Maggie Bullock, who has written a book on J. Crew, reported that upon the release of the Fast Company issue, a senior executive at the company (not Mr. Drexler, who denied knowledge of these incidents) “sent a team of employees out.” to pick up on any problem they could find” to soften the impact of the story.
Yet neither J. Crew nor Ms. Lyons have reached the same heady heights of relevance over the past five years that they had reached together. (She appeared in three episodes of Girls. Beyoncé attended the inaugural J. Crew presentation at New York Fashion Week.)
Ms. Lyons has since filled her days with gigs: brand collaborations (jewelry, furniture, lipsticks), board appointments, and a few interior design jobs. In 2018, she announced a partnership with Turner Entertainment, resulting in her year-long show Stylish With Jenna Lyons. In 2020, she joined Instagram and in her first month posted photos of her dog Popeye, some censored nudes and herself undergoing lice treatment. After founding LoveSeen that year, inspired by her own lack of lashes, her career took off, but not to the extent she had hoped. “My star isn’t big enough to support this brand alone,” she said.
Ms Bullock was still working on her book The Kingdom of Prep when the surprise announcement Housewives came out. It made sense to her that Ms. Lyons turned. After being “as central to the fashion discussion” as the designer at J. Crew, “how do you get back to anonymity?” she said.
But for Ms Lyons’ former colleagues, “it was kind of unthinkable to join this other team,” according to Ms Bullock. “People who’d worked with her in the past would say, ‘Does she have some kind of mental break?'”
There are famous fashion people like Ms. Lyons and then there are famous reality stars like Bethenny Frankel, NeNe Leakes or Lisa Vanderpump. They each have more than three million followers on Instagram; Ms. Lyons has about 275,000. She clearly remembers one piece of advice Mr. Cohen gave her when discussing the role: “‘All I can say is, you can’t hide. Once you’re on the show, there’s no hiding.’”