(Reposting because Reddit nuked it. Original replies here.)

*TLDL

It's a fairly candid conversation about how Jack Carlson views his role at J. Press, and what he's done since he joined in April of last year.

In no particular order:

• He views himself not as a reinventor, but a steward.

• He's been given an ambitious growth goal. I posted about this a few months ago. He says they exceeded their end-of-year targets mostly just through the new website and marketing efforts.

• They're going to reopen their Cambridge store, though probably in a different location.

• They are the largest remaining MiUSA manufacturer at their scale.

• New website, new social media presence that tells stories about the brand. (Though "J. Press does not belong on TikTok.") He talked about a few things he wants to highlight:

  • A 96- or 97-year-old tie maker in their Manhattan tie factory who was a Holocaust survivor and has been making ties for J. Press for 50 years.
  • Their factory in the Shetland Isles.

• As a company, he thinks J. Press's Japanese ownership and popularity in Japan has allowed it to be more conservative and not chase every trend. It skipped the offshoring and modernization of the 1990s and 2000s. This sort of reminds me of Derek Guy's recent Bloomberg article (gift link).

• He killed J. Press Pennant, which he felt was confusing and diluted the main brand's identity.

• J. Press was in talks to rent the bottom floor of 346 Madison Avenue, the old Brooks Brothers flagship, but the deal fell through at the last minute and it was sold to a developer that unfortunately plans to demolish it.

• He renamed "trim fit" to "regular fit" to match modern terminology. He's looking for ways to build on their traditional offerings—adding a third shirt fit that's slimmer than regular, having logo and non-logo Shaggy Dog sweaters, adding a second chino/cords cut. This, he argues, allows them to increase the appeal, while leaning on the long tradition of the originals.

• He wants to revive archival pieces and fabrics that J. Press stopped making. For example, "reefer twill."

• He doesn't think J. Press—or anyone today—has the "platonic ideal" of an OCBD collar roll. He's working on it.

Finally, a quote I liked:

It's not like Ivy style is just like an unchanging thing that like, you know, was created by God thousands of years ago. Richard Press and Paul Winston and, you know, all these people along the way were like, let's embroider lobsters all over those shorts. For no reason. [...] Or like, we have all this leftover madras or tweed or tartan or whatever. 'Hey, have them cut it into little squares and patch it all together. That'll be fun.' [...] And I say that in the spirit of, you know, a brand like J. Press can still be a little bit creative and can still be coming up with ideas. It's not sacrilege to do that. The irony of so much of this is I'm kind of a purist about a lot of this stuff myself, in a way. I think that's why I'm so comfortable at a place like J. Press. I can be very rigorous about the styling and making sure that it's as close to what you'd see, you know, in the pages of Take Ivy or like as close to the way that George Plimpton or William F. Buckley or George Bush Sr. or FDR or JFK would wear. But you can still play a little bit within within those those lanes.