When J.Crew tapped Brendon Babenzien to overhaul its menswear in 2021, the duo made for slightly odd bedfellows. At Supreme, where he worked on and off between 1996 and 2014, Babenzien played a crucial role in transforming the scrappy skate brand into a Harvard Business School case study. At Noah, the New York-centric label Babenzien founded with his wife, Estelle Bailey-Babenzien, he was early to champion a slow, thoughtful approach to design that runs contrary to the frenetic churn of the trend cycle.
But at the 40th anniversary bash J.Crew hosted to kick off New York Fashion Week, Babenzien’s influence was palpable. Among the crowd were veteran industry types—Todd Snyder, the designer who once occupied Babenzien’s role, held court in the back; Jenna Lyons, the erstwhile J.Crew supernova turned Real Housewives star, fielded selfie requests nearby—and throngs of young disciples weaned on Babenzien’s streetwear-adjacent cool.
By the time the Strokes took the stage later that evening, they might’ve been the least surprising people there. (At one point, Julian Casablancas called the South Street Seaport rooftop the coolest venue he’d ever played—and actually seemed to mean it.) All of which bodes well for Babenzien’s efforts to write the next chapter of J.Crew’s story. To hear him tell it, the role is just another chance to advance his real agenda, a proposition as electrifying as any of the bands he’s invited into J.Crew's orbit: good clothes at great prices.
To cap off the milestone, GQ hopped on Zoom with Babenzien to discuss why J.Crew’s clothing is more radical than you think, the death of the monocultural brand, and why he doesn’t want everyone wearing his Giant-fit chinos.
Brendon Babenzien: I wish I could take credit. I just happened to be the lucky one who's here as it's happening. It's a pretty big accomplishment for any business to be around for that long. Long before I was working there, I was a customer and a fan, so it's very cool.
Oh, sure. I love J.Crew, so when I was thinking about this job, I was kind of, like, This is a no-brainer for me. But I was also thinking about the timing of it. And it just felt like the right time for J.Crew to have success.
I'm going to be a realist about what's going on here: I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. There's all these other people that came before me that built the brand. I had so much to work with because of the founders, and then all the different creative directors, photographers, and stylists, and all the people that have done it before me. They've made my job really easy. It's a little bit of undue credit in a way, but I guess I'm lucky.
[Laughs] Right.
That was a layup. That was a layup for you, and the Giant-fit chino was a layup for me. I mean, it was there. It was in the archive. It wasn't like the whole world was wearing skinny pants for a hundred years, and I came along and said, Hey, let's do a big pant. It was already there. Timing plays a huge role.
The one thing I will give myself credit for—I think that I have good timing. And I think timing plays a big role in any creative person's success. Whether they’re a clothing person, or an artist, or a musician, or whatever. Knowing the temperature of the public, and what they might want, or what they're ready for, is an important part of the job.
It never really feels like a big swing though, right? I think most of the people that you might be referring to—people that kind of push things forward in the fashion space—it’s where they are. If everybody's over here, that's when you're, like, That's boring—I don't want to be there if everyone's there. I want to be over there. You can science it out a bit. When everything's in one direction, I tend to go the other direction, whether I'm conscious of it or not. And I think most people who are creating something function that way. It's kind of the role of creative people, no matter what field they're in, to push back on the status quo.
Look, I'm not here to define ‘designer.’ People can think whatever they want to think about that word, or what designers are. I don't know, I guess I haven't put in the work that I think is required to have a title like that. I've been in the business a long time, sure. But I can't make a pattern. I'm not sitting at the sewing machine. I'm not reinventing silhouettes, necessarily. From time to time, I have created something that I feel like I haven't really seen before. Maybe I've done a weird double-breasted shirt. Or a few things here and there where you're kind of frankensteining things together in a way that feels new.
But I feel like I haven't done the prerequisites to be considered a designer. I'm a little more in the realm of stylist, I guess. I don't really know what that is and I'm not belittling what I do. I think there's a lot of people who operate the way I operate, or have operated the way I operate over the years, who've contributed tremendous things to fashion.
But when I hear the word designer, I think of someone who's really studied the process, and can make a garment from scratch. Put it down on paper, make the pattern, sew it themselves and say, Here it is. But maybe that's old-fashioned.
That's a reality, right? A big part of the business these days is people who just have a vision. And you create that vision with whatever you've got. I think that's incredible, and I love the democratization it affords. People are, like, I see something, and I want to do it—and they put it out there. If that’s how you define ‘designer’, then by all means, I would be considered a designer.
