I loved J.Crew. And I admired Mickey Drexler. And that is why I am often confounded how the coolest brand in the world become faded, a footnote in the history of retail. There is absolutely nothing they offer that I want to own. And this is me, who lives in their T-shirts, white shirts and khakis. This article in the recent issue of Vanity Fair tells the story of its decline. However, for me, this was the standout paragraph:
That intercom, as omnipresent and disruptive as the squawking principal’s office P.A. system of yore, was his unsubtle way of keeping an entire company both slightly on edge and immersed at all times in his own rapid-fire mental stream. Day in, day out, he flicked it on, whether to play the Springsteen song that had just popped up on his iPhone, or to share a meditation on something he’d spotted “in the atmosphere,” as he put it—the violinist character in the movie he just saw; the service at the restaurant where he’d just eaten—that might, in some obscure way, inform their work at J. Crew.
There are so many similarities in Drexler’s intercom and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s twitter stream. Elon too keeps everyone on edge, sometimes random, sometimes brilliant, but mostly engaging. There is a reason why he has nearly 27 million followers!