Wednesday, June 15, 2011

NYT's Critical Shopper Looks at How Well is Madewell

A big "thanks!" to Diane, Emily, Jessica, Erin, Disco George, & Cara who kindly shared the following article from the New York Times with us (click here to read in its entirety):
Madewell, but Remade How Well?
By Alexandra Jacobs
June 14, 2011

FOR about five years, the brand Madewell has been rattling like rusty ironworks around the edges of my consciousness, producing vague and somewhat conflicting associations, like “flannel shirt,” “rain boots” and “Alexa Chung.”

After further investigation, I suspect this is the exact impression that its owner (or should I say hijacker), Millard S. Drexler — the mass-retail wizard who injected pizazz and profit into first Gap, now J. Crew — wants to convey.

Around the turn of this millennium, Mr. Drexler, known as Mickey, presciently intuited a groundswell of consumer yearning for traditional American dry goods and bought the rights to, though not the physical remains of, Madewell, a brave little workwear manufacturer in New Bedford, Mass., that opened in 1937 and closed in 1989, bookended by economic bad times. He then superimposed its true-blue, ye olde time-y logo on a line that might be described as Skipper to J. Crew’s Barbie. Fewer sequins, more lanyards.

This made-over Madewell is connected by but the flimsiest of threads to its defunct namesake; indeed, as several forays to its new flagship on the Ladies’ Mile attest, the company is now producing clothes not for the working class, but for the class of young women who attend expensive private colleges and are taking a gap year to, you know, figure out what they want to do with their lives.

How about a road trip? Or if you don’t have the energy: how about a souvenir from someone else’s road trip? A collection of T-shirts ($78 each) printed with Big Sky images taken during a cross-country drive by Dylan Forsberg, a Manhattan photographer, is titled “Where I Want to Be.” This idea of carefree, slightly removed itinerancy (tumbleweed by way of Tumblr) is echoed in the store’s décor, a hodgepodge of rusty bicycle seats, battered viewfinders, wagon wheels, Stewart Warner radios and stacks of burlap suitcases.

Atop the last are several smaller bags in the rucksack category: a “dusty roads messenger” ($245), for those delivering urgent files to rural shacks, I guess; a $132 “backyard binocular bag” in the vein of the still-extant heritage brand J. W. Hulme (now sold at Barneys); and, for the crosstown bus, the so-called “scholar” ($148), a shameless imitation of Ms. Chung’s signature, much more expensive purse for Mulberry.

Ms. Chung is the winsome young British presenter-for-hire who has designed a few items derived from her personal style for Madewell (cropped fisherman-knit sweater, $140, available online) and who is quoted on the wall, alongside Lucky magazine editors, declaring this season’s omnipresent chambray “a no brainer” and concluding, “Long live tomboys.”

I applaud her determination not to be crushed by the frill juggernaut, as well as the good cheer of the Madewell sales maidens, who place no restrictions on the number of items you can carry into the dressing rooms. “You can try on the whole store,” one said generously, shoving aside a curtain made of mattress ticking so I could take a pair of cute gold linen-Lurex shorts ($88) for a spin.

Later she was gracious enough to return to me the pair of scratched sunglasses I’d worn in and accidentally left on a chair — lucky for sure, as it’s not inconceivable that otherwise they might have been appropriated by an eager stylist and sprinkled into the store’s stock. “Found. A one-of-a-kind discovery from us to you,” read the artfully crumpled, handwritten tag adorning a Wrangler denim shirt ($78) spattered with an unidentifiable dark red stain. (Rust? Blood?)

Madewell brass, lovingly tarnished I’m sure, also pride themselves on showcasing items from local partners, or so-called “hometown heroes,” including Other Music in the East Village, which provides indie CD’s to throw into the car for the imaginary road trip; and Love, Adorned in NoLIta, source of some (oh, for a simpler time) Alyssa Ettinger “NYC-themed” white ceramic dairy bottles ($40 to $50).

They are less forthcoming about the fact that most of their all-American looks, including “heritage premium” overalls in a faded “bighorn wash” ($200), are made in China. Now that’s distress of another stripe. “We started out as a workwear company in 1937, so we know a thing or two about denim,” smoothly elides Madewell’s marketing literature, suggesting that the urbane Mr. Drexler personally took lessons in rivets and topstitching from a union foreman in New Bedford.

LIKE every other jeans joint in town, Madewell offers a denim bar, as if it were serving cocktails instead of flares and skinnies. Here there is also a bracelet bar, with plastic bangles woven from used floor mats in Burkina Faso ($10.50) and rope cuffs like the ones girls exchange at summer camp ($5). Dangling from the rafters and enhancing the Etsy-ish, wayfaring milieu were a few brightly colored yarn pompoms.

Defying a longstanding personal rule against white pants, I tried a slim-cut version called the Switchyard ($69.50), with an ankle zipper. (When in doubt, Madewell designers throw in a zipper: up the back of a strappy wedge, $228; on the pockets of a delicate blush cardigan, $69.50.) The jeans didn’t electrify. But they were nicely oversize — engineered, perhaps, to give every mall walker in America the illusion that she is Alexa Chung.

Madewell | 115 Fifth Avenue (East 19th Street), (212) 228-5172; madewell.com.

TRADE WELL A subsidiary of J. Crew, the store, which also has a location in SoHo, juxtaposes in-house labels (Broadway & Broome pleated ikat dress, $245) with lumberjill classic brands like Penfield (olive anorak, $149) and Stetson (chambray fedora, $78). There’s also a smattering of pieces from nearby independent businesses.