I think I function in this anthropological space, more than anything else. Kind of being aware of where we are as a society, or, in the case of Noah, where I would like society to go. What would I like the value structure of our society to be, and how do I create that with the clothing, the business, the messaging. All of the pieces tie together to say, This is maybe how we should be. That’s how I function: pushing a direction of where I'd like us to exist.
I don't think people have to be incredibly conscious of the change. I don't think you have to give it to people on a silver platter and be, like, Here's where we are today: do this. That would actually be really counterproductive to the way I think about things.
Those subtle things, they become the reality, as you push for change. So you're not really hitting people over the head. It's kind of a gradual process. And as people see things or hear things over and over, those things become normalized. I think that's kind of how you do it. It's not some big secret.
So for a J.Crew customer, it's a slow, gradual change, as it should be. I'm not that invested in trends, and I never have been. I can't even imagine a world where we go in, and we say to our customer, Hey, you were doing this, and now we think you really need to do this. That would be really bizarre. It's just too abrupt, and it would feel unnatural. I would even go a step further—change isn't always necessary for everybody either.
I don't expect, nor would I want everyone, to eventually end up in Giant-fit chinos. That would be just as bad for me. Because that's also a form of monoculture, right? We're just telling them to go from here to there. What I would love for society in general is for people to be more themselves, and actually be confident in being themselves, whatever that means to them.
Some people feel more comfortable in baggy stuff, some people feel more comfortable in slim stuff, and that's how it should be. I like the idea that our industry is a little more supportive of the individual, rather than trying to control the individual, and dictate to them who they should be.
That's really what marketing and advertising often does. It’s, like, This is who you should be now. The business functions in a way where we need people to buy new things all the time. So we tell them, Here's some new stuff. Check it out. This is who you are now. That's why there's billions of dollars spent on advertising and marketing agencies to convince people to buy new things.
I want people to connect with the actual brand lifestyle, the real meaning behind it. And J.Crew, historically, is a pretty honest business.
It's kind of, like, We love the beach, and we love dogs, and we love getting outside, and we love travel. If you've ever spent any time with the people at J.Crew, in the organization, that's all genuine. That's who these people really are. And that's what I love about it. And some of the policies in the organization follow that mindset. The way people treat each other in the organization follows that mindset. It's a pretty cool place, which to some people might be surprising, because it's quite a large organization. But it's pretty human.
And that's what I'm trying to get across to people more than, Buy this shirt. It's trying to encourage people to live a really full life more than anything else. And clothes, for better or for worse, just play a role in that life. We have to get dressed. I encourage people to support brands that, in a sense, support them for who they are, rather than trying to tell them who to be.
That's the hope, right? But when you start talking about economics, what you and I might think isn’t exclusionary, is to others. For plenty of people, J.Crew might even be a little bit out of their range.
But the goal, fundamentally, is to offer the best product at the best price. That is at the heart of everything we do. We're not trying to offer the cheapest product, because in some cases, quality might suffer too much. Quality might suffer too much to get the price point really down to a super democratic place.
Then you start getting into the question of value. What is the real value? And when I look at the landscape of businesses in the market, in America in particular, part of the reason I've always loved J.Crew is I think the value there is incredible. What you get for the money is amazing. And there's not a lot of brands who can accomplish that. There's not a lot of brands who even want to accomplish that. That's the other thing that I like about it: it’s kind of part of the goal.
That wouldn't necessarily be the goal for me. Things have changed since then, outside of the company. Our society has changed. I just like the idea of making really good clothing, and educating people to use those products however they see fit. If you want to take the Giant-fit chino as a really good example—you could literally dress a Bernie Sanders character in those pants, and it would be totally on-point and accurate. [You could dress] some older gentleman from Massachusetts, or Vermont, or Maine—who only wears chinos in their original form, which was quite baggy—and then you could take that guy's grandson and put him in the same pants, and he would look totally different. He's wearing a different shirt, he’s got a skateboard in his hand or whatever, but it's the same pants.
That's where I like to exist. I like to exist in this place where we make these products, they're really good, and individuals can do with them what they like. That's the goal for me. And in that way, there is no monoculture. In that world, that kind of universe that I imagine existing in the future, people need to be able to think clearly for themselves, and be very confident in who they want to be or what they want to present. It removes the power of marketing and advertising, which people in the business don't like to hear me say because that's so much of how the business works.
