Back on the Corner, J. Press Returns to Madison and 44th
The Ivy League outfitter reopens a wood-paneled flagship at the intersection it held for more than 80 years, with womenswear in the racks
At a quarter to seven on a weeknight, Madison Avenue at 44th Street is a river of commuters heading for Grand Central. Most of them walk past the corner without looking up. A few now stop at 340 Madison, where the lights are warm and the walls are paneled in wood, and where an old name has been waiting to come back since 2014.
It finally has. J. Press, the clothier founded at Yale in 1902, opened a new New York flagship at that address on September 17. It is the same intersection where the company ran its Manhattan store from 1932 until 2014, before it moved into a smaller shop down 44th Street that has since closed. For a brand that turns 125 next year, the move is less an expansion than a homecoming.
Menswear Row, Revisited
There was a time when this stretch of Madison was the center of the American wardrobe. It was known as menswear row, with Brooks Brothers, Paul Stuart and J. Press all doing business along it, and a man could assemble a whole life of oxford shirts, rep ties and natural-shoulder jackets in a few blocks. That world thinned out over the decades. As WWD reported in September, the old Brooks Brothers flagship at 346 Madison, directly across the street, was sold to SL Green for $85 million and is being torn down.
J. Press is betting the corner still means something. Its president and creative director, Jack Carlson, says as much.
"That intersection is like the spiritual home of American menswear and Ivy style. It's where J. Press should be." Jack Carlson
Carlson took over a little more than a year ago. He founded Rowing Blazers, rowed three times for the U.S. national team and holds a doctorate in archaeology, and that last credential shows in the new room. The store is about 1,674 square feet, paneled in wood, and built as a nod to the company's first shop on the Yale campus in New Haven. Carlson dug through the archive to dress it. There are letters from former presidents signed on White House stationery, photographs of famous customers, and Yale and college sports memorabilia. According to Oui Speak Fashion, the house has dressed everyone from Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
It reads less like a boutique than a members' club that happens to sell sweaters.
The Sweater From Shetland
The clothes are the point, and Carlson has spent his first year pulling them back toward the center. He told WWD that the line had drifted into something more generic over the years, and that the answer was to be as purely J. Press as possible. That means the button-down oxford, the navy blazer, the tweed sport coat and above all the Shaggy Dog sweater, the house's best-known knit.
Carlson visited the Shetland Islands, where much of the company's knitwear is made, and came back with a story he likes to tell. Plenty of brands sell a Shetland-style sweater, he said, but the Shaggy Dog is actually knit in Shetland from Shetland wool. Every one is brushed by hand with a teasel, a plant with a tall, prickly head, which raises the soft, lofty texture the sweater is known for.
It reads less like a boutique than a members' club that happens to sell sweaters.
The new flagship is also the first New York home for something J. Press has barely tried before. Womenswear is back for only the second time in the company's history, after a brief run in the 1960s. The capsule leans on the house classics, with Shaggy Dog and Fair Isle sweaters from Scotland, American-made oxford shirts, blazers, tweed jackets, chinos, taffeta skirts and waxed cotton outerwear, plus collaborations with Gloverall, Alex Mill, Paraboot and the designer Steven Stolman. Carlson told WWD he had been asked to make women's clothes almost every day since he arrived.
After the Office Lets Out
J. Press has been owned by the Japanese company Onward Holdings since 1986, and it runs about 100 stores in Japan. In the United States it has just three, in New Haven, Washington and now this corner of Midtown. The New York store stays open until 7 p.m. on weekdays, which makes it a stop for the after-work crowd rather than a weekend errand.
American classics have had a big season in New York, all the way to Ralph Lauren's show downtown. What J. Press offers is the original article, back on the original corner. Walk in at six, try on a blazer under the presidential letters, and catch a train out of Grand Central looking like you were always meant to.
