J.Crew CMO Julia Collier on Marketing Americana in Modern Times

Last week, guests including creative director Terrence O’Connor, gallerist Hannah Traore, and actor Yesly Dimate spent two days in New York’s Adirondack mountains. They were at Camp Crew, the adult summer camp that’s the backdrop for J.Crew’s latest brand trip and campaign. Chief marketing officer Julia Collier conceived the concept — but she didn’t join the guests for the canoe races, dockside swims, and sunset boat rides.

“What we found with the Italy trip [last summer] was that not having an official brand representation there allowed for people to connect in a way more authentic way,” Collier says. “I felt quite strongly about there not being a me, or an Olympia [Gayot, J.Crew’s creative director], to take it outside of that traditional brand trip thing.” (J.Crew’s director of PR was along for the ride, to make sure things ran smoothly.)

Collier jokes that she couldn’t help but micromanage from afar. The trip was part of a larger campaign she had conceived around the 250th anniversary of the United States. “It’s impossible to ignore America 250,” she says. “Whilst we don’t think it’s right for us to align closely with it, it is an important moment to recognize that we are an American brand and we’re very proud of that. And what we represent to people is a part of America that is nostalgic.”

The resulting marketing initiative was a multi-pronged effort that involved an initial campaign featuring 2010s supermodels — all former Victoria’s Secret Angels — in a summer camp setting; the Camp Crew brand trip; and pop-ups and activations in Chicago (June 13-14), Georgetown (June 13), New Jersey (June 13), and Nashville (June 19-20). The limited-edition Camp Crew capsule collection is available to buy at each activation.

Collier looked at talent who she thought would get along, even if they didn’t all know one another.

It’s a reflection of British-born Collier’s approach to marketing since she joined the all-American brand as CMO at the beginning of 2025 after five years at Skims, four of which she spent as SVP of brand marketing. She joined at a moment when J.Crew was back on the rise, in both financials and the cultural conversation, following the brand’s 2020 bankruptcy filing. Under CEO Libby Wadle, who took the helm in November 2020, J.Crew has once again established itself as a modern American player.

But J.Crew is now competing in a scene that’s more saturated than the days of J.Crew’s famous catalogs, as brands like Gap and Abercrombie claw back their once-huge market share, and the Zaras of the world continue their push upmarket, all bolstered by buzzy campaigns with big talent in front of and behind the camera. Collier’s job is to make J.Crew stand out from the crowd with a modern marketing playbook that utilizes — but also pushes beyond — the nostalgia factor.

Since joining J.Crew, Collier has built hype around J.Crew’s clothes (like the Rollneck sweater) and collaborations (like the US Ski & Snowboard collab) by leaning into the brand’s heritage, without resting on its laurels. Camp Crew is the brand’s latest initiative that endeavors to strike a balance. “Even if you have all the money in the world, what you don’t have is people’s attention all the time,” she says. “You have to pick your moments.” Here’s how she picks them.

J.Crew built out a whole summer camp. “There were no smoke and mirrors there,” Collier says.

What consumers want from J.Crew, Collier argues, is nostalgia. It’s what she’s learned from trawling J.Crew Reddit threads, where users pine for old J.Crew catalogs as much as they do, like the brand’s “OG Cece flats” and “original pullover anoraks”. But too much nostalgia risks hindering creativity. The way J.Crew opts to do so, while continuing to scale and grow as a brand, is through its imagery. “It’s less about leveraging nostalgia and more about the emotion that’s attached to that. It is comfort, it is reliability, and it is something very universally human that I like to tap into,” Collier says. “It’s why that Instagram account is so popular,” she adds, nodding to the @lostjcrew Instagram account, which resurfaces old J.Crew catalogs.

Harkening back to the past is not without tension. In casting a bevy of 2015 Victoria’s Secret Angels — Jasmine Tookes, Josephine Skriver, Martha Hunt, Sara Sampaio, and Taylor Hill — the brand risks falling into the traps of VS itself, harkening back to a time when brands didn’t concern themselves with now-baseline expectations of inclusivity. But, Collier argues, it’s about bringing the ‘then’ into the ‘now’. “I looked to them in 2015 as the pinnacle of cool,” she says. Featuring them, together, in 2026 works only when the shoot makes it feel contemporary, she argues, from the set to the styling to the water balloons used. It could almost be in an old J.Crew catalog — but the cut of the bikini, or the shoes on the models’ feet, suggests otherwise.

Americana is also a tougher sell in 2026 than it was during J.Crew’s early-2000s heyday, but Collier is focused on the positives. “I keep going back to the optimism of America. Especially as an English person, that’s how I look at America — through these rose-tinted shades sometimes.”

J.Crew reunited the Victoria’s Secret models of the 2010s.

While navigating nostalgia is all about striking a fine balance, when it comes to the Americana of it all, Collier is wary of trying to do too much, even as division in the US means many brands are scrambling to speak to different subsets. “If we are strict with ourselves around our brand pillars when it comes to America — confidence, optimism, ease — you can build really passionate communities around that,” she says. “Marketing in America today is about policing yourself a little bit with what you want to stand for and what you want to put out in terms of being ‘an American brand’. If you try to say too much, as we know as consumers, you’re not saying anything at all. We are hit with so much from brands that are trying to be so many things.”

J.Crew may have been built on catalogs, but these days, it’s a marketing machine, rotating through a roster of talent, collaborations, and brand trips to project the brand into the mainstream, especially amongst younger audiences.

While at Skims, Collier aimed to cast talent that would spur the reaction ‘I can’t believe they did Skims’, resulting in campaigns featuring everyone from Lana del Rey to Usher to breakout White Lotus stars. “We were always trying to prove ourselves,” she says. At J.Crew, the 40-year-strong foundation is in place, so talent is a different type of lever. It’s leveraged to appeal to the younger generation, whether to capture their attention with a slew of 2010s models or to pique their interest with up-and-comers like actors Molly Gordon and Benito Skinner, both of whom featured in the brand’s Rollneck campaign at the end of last year. “You have this initial frame of reference that is in the past, and it’s through casting contemporary people, or doing something newsworthy with a reunion, or whatever it may be, that takes it forward,” Collier says.

Collaborations are underscored by a similar ethos. J.Crew has collaborated with independent designers from Maryam Nassir Zadeh to Christopher John Rogers, and last year enlisted five indie New York designers to remix the classic Rollneck sweater, bringing a new, fashion-y audience to J.Crew. Larger collabs with entities like US Ski & Snowboard, on the flip side, are about driving hype among a large consumer base through crossovers that the brand builds out through storytelling campaigns (see: the characters built around the five featured athletes).

Trips are the most restrained lever. Collier keeps them small, short, and ultra-curated, designed to round out the world of whatever it is they’re pushing (in this case, Camp Crew). Both in Puglia last year and upstate New York this year, attendees were relatively niche, known in their circles but not necessarily far beyond. Collier isn’t inviting the career influencer with tens of millions of followers; she’s looking to New York’s creative community, bringing in creators whose work extends beyond social media.

Is this limiting? “Our existing audience wants something specific from J.Crew. My goal is never to alienate them — that would be disastrous. They should always feel included. But with these types of activations, it’s really with the goal of acquisition.” As with the indie brand collaborations, J.Crew is targeting a young, tapped-in consumer who is as interested in the personalities on the trip as they are in the vintage-y American aesthetic (which caters to the brand’s broader base).

Consumers want in. Camp Crew may be wrapping soon, but Collier has seen comments asking whether they can come and visit. “Maybe next year,” she says.