I'm always pushing for individuals to feel good and be successful more than I'm pushing for the corporate structure to work out. That's just how I operate. I think there's a way to do that and be successful as a business, too. It just means that as a business, you have to care about people. You have to respect people, and then you can be a part of that evolution.
Your business doesn't have to suffer if society evolves in that way. You can be a part of that. It's a mentality change that you have to have. What I've witnessed in the little over two years that I've been with J.Crew, is that there is a different mentality here than some other companies that I've been around.
I haven't worked in a lot of places, but I speak to a lot of people, and the mentality [at J.Crew] is much more human, and is a little more caring about the end user. What is their life, and what should their life be like? They care—and that's massive.
Intent is really important. If you're a painter, and your intention is to become a famous painter, to make a ton of money because artists can be wildly successful financially, I think your work suffers. It's not as important as if your intention is to just create something because you had this feeling, and you couldn't stop yourself from painting. Those two different intentions really matter.
I think business needs to be part of the solution to these really large global problems. I believe that. I believe it for Noah, I believe it for J.Crew. And what I've experienced is that at J.Crew, there are steps being taken to be part of the solution. And that's a really nice thing to be a part of, especially at scale. Noah is a small company, and when we do things, it's important and it's relevant, but it's small.
If J.Crew does something, it's quite large. So if they switch to recycled nylons, or regenerative cottons, the impact is much greater than if I did it at Noah, right? There's real volume there. It has an impact on those materials and the potential future of those materials.
Oh, of course. The @lostjcrew account is phenomenal. And what's really lovely about it is the general public gets to see the imagery that I get to see all the time. We have all the old catalogs in the office, and they're source material for me.
I get to look at that stuff all the time, and there's so much stuff that J.Crew did, and so much of it's so good. The products, the photography, the casting—it was all pretty incredible. Lostjcrew has done a really nice job of curating that so people can see it. It’s part of the American fashion landscape.
You can never underestimate the power of nostalgia. And I'm not—well, maybe I am a nostalgic person. People like that time. For me, it felt like that was just before we all realized the world can be a pretty dark place.
There's quite a few people who live in America who've always known it's a dark place. But for a lot of people there was an innocence. Some of it was ignorance, but there was innocence there, too. It was fun, and things felt safe, and I think people appreciate that, and long for it again. Now the veil's been lifted, and we see things for what they are. And I think it's a little bit scary for people. They're just looking for some security. And let's not discount the fact that the clothes were great.
They were fun, they were long-lasting, they were made well. We've got a guy in our organization who's sourcing all this vintage stuff; he's incredible at it. And he's got stuff from the first year—J.Crew Outfitters, year one—you can put on a rack and sell tomorrow. And it's in incredible shape. It held up. It stood the test of time. And that's a really important thing. I think people recognize that. I think they recognize that that period of time was an important one in American style.
Of course. We're inundated with imagery and ideas all day long that tell us we have to look good. That's a big part of our society. We're an aesthetics-driven society. We value beauty. So if you don't feel comfortable, it's kind of a hard way to go through the day. If you find something that suits you, whether it’s a great T-shirt or pants that fit you really well or whatever, and they give you just that little bit of confidence to feel good about yourself, that's massively important.
I feel proud, to some degree, of the younger generation redefining beauty standards. I think there's something really incredible about this idea that beauty standards are being shattered, and that all types of people can be considered beautiful. It really wasn't that way for a long time in the fashion business. There was one standard of beauty. I feel really excited about that for young people, particularly since I have a daughter. She's eight, and I'm encouraged by the fact that she might not encounter the struggle she could have had if she was coming up 30 years ago. That gives me some security.
I've never really thought of them as important or not—it was more just the natural order of things. It wasn't about, like, Oh, we have to make the biggest splash possible. It's more, It just needs to feel like a New York night. Let's do that. That's what people come here for.
That was really the approach to both of those events. The 40th one was obviously quite a bit bigger. But the fundamental concept is, like, Let's just make it cool for people to go out in New York. That's why we're here, that's why most of us are in New York in the first place—for what it has to offer.
It's funny, right? If the idea of something being radical is really just saying that it's in opposition to the current popular culture, then you could make the argument that J.Crew’s style—which is arguably more conservative than where we've been for the last five to ten years—would position it as radical, right?
It's counter to popular culture, which has been driven primarily by streetwear. But more importantly, the real radical nature of what people might be connecting to is this idea that you can be yourself in the clothes. And it is fundamentally radical within fashion to buy clothes that aren't expensive, or branded, or whatever, and still look good. So this is a conversation about encouraging people to have an interest in their personal style more than it is a conversation about fashion.
