The Rowing Blazers founder breathes new life into the heritage brand as he takes the creative reins.

Jack Carlson has a story he likes to tell about George H.W. Bush. Back in 1980, during his first run at the White House, Bush was giving a speech at Yale, his alma mater, and being heckled by some students. At one point, someone shouted out that Bush was nothing more than a &ldquo;Brooks Brothers Republican&rdquo;&mdash;an out-of-touch, self-regarding, Ivy League smoothie. Bush, gently offended by the implication, calmly opened his sport coat to reveal a different logo on its inner lining. &ldquo;I wear J. Press, thank you.&rdquo; The uprising was immediately quelled.&nbsp;
&ldquo;I love that,&rdquo; says Carlson, who has just been minted as the new creative director and president at the 123-year-old outfitter. &ldquo;The humor comes because J. Press is arguably even more Ivy League; it&rsquo;s the even more ivory tower label.&rdquo; And yet, somehow, also the more charming and disarming of the two; a brand that is so comfortable in its privilege as to be entirely down to earth. Like an oil stain from a bike chain on a pair of perfectly pleated slacks. A sort of American sprezzatura.

Photography courtesy of J. Press.

This is how it has appeared to several generations of men-in-the-know, certainly. The Kennedy boys were fans. (So were Roosevelt, Ford, and Clinton, as it happens.) Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis loved its soft-shouldered slouch. George Plimpton was in many ways the marque&rsquo;s spirit animal&mdash;the man whose style Women&rsquo;s Wear Daily once described as Wobbly WASP, his Oxford collar permanently askew beneath a Shetland jumper. To men of a certain stripe (and I use the term advisedly), J. Press was the de facto uniform, from prep school to embalmer. &ldquo;I actually got many of my first shirts and ties and blazers from J. Press in Harvard Square,&rdquo; says Carlson. When he came home from school as a kid, his parents were bemused that he didn&rsquo;t want to change out of his school preppy clothes. Well, why would you wear anything else?&nbsp;
And then, at some point in the 21st century, prep&mdash;or Ivy, more accurately&mdash;disappeared entirely beneath the horizon line. Perhaps it was the inevitable hangover from that early noughties period of high street, frat boy preppiness&mdash;two Abercrombie &amp; Fitch collars popped at once; a mop of blonde hair above bad aviator shades. Perhaps it was the skinny-jeaned fever dream of <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/indie-sleaze-aesthetic-2010s-trend-comeback-era" target="_blank" rel="noopener">indie sleaze</a>. Perhaps it was simply the all-powerful hype of the #menswear era. But <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/shopping/neck-ties-fashion-trend-shopping" target="_blank" rel="noopener">preppy</a>, from about 2007 to maybe 2016, was pretty much a dirty word.&nbsp;
It was about that time, in fact, that Carlson started Rowing Blazers&mdash;the company that has done more than perhaps anyone else (take that, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/ralph-lauren-classic-timeless-runway-moments-90s-knitwear" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mr. Lauren!</a>) to keep the preppy daydream afloat. It came about first as a coffee-table book&mdash;a beautiful glossy monograph on, well, rowing blazers from around the world and the institutions that sported them. (Carlson was a member of the U.S. National Rowing Team, as well as the captain of Georgetown&rsquo;s rowing club and a member of the Oxford University Boat Club.) After this, Carlson began making actual blazers for rowing clubs, before expanding quickly into all sorts of preppy-adjacent apparel. Everyone told him it was a terrible idea. &ldquo;I had friends of mine in the industry who were like, As a friend, I'm advising you not to do this,&rdquo; he laughs. &ldquo;They said, Preppy is dead.&rdquo;&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/kylie-jenner-timothee-chalamet-red-carpet-debut-sheer-schiaparelli-gown" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Timoth&eacute;e Chalamet</a> didn&rsquo;t agree. Nor did Pete Davidson, Justin Bieber, <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/pop-culture/young-photos-of-gwyneth-paltrow-astronomer-spokesperson-chris-martin-coldplay" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gwyneth Paltrow</a>, or Russell Westbrook&mdash;all devoted fans of the brand early on. Growing up, Carlson had wanted to be a cartoonist, and as we chat he takes me on a tour of his New York apartment, its walls patchworked with framed illustrations and esoteric prints. My favorite is a poster of an alligator wearing a Lacoste polo shirt with a human as the logo&mdash;Save an Alligator: Eat a Preppie for Lunch, it reads. That cartoonist&rsquo;s eye was key to Rowing Blazers&rsquo; early success. In a world of austere streetwear on the catwalk, the brand&rsquo;s hallmark became a sort of joyful, high-color referentialism&mdash;collaborations with the Babar estate and Tintin, say, that carried the preppy garb away from snootiness and into warmth and affection.&nbsp;
An early coup came when the brand did a collaboration with Harry&rsquo;s Bar in <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/paul-poiret-fashion-is-a-feast-exhibition-mad-paris" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Paris</a>, a then-unheard-of crossover which came about when Carlson simply called up the bar owner and asked. Nowadays, every single luxury fashion house under the sun is doing pop-ups and collabs with famous restaurants and bars and hotels, in an attempt to borrow some second-hand heritage from these storied institutions. But RB did it first. Preppy is back at a designer level, too. The cool kids now wear Lacoste polos on the Lower East Side and in Dalston. <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/jonathan-anderson-creative-director-dior-womens-mens-couture-debut-collection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jonathan Anderson</a>&rsquo;s much-anticipated first collection at Dior this spring could have been, in parts, taken from the wardrobe of a 62-year-old Oxford don. The style world finds itself in a nostalgic mood&mdash;harking back to a clubby, understated, &ldquo;old money&rdquo; aesthetic and a simpler, pre-internet moment. We are all John F. Kennedy Jr. now.&nbsp;
Which makes Carlson&rsquo;s appointment to the helm of J. Press feel particularly timely. If any brand has the credentials to capitalize on the third coming of prep, it is this one. J. Press&rsquo;s longevity and manufacturing quality are unmatched. (It&rsquo;s telling that the brand has long been beloved in <a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/travel-living/lofficiel-coffee-cafe-opens-tokyo-japan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Japan</a>, the most quality-conscious market in the world. In fact, the company has been owned, since 1986, by the Japanese clothing house Onward Kashiyama.) On his second day in the job, Carlson went to visit the factory in Queens where J. Press still makes its ties. He spotted an older man sitting on the factory floor, and they got chatting. The man said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been making ties for J. Press for over 50 years,&rdquo; Carlson remembers. &ldquo;It blew me away.&rdquo; There are stories like that across the country. J. Press makes its rugby shirts, tees, and sweatshirts in California and Oregon. &ldquo;We make suits and blazers and sport coats in New York City and in upstate New York,&rdquo; he adds. &ldquo;A lot of these factories are multi-generational. You just don&rsquo;t hear about things like that anymore.&rdquo;

