Jenna Lyons to net million dollar exit package from J. Crew

Jenna Lyons, the bespectacled former creative director at J. Crew, will receive her annual salary of 1 million dollars for one full year when she exits the business on 9 December.

Until then, Lyons has been named an 'advisor' to the business, a polite way to communicate she no longer wields any creative power.

J. Crew is now facing the challenge of ending its multi-year slump, of which the numbers haven't lied. The company saw its fiscal year ending 28 January fall 2 percent to 695 million dollars from last year, with its debt standing at 1.5 billion dollars, down only 6 percent from five years ago.

The latest annual filing from J.Crew showed that Lyons may not be so badly off once she leave. She still owns 296,296 class L shares, 1,777,777 class A common shares and fully vested options to buy 1.8 million class A shares at 10 cents each, according to Barron's.

She also had unvested options to buy 3 million class A shares and unvested performance-based options to buy 3 million class A shares; both sets of options had exercise prices of 10 cents a share. Lyons also had 2 million in restricted class A shares that had not vested yet.

While the fashion world awaits what Ms Lyons will do next, she will no doubt avoid breeching her six months non-compete, in order to keep her pay out. Lyons once told the Wall Street Journal, "In another life, I would love to be a magazine editor." Let's see if the world of publishing is where she will head to next.

Photo credit:Jenna Lyons, source: Jeanstories.com