Fashion is just what's popular now. That can be anything, and it can change all the time. But personal style is kind of innate. It's who you are, and it's your fundamental platform that you operate from your entire life. That's really what we’re encouraging. That might be radical in the space of fashion, because we're not encouraging people to be trendy. We're just saying, We want you to look good. We want you to feel comfortable. We want you to be yourself. And if you can find those things in our space, great. And if you can't, that's fine, too. You can't be everything to everybody.
Look, it's all a matter of perspective. I could very easily agree with you and say, Yes, your assessment is 100% accurate, no questions asked. Or I could say, Well, when I was a kid in 1981, my fundamental base was preppy. That was my core style proposition. But I was also interested in other things like skateboarding. And I was there for the birth of hip-hop, and was listening to hip-hop when I was 10 and 11 years old.
Even within that space, within the hip-hop community in the early days, there was still this kind of connection to prep in some cases. Dudes wore Lacoste, or they wore Le Tigre, or whatever. It was worn differently, but in some cases it was the same product, just flipped on its head—and it was aspirational.
The clothes were always just good clothes; access was the separation point. And you're talking about a time when, quite frankly, access was much more difficult for a variety of reasons. Today, everybody can access everything—whether it be a song or a shirt—because of the way the internet works.
But if you're a business in 1983 or '84, you kind of have to choose where you go to access customers. You have to say, Well, let's try and reach these people. You really couldn't reach everybody back then. You would've had to have a zillion dollars to target every customer at every level. Today, I think the clothes are still just the clothes—but more people can see them. And then more people can choose for themselves whether it's for them or not. You can reach so many more people through just Instagram, for instance, than you could back then. Back then you had to mail a catalog to someone's house.
[Laughs] Yeah, right. That's how they did it. And obviously you couldn't send them everywhere. So I think the clothes haven't really changed, but more people can see the clothes, and then more people can choose for themselves how they wear them, or what they do with them, or if it's for them or not. That's kind of cool to me. That's interesting.
It's happened across the board. It's happened in every subculture. When I was a kid, skateboarding was always advanced in terms of its cultural position. Skateboarding was always more diverse than other parts of our society, more open, more progressive.
But it still was a very white sport. I had friends that I skated with that weren't white. It was a mixed bag, but that was in New York. It wasn't that long ago that we saw a really massive shift in demographics in the world of skateboarding. It really became super diverse probably 15, 20 years ago. If you go back to the '80s, it wasn't like there were loads of people of color in skateboarding. Everything is kind of cracked open now, and we're moving in the right direction, I think, as a society. We have a lot of work to do and a long way to go, but it feels like things are going the way they should.
It's not the goal. It would be nice, but I don't think it's the standard. I think it does happen, and it will happen. But I don't think it's the stated goal. J.Crew, whether it attracts a very young customer or not, will be totally fine. Because everybody evolves, and everybody grows up.
We all get older, and we have great products for people as they get older. I don't think we're going, Hey, how do we get the young kid in the store? I think we will get the young kid who thinks for his or herself, and really disregards all the things they're told, or just goes, like, I'm going to go in there, and I'm going to find something I like. And it's going to be at a good price, and I'm going to make it look cool.
That kid is advanced. And that kid has always existed. They're a small segment of the market. They don't really need to be told what to do or how to do it. They're going to figure it out on their own. They're going to do what they want to do.
They'll shop in J.Crew, and then they might go to Stüssy. Then they might go to a vintage store. My goal is to make sure that I'm satisfying those kinds of independent thinkers. Those people who have really good style, who are not really abiding by the rules that are being thrown at them on a daily basis.
I just want to make sure that that person, if they walk in the door, looks around and goes, Yeah, this is good. I can do this. I would hate to think that somebody who thinks for themselves can't find something in a J.Crew store. That would be a disappointment for me.
It's funny, because I said that as a representation of myself. I've always come in with that kind of pessimistic attitude. I've always thought that way. And you make a very valid point about J.Crew—there is this kind of unfailing optimism, which for me is incredible.
I appreciate that counterpoint to my fundamental starting point of pessimism. It's important for me to be around that level of optimism. What you're feeling and reading in the catalogs—or [encountering in the] photography or website—it's actually pretty genuine. The people that work there and the leadership team there: it’s how they operate, and it's kind of refreshing for me to go there, to be around that energy.
