The J. Crew catalog of the 90s was the preppy manual of my generation

With the news that J. Crew is relaunching its catalog, we’re resharing this story from May 2020 about how the mail-order catalog remains a touchstone for an entire generation of the preppy persuasion.

Last weekend, as news of J. Crew’s impending bankruptcy began to circulate, I spontaneously posted on Instagram a selection of what I believe were some of the most momentous moments in the history of J. Crew’s catalogs. I’m talking about that midpoint between the late 80s and early 90s, a more innocent time when mail-order was king, there was no internet, and you could pay by check.

There, in a shot from the fall of 1989, was Matthew Barney with disheveled hair, before…Cremaster cyclebefore Björk, in that colorblocked T-shirt I’d lobbied my mom for, looking like she was about to go play Capture the Flag.

Then there was that great swimsuit cover from the summer of 1989 that, in one fell swoop, heralded a modern, liberating new era of matching swimwear—something that simply didn’t exist before. The two models (the blonde one, it’s worth noting, represents my current quarantine hair goals) left us all wondering which girl we were: athletic-inspired sports bra or sleek bandeau? Rolled-up high-waisted bottoms (which, unrolled, doubled as men’s shorts; this, big news at the time, struck me as risqué) or classic swimsuit?

Next, the image of two friends (one of whom was Annette Roque, later to become Annette Lauer) strolling along the beach on a perfect day wearing matching men’s chambray shirts over their simple jerseys. That image is seared into my memory as a hallmark of the brand’s laid-back, boy-inspired style and the way it always encouraged women, via unisex sizing guides, to buy the menswear, too. Talk about being one step ahead!

But still: can you imagine remembering, vividly and more than 25 years later, no less, a mail-order catalogue?

“I lived for them”

Turns out you can, because as the day progressed, the comments piled up at an astonishing rate, leading to a nostalgia-fueled Gen X lovefest. “Oh, how I remember those catalogs and the stacks of pages with the corners folded in,” recalled Net à Porter president Alison Loehnis.

“It was my favourite magazine,” said La Ligne co-founder Valerie Macaulay, echoing the sentiments of many who say the simple sales tool that materialised in mailboxes across the country each season was somehow so much more. “I lived for them,” added stylist Karla Welch.

“Ahhh, the turtleneck,” wrote an old friend, remembering the company’s most iconic Hall of Famer. “The anorak was life,” offered a nail art influencer who had one in the same color as me, hunter green, and wondered aloud if it was still at her parents’ house.

“Don’t forget the corduroy-collared Barn jackets!” commented designer Peter Som. “All I ever wanted was a Barn jacket,” lamented another.

Someone fondly recalled owning a reversible swimsuit in a shade called “Lake,” while another friend mused that flipping through the catalog in her college dorm “was the first time I learned that the word ‘ecru’ was a color.”

J. Crew, riddled with idiosyncratic references, was a language we collectively spoke without even realizing it. For a company that primarily sold khakis and T-shirts (albeit perfectly layered and creased), why did we connect so deeply? Why does it still resonate?

American preparation, par excellence

For many preppy Gen Xers, the brand, which launched as a catalog in 1983, showed up on our doorstep (literally) at a time when we were coming of age, figuring out who we were and who we wanted to be. J. Crew was one of the first brands I claimed as my own.

The same thing happened to Som. “Do we call the number or fill out the little order form?” he mused wistfully the other day over the phone from his home in Sag Harbor. Som, a San Francisco native who had moved east for school, saw his leafy New England campus reflected in the pages of the catalog and something clicked.

“That East Coast style was cool and classic,” says Som, who had gone through a brief New Wave phase in high school and was “a goofy kid in K-Swiss sneakers trying to figure out who he was” by the time he got to college. Som says the J. Crew influence was nothing short of a “defining moment.”

J. Crew didn’t just define an aesthetic (quintessentially prep Americana), it also built a world. Style was approached as a way of telling stories. There was a cast of familiar characters, and seeing them return each season when the new lookbook (or “Source Guide,” as the company cleverly called it) arrived was almost like catching up with old friends. Had someone gotten a haircut? Who was this new person in the mix? Who did we think was dating whom in this story we were telling ourselves, poring over snapshots of cookouts, piggyback rides (a recurring trope), and two-up bike rides for clues.

And what were they doing now, in this fictional universe of endless weekends we imagined ourselves in? Were they going to a clambake? A bonfire on the beach? A snowball fight? An impromptu sleigh ride? Or, since pajamas, robes, and wool socks seemed to be big business, a sleepover at someone’s house for the weekend?

Even the address in Lynchburg, Virginia, where the catalog originated (and to which all returns were addressed)—the cheerful, patrician One Ivy Crescent—was delightfully on-brand. If ever there was a preppy handbook, this was it, made real.

Aspirational, yet relatable

Part of the magic of #OldJCrew — and one of the reasons we held on to it so tightly (and seemingly never let go) — was the dream it offered. “J. Crew was one of the first to embrace this lifestyle. On the beach or by a campfire, everyone looked like they were having fun. It wasn’t just about a product shot, it was about how you live your life in these clothes,” Som says. “You’d look at the lookbook and think, ‘I want to live like this. ’”

“You could imagine yourself there,” agrees Loehnis, who can still visualize where in her childhood home she kept her catalog collection. “And the casting was always perfect. You either dreamed of being that girl or dating that guy.”

J. Crew conjured a world that was aspirational, yet relatable. It had an air of opulence, to be sure, but it wasn’t snobby. It was pedigreed, but unpretentious. The models were attractive, but not intimidating. The inherent cool of its lightly rumpled, effortless style seemed attainable. “Cozy,” is how Som describes it. “It was escapist, but also within reach.”

And in more ways than one. As Loehnis recalls from her teenage and college years, the catalog was something “you could flip through like a magazine,” but unlike most fashion magazines, “there were things you could get. Maybe you couldn’t afford everything, but it was affordable; it was within reach.” A low-tech precursor to today’s e-commerce, it was “shopping on your own terms, in your home, lying on your couch.”

And who could forget the lovely southern telephone operators who answered the phones in Virginia? “You would call that phone number and she was always a lovely, helpful woman,” Loehnis recalls fondly. “You would ask if they had your size and color and she would put you on hold to check. And the answer was never ‘no,’ it was always ‘sure, you might get it.’”

After all these years, I still have my original turtleneck. Charcoal gray, men’s size medium, I ordered an extra-large so that when I wore it over a pair of leggings on campus, the shape (with the perfect amount of boxiness) and length (which fell just below my butt) were perfect, and the rolled collar would stand up and loosen just enough to pass for a turtleneck.

I still wear it (no holes and hardly any pilling) on ​​weekends when I’m a bit cold. And you know what? It’s perfect.

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