PAID WELL Staff members are cheery and helpful, if a bit vague about the main stock, which — despite the brand’s tenuous roots in all-American manufacturing — is mostly outsourced overseas.

FRAYED WELL Mason jars, exposed light bulbs, stray ladders, zippers and spools create a rare, if obviously cultivated, “homemade” atmosphere on a rather generic shopping row.
Well said! I think the author did a great job summing up Madewell in her observations of the store. The store definitely tries to portray itself as one way (small, made well products, slightly lower price points than J.Crew), while it really is another (more expensive than J.Crew for many items in many categories).

Now in all fairness, I find the associates at Madewell very nice. Even though I am not their target customer, I still manage to find one or two items to crush on, like the Staircase Skirt (Item 41703; $168.00). ;)

What are your thoughts on this article? Do you agree with the author's take on Madewell? Any points you found interesting?

19 comments:

  1. Fab.u.lous! What a great article! The part about the author's glasses made me LOL.

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  2. I actually found it excessively harsh. There is no merchant who could meet the author's standards. Every brand has its issues, those that aren't made in China are typically out of reach of most consumers. It's as if the author didn't do so much as an investigation as pick and choose evidence to support her prior assumption that Madewell is a sham. Let the consumers decide. The brand is typically too casual for me, but of what I have bought none has been a dud, and some items were very nice.

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  3. It's a lot nicer than what Cintra Wilson probably would have written about Madewell.

    I haven't been in a Madewell store for years (none even remotely close to me after the Vegas store closed), but the bracelet bar sounds kind of cool.

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  4. It's difficult to gauge someone's tone from the written word. It reads a bit snarky but perhaps some of it was tongue-in-cheek? Definitely seems as though the author did their research into the company. I only buy the odd thing from Madewell but so far have returned very little.

    My thoughts are that Mickey's plan has been to use Madewell for the more trendy items and move J.Crew back to the classics and higher-end offerings. I suspect buying Madewell was part of the long-term plan in that regard, taking J.Crew private was another step. JMHO, or maybe JM wish. ;^)

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  5. @tamara.chicago -- love it or hate it, ALL articles in that series have a very snarky, tongue-in-check tone, as xoxo says. I guess that's why it's call the "Critical Shopper"

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  6. I find the article very narrow minded. Seems to be a review from someone that had an opinion way before they stepped in the door. I can't even pinpoint the real point of the article. It seems that they just wanted to be harsh just for the sake of being so.

    Everything I have purchased from madewell I have enjoyed. I often find the fit, quality and originality to meet my standards. I'm not always keen on their staying online or in the store but in their raw form I can better see the potential of the item and how versatile it really is for many age groups.

    I feel like the prices tend to be a bit high but when I had a retail store near by there were often really good sales with prices much lower than online.

    To everyone their own though and beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder.

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  7. True, Rosie, thanks for pointing that out. :)

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  8. I found the article hilarious! I shared with my friends who go to "expensive private colleges," one of whom actually took a gap year, and we all had a good laugh. I love the author's disdain for the floaty collegiate airhead. I do find Madewell's carelessness contrived, but the same can be said for J. Crew's current preppy-chic. And although Madewell assumes the identity of a young twenty-something coed, the target audience is anything but. Madewell is another aspirational brand that deserves its place in fashion.

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  9. It's kind of obnoxious that the author criticizes the Scholar Satchel as being a rip-off of a Chung bag she designed for Mulberry (without Mulberry's designers' help?). That type of bag existed long before Chung was alive, and Chung no doubt saw one and decided to put her own spin on it. Nobody accused her of thievery.

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  10. tamara.chicago, you're so right on the scholar satchel. It's been around so long I'm sure that was invented for mail carriers of the Pony Express.

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  11. Heads up

    http://www.refinery29.com/eddie-borgo-for-j-crew-s-collection-goes-on-sale-tomorrow

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  13. The news about the Eddie Borgo Collection was also on Fabsugar yesterday. Click here. :)

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  14. I just visited a Madewell store for the first time. I fell in love! At the same time, I think this opinion piece is right on. I loved the atmosphere of the store, the shoes, the accessories and the music. Was pleased to see some Made in USA items. My daughter left with a beautiful leather belt from the clearance rack -- the full price items are too much for us. But the store is a great source of inspiration and ideas on how to mix the authentic stuff already in our closets.

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  15. Being from SE Mass, I'd like to see Madewell succeed. For the price point, they could have less made in China.

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  16. This article left me with a huge smirk! I thought it well done. I have yet to visit a Madewell store or purchase anything online, but I have to admit that I can appreciate the way the author stripped down the mystique and allure of a brand and really boiled it down to what is, in less romantic terms, a systematic and thoughtfully crafted branding strategy. How cheeky and clever! I'll look forward to future similar editorials from The Critical Shopper. A little bit of poking fun & and little bit of playing devil's advocate makes for an amusing read.

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  17. I recently made my first online purchase from Madewell: three "jackets" made from sweatshirt material and a jersey t-shirt. I returned three of the four pieces because the quality of material and construction looked more like Forever 21 than JCrew. At $70-$80 per item I expect something I wouldn't be embarrassed to wear. Guess my JCrew addiction will continue unchallenged.

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  18. We have had Madewell in Dallas for for a couple of years. It was actually the first one. I liked the look of the clothes but they weren't really "madewell". I had several tank tops with skinny straps that broke. (to madewell's credit they did let me return them since they were no longer carrying them) I have a couple of tops and sweaters that ended up with holes. I do however have some great terry shorts and pants that have lasted really well. But I have hard time justifying the cost when I am not sure if the clothes will last.

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