take solace in the fact that we are not unique in our decline. And yet, when looking at the relatively recent decline of Britain (and Europe in general), I can’t help but think that there is, perhaps, something different this time around. When the Roman Empire collapsed, despite the Romans' innovation in infrastructure, politics and intellectual thought, Europe was pushed into a period of intellectual deterioration and economic regression. This has clearly not happened this time (although I guess it could just be a matter of time).

While Europe’s importance has diminished, the influence of her history, her legal systems and her political theory are still unavoidably evident in the world today. The framework of international relations, the schemas with which we understand the political world, have been forged by the centuries-long dominance of the European powers over the rest of the world. These conceptual frameworks dictate how we think about the world and how states interact with other on the international state.

Democracy was originally just a name for the form of government devise by Kleisthenes in Athens. By the time of the French Revolution, it has accrued a deeper meaning and was linked to a number of political values such as liberty, equality and justice. Now, it is widely considered the only really plausible or legitimate form of government. Similarly, the Human Rights Agenda, so often invoked in discussions of the recent violence against civilian in Egypt and Syria, was born out of the European Natural Rights tradition. The words we use to describe, and the concepts we use to understand, the world around us are largely rooted in the European intellectual tradition.

So Britain may very well be a small nation that no one pays any attention to. But when the US is arguing with Russia over the fate of Syria, it is doing so using the terminology, the legal framework and the international organisations that wouldn’t exist without Britain’s centuries of global dominance.

NB: this article argues that Europe and Britain are still influential conceptually and legally despite their waning importance on the world stage. This article doesn't look at whether or not that influence is a good thing. If you're interested in that though, here's some good places to look:

 

Fraser A (2005) Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Now Who Calls the Shots? 
Ake C (1993) The Unique Case of African Democracy

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Bibliography

For a great book on the decline of Britain after the Second World War, check out: Heinlein F (2002) British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945-1963

For a historical overview on the rise and fall of world powers, check out: Darwin J (2008) After Tamerlane

For a bloody marvellous look at how Democracy became the only legitimate political system, check out: Dunn J (2006) Setting the People Free