3 Style Lessons in 15 Minutes
That's what you get when you shop with Joyce Lee
I moved to New York City in 2012 for my first job — well, actually, an internship that turned into a job — at J.Crew.
After an extremely detailed vetting process (truly, they should have made this internship program into reality TV), the company sorting-hatted each of us into departments. I was told I was a merchant. I had no idea what that meant at the time, but a decade later it would be the reason I felt confident enough to quit my editorial career and start my own retail business.
When I got to 770 Broadway, J.Crew’s corporate headquarters,
was already busy ascending the design ranks at their new (resurrection of an old) workwear brand, called Madewell – where I had worked retail in college, at the Century City Mall in LA, during the original Alexa Chung collab era.While I was learning how to assort men’s chinos, crying into my spreadsheets (no one had prepared me for how many v-lookups were involved in this job), I would daydream about what was happening over in the Madewell corner of the office. Everything they were doing felt so fresh and new and exciting. And Joyce was behind all of it.
Remember the Transport Tote? If you don’t know it by name, you probably recognize it.
This is a prime example of a Joyce Lee joint: a bag that is just as beautiful as it is functional. Something that is designed to be lugged around with your whole life in it for years.
Joyce thinks not only about what women want to wear, but how they need to be able to wear it. Over an incredible 15 years at Madewell, she went on to become the creative director of the brand. And during that era, she became a major influence on my personal style – and that of countless other women.
Fast-forward to last year. Joyce had recently left Madewell, and I decided to DM her. She had begun making these custom, instantly-iconic boat bags, and I wanted one…but also, I wanted to meet her.
A zoom hang turned into a lunch date turned into Joyce now being someone I feel lucky to be able to text when I’m in any sort of style dilemma. Which is to say, she is as kind and warm and generous as she is brilliant.
I ran into her recently at the launch of our friend Madeleine’s fall denim line (PSA: if you are short, you should know about Nelle Atelier’s petite jeans).
Chatting while walking out of the event in Soho, we realized we both had the same destination in mind. And that’s how we found ourselves in an impromptu shopping trip in my favorite (and, sadly, one of the only remaining) multibrand womenswear shops: No. 6.
As we started to go through the racks, packed with fall newness in candy colors and nubby fabrics, she asked me what I was looking for. “What do you need right now?” she asked, and I laughed. “Nothing,” I replied, “what kind of question is that?”
Joyce is one of those people who you instantly feel comfortable sharing your innermost anxieties with. I told her that recently I had been feeling like I can’t really define, or even describe, my personal style at all. I’m all over the place, I explained, and I just buy things that I like in that moment, but I’m not sure how those pieces fit in to any kind of guiding aesthetic.
“But why do you need to define your style?” she asked. And then she said, “maybe you just need
’s three words.”“What’s that?” I asked. I had somehow never heard of this concept (although it’s been extensively covered), wherein you choose three adjectives — one practical, one aspirational, and one emotional — to encapsulate your personal style.
But before Joyce could begin to explain any of that, she stopped dead in her rack-perusing tracks. I saw her eyes before I saw the jacket. She was in love.
It was a pearlescent, cloud-like shape that looked like a pillow descended from heaven. She slipped it on, and her entire face lit up. It was somehow incredibly soft and incredibly cool at the same time.
Upon further inspection, we discovered the jacket was reversible. She had fallen for its ethereal quality – but on its other side was a matte gray finish, for a sportier alter-ego.
Not only was this jacket actually two jackets in one. It was half the price that she had originally guessed it to be off the rack.
I think I knew for sure before she did: She had to have this jacket. I took lots of photos of her in it to make my case, and upon looking at them, she agreed.
It only feels fitting that, in the process of explaining a very helpful framework for defining your personal style, Joyce unlocked lesson number two of this 15-minute shopping trip: you have to be willing to ditch that framework.
Sometimes, the pearly, puffy jacket finds you. And whether or not that jacket may have fit into your personal style definition before you met it, it does now. Because that jacket makes you feel something. And when an article of clothing makes you feel something, you listen.
And then of course, there’s the third lesson: Never say no to an impromptu shopping trip. You never know where (or to what jacket) it will lead you.