J Brand: from jeans to full fashion label

Global industry changing businessman, Jeff Rudes, the founder of noughties denim success story, J Brand, has announced plans to turn the long standing, luxury jean staple label into a fully blown fashion label. The first step: a well executed and received

presentation of the AW13 collection during New York fashion week. The pieces fit with the fashion mood of the moment - wearable separates, baggier, borrowed from the boyfriend shapes, and luxe fabrics.

Rudes, who has been credited with altering the face of the jean market with this megalith, which makes ‘anonymous’, perfectly cut jeans to fit from day to evening in the wardrobe of everyone from Hollywood’s A-list to a stylish mother, has sold a majority stake to Japanese company, Fast Retailing, who also owns the likes of Helmut Lang and Uniqlo.

While other businesses rely on data, fashion fairytales start with a hunch. The denim market is crowded, was crowded eight years ago when Rudes’ faith was with the opposite of what was “in” at the time. “For us, it was always about dressing a woman in a chic way,” he says. “I had experiences in the jean space and knew it was the moment to change.” J Brand has pushed skinny as far as anatomically possible (ankle zips help). “We knew who was buying the jeans at the start. It was the fashion savvy girl. But aspirationally, we knew it would go more mass because what we saw was, when anyone tried on our jeans, she looked amazing. And who doesn’t want to look amazing?”

And keep watching this space, there seems to be plenty more ideas in the pipeline (sorry!)