Summer Collection: J Crew, a Dress, and a Dog

Desiree, a salesperson at my go-to store, once said of the J Crew design team, “They don’t disappoint.”

Ella dress in porcelain paisley, jcrew.com

She’s spot-on. I mean, look at this dress.

Yes, I borrowed the photo from the J Crew site without asking permission. It’s fair use since I’m commenting on it. But please, Jenna Lyons, charge me with piracy.

Throw me in J Crew jail where I’ll be forced to wear navy blue and white reverse sailor stripes and work in exotic locales like Tanzania, Bali, and New Zealand.

Sentence me to a lifetime of schoolboy blazers, cotton capris with a hint of stretch, and vintage V-neck tees in Byzantine blue, heather graphite, and the perfect shade of bright plum circa spring 2010.

Now about this dress named Ella. Exquisite. Prettiest thing I’ve seen since last month’s J Crew catalog. Oozes summertime when the living is easy.

If you read this blog, you know my dog’s name is Ella. Perhaps Jenna Lyons has been reading this blog, too, and she’s been inspired.

“See that little dog Ella?” I can hear her telling the crew at the Crew. “Who owns a creature of such intelligence, taste, and style? Feel the epistle. Inhabit the epistle. Express the epistle!”

Ella dog in wheaten fur

Voilà. Out comes the Ella dress in porcelain paisley. Named after my dog. And a steal at only… $298?!

Why do you do this to me, Jenna?

How could you design a dress for me at the end of the traditional spring-summer shopping season when my clothing budget is as dry as the sun-scorched earth of Al Gore’s inconvenient truth?

How could you introduce it in May—the month of Mother’s Day gifts, graduations, and summer camp deposits? How could you name it after my dog then price it oh so high above me?

This is one reason J Crew is successful. Besides quality, design, color, and hipness factor, J Crew appeals to those of us in the masses as attainable and out of reach at the same time.

That, and they steal writers’ dogs’ names for their dresses.

A girl’s gotta dream.

Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. 1 Corinthians 10:14 NIV

Tempted by Squeeze.

How do you keep your idols at bay?

17 thoughts on “Summer Collection: J Crew, a Dress, and a Dog”

  1. Pingback: Go for Broke? A Blogger’s Dilemma | everyday epistle

  2. But do you actually go any place where you could WEAR the dress? That’s my problem…I have all these great fashion dreams, but I work at home…in my jammies. ;-) I guess I could glam up for the cat. :-)

    1. The cat would love the dress. Cats are diehard fashionistas :)

      Seriously, I’ve bought strapless party dresses as my spring dress-up outfits for the past two years. I’ve been able to wear them to parties, graduations, weddings, Mother’s Day at church… And I can dress them down with flat sandals and wear them on vacations when we’ve gone out to dinner. That said, with two strapless dresses in the closet already, my shopping list specifically read NO MORE STRAPLESS DRESSES! So I settled for the skirt instead.

  3. Such a great point about why we love J Crew–attainable, yet out of reach. Sigh. Luckily my kids make shopping a complete nightmare, so I don’t do it much. Here’s to treating yourself to the dress that was meant for you.

    1. Well, I tried it on and it was fabulous, but I couldn’t justify spending the money. I compromised and bought the skirt in the same pattern instead. Figure I can get a lot of wear out of it as a separate.

  6. I see I’m not the only one to worship at the altar of J. Crew. :P

    The Ella dress (found on page 4 of the June catalog) is my favorite too!

  9. That dress is awesome. Unfortunately the decimal point is two digits off. Well heck, for something so cool, I’d be cool with only one digit off, either.

    Keeping my idols at bay is easy – most of the stores I “lovelovelove” are only in Europe, some of them only in Hungary. Out of sight, out of mind. :) Well, not out of mind, but out of the reach of my shopping cart, at the very least. :D

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