‘Real Housewives of New York’ Newbie Jenna Lyons Was Once Known as the ‘Woman Who Dresses America’
Real Housewives of New York has entered a new era, and has announced seven new cast members for season 14. Former President and Executive Creative Director of J.Crew Group, Jenna Lyons, will be a new Bravolebrity along with Sai De Silva, Ubah Hassan, Erin Dana Lichy, Lizzy Savetsky, Jessel Taank and Brynn Whitfield.
This group of “seven dynamic women” runs in the same social circles, and have made their mark in everything from NYC real estate to modeling. When it comes to Lyons’ backstory, she was once known as the “woman who dresses America.”
‘RHONY’ newbie Jenna Lyons turned J.Crew into a coveted fashion brand
As Deadline reports, Lyons is “widely recognized as the creative force behind” retail chain J.Crew and their “phenomenal rise” in the 2000s from “floundering catalog chain to one of the most coveted fashion brands” in America.
At six feet tall, Lyons became well-known in the fashion world thanks to her signature look — orange-red lipstick, a deep-parted ponytail, and thick, black eyeglass frames. The 48-year-old started working for J.Crew straight out of the Parsons School of Design in 1990 and worked her way up to the top of the company over two+ decades.
As the brand became more and more successful — tripling sales in the decade after she took over as president — Lyons became the face of J.Crew.
The new ‘Real Housewives of New York’ star was once known as ‘the woman who dresses America’
Lyons’ rags-to-riches story is the stuff of legend in NYC social circles, and she was dubbed “the woman who dresses America” by The New York Times back in 2013.
She received a huge bonus when former First Lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia wore J.Crew to the 2008 presidential inauguration. And, she regularly showed up in The New York Post as a major socialite after divorcing her artist husband Vincent Mazeau for another woman, Courtney Crangi, in 2013.
Lyons’ mentor, J.Crew chief executive Millard S. Drexler, said that the RHONY newbie is — in his opinion — one of the most talented, trained, intuitive, and commercial designers” he’s ever met.
“She went through this public period that was, let’s call it, maybe slightly scandalous. And I think that made her, in a perverse way, very appealing, because who in the world doesn’t deal with issues?” Drexler said.
“I saw her grow dramatically from having suffered that adversity — grow in her own confidence, in her own appeal. And it wasn’t like she hired a bunch of public relations people to cover anything over. She handled it with a great amount of dignity.”
‘Real Housewives of New York’ newcomer Jenna Lyons left J.Crew in 2017
After 27 years with J.Crew, Lyons’ left the company in 2017 amid declining sales and financial problems. In 2020, she launched her own beauty company LoveSeen, which focuses on fake lashes. And, that same year, she and her employees starred in an HBO Max reality show called Stylish with Jenna Lyons.
She currently lives with her son Beckett in NYC, after splitting from Crangi in December 2017.
Real Housewives of New York Season 14 will begin shooting this fall and will premiere on Bravo in 2023.