It's really nice to be reminded that the world isn't so bad sometimes. You can find beauty everywhere. There is still so much good. And I've tried, to some degree, to adopt some of that into my life. I admittedly struggle with it, and I have to remind myself. But whenever I'm feeling really grim about things, I try to remember that.
I think she's pretty optimistic. Because my wife is incredibly optimistic.
Yeah, I really hope that she continues on that path, and she takes more of my wife's view of the world than my own. Because I think it's the right approach, quite honestly. Pessimism doesn't really do much. It can be, when you're younger; there's a darkness that maybe has a little bit of a sexiness to it or something. But it doesn't serve you very well in the long run to be a pessimist, or to be negative. Nothing really good comes from that. I don't want to confuse things, though—there's pessimism and negativity, and then there's reality. I can be very critical of things. I view that as a necessity. I think if we don't have a critical society, we have no standards.
It's important for us to be honest about whether something's good or not. Again, what's good and what's not can vary depending on who you ask. But I do think that we need some standards. So I can be viewed as negative sometimes just by being honest about it. Like if I'm critiquing a song, or a collection, or a dinner, or whatever it is. It can be viewed as negative, and my position is, well, no, I'm just trying to say whether it's good or not so we can have some standards. Because if everything's good, nothing's good.
[Laughs] I don't. Like I said, I'm trying to skew more positive. So I don't want to be too judgmental of where people find comfort, joy, or happiness. Everyone's different. Everyone's experience is different. It'd be pretty rude of me to think, Well, I'm going to judge you, because you found this moment of comfort in buying a pair of pants.
I think what you have to really get into then is: Why is something bringing you joy? There's a why behind it. I was raised with very little. We didn't have much. It wasn't a disaster, but I had a job when I was 13. I was trying to earn my own money so I could have the things I wanted. And I remember what it was like to get something that I really wanted for the first time that might've been a reach. That holds tremendous value, when you don't have much, and you can get something, and it brings you joy because you're like, Oh man, I really wanted this thing.
But sometimes, things bring people joy for what might be the wrong reasons. There’s a difference between earning something—really, truly earning something—and just buying something because it's expensive and you can get it. You have this really quick moment [of joy], but you might not value it quite as much. Does that make sense?
It’s subtle. And subtlety—whether it be subtlety in a person's presentation, how they speak, or how they dress—requires some level of competence. It requires an ability to not lean on things, to not lean on some wild piece of clothing, or your car, or whatever it is to get attention. You're relying on yourself, and that takes confidence.
The hope is that—outside of J.Crew, just generally speaking—we can build a society where people are given confidence through the various kinds of social infrastructures that can offer it. And they're being told positive things about themselves through film, or music, or photography.
That's how we build individuals who can be confident and feel good about themselves. And historically, we've failed at that. This country has failed at making everyone feel confident, and included, and secure in who they were. But the younger generations are moving in a better direction. They're changing that storyline a bit.
No, not entirely. I think businesses function differently than a society, because they have to make money to stay in business. So choices might be made differently. But I don't think it's too much to ask. I think some businesses can do it, and some can't. The consumers should have the power.
If they only want to shop with brands that they feel aligned with, they can shape the landscape of businesses in the future. And that’s incredible. Long before I started Noah, we were talking about how people can really drive change through how they spend their money. And they can decide who stays around and who doesn't.
It's really a war between the people trying to get the things they want or need in life, and advertising and marketing. Can the advertising and marketing dollars be spent in a way that's powerful enough to overcome an individual's real needs and desires and wants for themselves? So far, I think, advertising and marketing wins. That’s the reason people still drink drinks that are killing them, and smoke cigarettes. They're being overpowered.
I honestly don't know if I can answer that question. Now you're talking about a fundamental economic infrastructural evolution that I'm not sure is possible in my lifetime. Because you've got to change the entire value structure of the society in order to change all of that; everybody has to agree that making as much money as possible isn't the end goal.
But unfortunately, that's kind of the rule right now. It's, like, Hey, try and make as much money as you can. For some people it's a lot, and for some people it's a little, but everyone's goal is pretty much the same: Let me get more. And the unfortunate reality is most people don't get enough. The people who control most of the wealth have an insane amount of wealth, more than they could ever use. And that's where the system goes kind of sideways.
If that wasn't the case, wealth would be a little bit more evenly distributed and things would be a little bit better for the society at large. More people would be better off than they currently are today. That's bigger than the business.