Dress Shirt
How J.Crew engineered its top seller
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J.Crew, the haute prep retailer in the midst of a menswear renaissance—the chain was sold for $3 billion in late 2010—makes dozens of styles of dress shirts. Its most popular: the Thomas Mason fabric point-collar dress shirt in white, which accounts for a fifth of its top-of-the-line shirt sales. Why are people going nuts over a simple white button-down that sells for $135? It’s complicated.
① Pick a Fabric. At the 215-year-old Thomas Mason mill in Albino, Italy, J.Crew menswear chief Frank Muytjens and his staff winnowed a plethora of white swatches down to about 10 favorites, then ordered enough of each fabric to make tailored samples.