If you can believe it, we’ve entered that time of the year when social calendars quickly start to fill up with dinners and soirées that extend long into the night, calling for rounds of sparkling cocktails and equally festive attire. For the 2024 holiday season, J.Crew has tapped arguably New York’s most cheerful designer, Christopher John Rogers, to make sure you’re dressed for the occasion.
A selection of metallic separates crafted from duchesse satin mixed in with brushed knits (which feature Rogers’s trademark Technicolor stripes) alongside tailored outerwear, the 48-piece collection is “high-octane excitement,” as J.Crew director of womenswear Olympia Gayot puts it.
In the early ’00s, J.Crew tried its hand at “embellished sweaters and every color of cashmere on the rainbow,” before focusing on a more toned-down palette, Gayot notes. As the brand continues its meteoric return, it hopes to infuse some of Rogers’s playful (and wonderfully pigmented) elegance into the laid-back, modern heritage aesthetic it has honed. “Christopher plays with the proportions, because that’s his world and that’s so important,” says Gayot. “We don’t always get to do that, you know, because that’s not who we are. So being able to really go there feels really exciting for us.”
For Rogers, who worked at J.Crew the summer before his sophomore year of college, this partnership is a full-circle moment: “There’s a lot of synergy between the two brands. I think this sense of eclecticism and imbuing every garment with a sense of dynamism…was the goal. I think whether you’re talking about a metallic barn jacket with this sort of matte corduroy contrast, [it’s about] taking something that’s essentially quite utilitarian and day, and proposing it for evening or something more eventful.”
The collection is definitely meant to be witnessed by an audience—celebrated, even. Deliciously bright knits, a sweeping sequin-paneled gown that calls to mind Old Hollywood glamour, vinyl and tweed worked into calf-skimming coats, and the pièce de résistance: that iconic barn jacket reenvisioned in a lustrous gold lamé.
“I think the customer is incredibly sure of themselves and the way that they want to show up in the world, and are trying to find tools to express that,” says Rogers. “In this collection, we have shapes that are more tailored and more femme and more close to the body. We also have things that are more forgiving. A variety of shapes was important, a variety of weights was important, and trying to give lots of different types of people access to tools that make them feel like themselves.”
Rogers’s favorites include the knits (this writer can only describe them as wearable joy) and towering bodycon dresses. For Gayot, it’s the black satin cargo pants. “I love a tuxedo and the idea of having a tuxedo in this very ready-to-wear proportion that feels extreme, but in a wearable way,” she says. They’re perfect for the season’s glitziest festivities, but, as she notes, can easily transition into the spring when paired with a sweater and those perfectly broken-in loafers.
The holidays are quickly approaching. In a season that hopefully fills us up with warmth and renewed optimism, it never hurts to add a little more sparkle by way of a glorious gown or gilded coat.
The J.Crew × Christopher John Rogers collection is available to shop online and in store. Shop our edit below.
Michella Oré is the fashion commerce editor at Harper's Bazaar. Previously, she was the style commerce writer at GQ and associate producer at Vogue. Her writing has been published in i-D, 10 Magazine, and WWD.
