Living a Curated Life: The J. Crew Mom Aesthetic By Sarah V.

Link to the image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/27396076461 

A J. Crew Mom isn’t necessarily a mom to anything other than a classic 1988 Rollneck Sweater, one of the most famous items sold by J. Crew, that she undoubtedly bought from the men’s section. When she wears it nobody questions her femininity. She most definitely looks fabulous because she is wholly content in her comfortable outerwear. The J. Crew Mom dresses almost androgynously in items that are so simple they would be considered basic if it were not for their immaculate fit and exemplary quality. 

She is a working woman who dresses to be taken seriously like a corporate boss while feeling cozy and unhindered by the unimportant fashion burdens, such as annoyingly high heels and tight pencil skirts. She seems too effortless to be vain. Her hair is perfectly messy to the point where it’s wavy like she was just hanging out at the beach. She doesn’t look like she puts on any makeup. She just has a healthy natural glow.

Her favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla, which is normally considered boring. However, she loves it regardless because you can eat it by itself or put it on top of a pie or a cake on an extra special day. She prioritizes versatility and practicality because she is too busy doing important things, like going to work or taking her children for walks on the beach, to waste her time on the minute details. She is simply put together.

For this reason, everybody wants to be her. Now more than ever, we see girls dressing up in their dads’ Banana Republic Sweaters that they stole from their closets. We see it on Pinterest and TikTok and try to emulate it because we want our looks to mirror the aesthetic of the J. Crew Mom. But when we go out in those clothes, we look basic, and the effect just doesn’t hit the same as it did for the J. Crew Mom. We always go home wondering why. Then we go online and look for clothes that aren’t basic, and we find ourselves buying clothes that fit some microtrend that started suddenly on social media and will just as quickly fade next week. We decided that we loved those clothes because some random kids at school noticed that we dressed to fit a short-lived trend. But a couple of months later, we realize that we don’t feel comfortable wearing those clothes out because they don’t suit us. This begs the question: how do we live up to the J. Crew Mom image?

The answer is we don’t. The reason that the J. Crew Mom is so appealing is because her aesthetic was carefully cultivated over many generations by the designers of J. Crew who have studied fashion in depth and analyzed the longevity of trends to a larger extent than we common folk can fathom. When we think of the J. Crew Mom, we think of New England beaches in the summer with a slightly chilly breeze. It’s a curated image that has been fine-tuned over decades and decades. What we really want is to have her effortless swagger, so we chose to dress like her. Think back to the clothes she wears. She doesn’t wear too many different types of clothes, but everything she wears seems to fit so seamlessly together. 

That’s what our wardrobe should be: a small collection of pieces that fit seamlessly together inspired by the things that make the wearer happy. So now, when one of us thinks about what they want to add to their wardrobe, they should remember the things that inspire them: their favorite food, their favorite color, their favorite place. But they should never forget to wear high-quality, comfortable pieces to be just as effortless as the J. Crew Mom.