How does Carlson see the next chapter of this long history playing out? &ldquo;Everything I do, I want it to be very true to J. Press and its roots,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;And I think in many ways, actually, my job is to bring it back to these roots in a way. Some of that means telling the story of the stuff it&rsquo;s been doing all along: the made-in-USA part, the made-in-Scotland heritage.&rdquo; But also, he says, the Japanese thread to the story. &ldquo;I think it's a huge feather in our cap to have had the endorsement of Japan for all these years, with the country&rsquo;s incredible level of care and rigor. So without revealing too much, I want to bring the Japanese side of things to the fore with a number of projects and collaborations,&rdquo; he says. He&rsquo;ll also encourage a little more seasonality to collections (&ldquo;although J. Press is not fashion with a capital F&rdquo;), and editorialize their presentation more. &ldquo;But at the end of the day, the Mount Rushmore of J. Press products is still the button-down Oxford shirt, the navy blue blazer, the khaki trouser, and the shaggy dog sweater,&rdquo; Carlson says. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m certainly not going to go and change those things up.&rdquo;
The Mount Rushmore reference is a useful one. A brand so beloved by past presidents can&rsquo;t help but be aware that America finds itself in a challenging political present. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of change in the U.S., and it&rsquo;s a moment where being patriotic or waving the flag&mdash;all these things can have political undertones to them,&rdquo; says Carlson. &ldquo;I think J. Press is refreshing, in a way, because it&rsquo;s all of those things, but without the political charge of partisan feeling or polarizing narrative. It is quintessentially American,&rdquo; he concludes. &ldquo;But it wears this in a kinder, gentler, much more genteel way.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s a fine time for the return of the brand that never left.

Jack Carlson Makes His Debut at J. Press as Prep Stages Its Comeback

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