1. The biggest decline in Jcrew is regardless, regardless of their struggle related to styling, all the styles have gone down in quality of production.
Things just aren't tailored as well. The best thing about Jcrew, regardless of what your "Jcrew style" was, is that it was tailored well, and this matters alot for professional working women, skin tight pants, or pants that dip too low when you sit down, button downs too tight at the bust, all of these relatively minor things add up to you losing all the focus at your presentation or meeting because whether men are trying to be or not, if they can see through your shirt, or your underwear is showing, its a distraction.
jcrew was a go to place for high quality work clothes well tailored and classy. You obviously looked better being thin, but you did not need to be model thin to look good in the clothes and look professional and classy.
That has gone downhill and the quality of their materials and sewing has just gone down.
2. A few years back, Jcrew tried an edgier tomboy/working women look that was still sophisticated and classy, slightly leaning androgenous but still you had colors to choose from and it was a way to be tomboyish without wearing black to prove your "different".
They also tried some European influence and I liked all of it alot as a female in tech, and dressing down and androdgenously is comfortable for me. It turned out not to be popular at all.
3. So here is what JCrew did...they said "ok we can't do the edgy thing" and openly came out with a statement saying they were going back to the classics.
here is what they meant: they went back to housewife classics.
The dresses are for moms on vacation. It's the "sophisticated stay at home mom" look but unfortunately the women buying their clothes are mostly working women, and continually working women who are younger and more progrssive, so the whole "sundress to work" kind of thing was not working out.
They moved their work wear back to 1980's power women workwear, and the rest of the clothing to housewife clothing.
Turns out most working younger women late 20s/early 30's are neither housewives and they reject the queen B power women on wallstreet status style clothing.
JCrew fell flat, got scared in their new explorations and reverted back to the safest and most original lines they had, except this time they were lower quality.