Juicy Couture’s New Creative Director, Jamie Mizrahi, on ’90s Nostalgia and Her First Tracksuit
Track is back—and so is Juicy Couture. The label known for its stretch-velour, often-bedazzled tracksuits turns 20 this year, right in step with fashion’s renewed ’90s and early-’00s obsession. Juicy has been out of the spotlight for a few years, but it made a big splash last summer with its clever Vetements collaboration. And this morning, the brand announced some more big news: It tapped celebrity stylist Jamie Mizrahi to be its new creative director.
Not only is Mizrahi the most well-known, insider-y person to take the helm since Juicy’s founders, Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy, but she’s also a stylist, not a designer. Mizrahi knows what “cool” looks like in 2017 and understands how it should relate to the brand’s established oeuvre. Nick Woodhouse, the president and chief marketing officer of ABG (which owns Juicy Couture), explained that her role will be to “bring the brand to its full potential and infuse a new and fresh design foundation,” adding that “Jamie lives the Juicy Couture lifestyle and embraces the brand’s bold and irreverent Los Angeles spirit.”
Mizrahi was already consulting for Juicy when they asked her to officially join the team. “I came in to give feedback on the collections and concepts, and when I saw the archives, I got so excited,” she tells Vogue. “This is the same office where Pam and Gela started everything, and there were so many pieces that brought me back to my childhood—I got this rush of nostalgia.”
Nostalgia is certainly a powerful thing, but Mizrahi is somewhat resistant to the zeitgeist. “I think it makes a lot of sense that people are interested in the ’90s right now, because fashion is cyclical,” she says. “But with Juicy, that’s not really the goal moving forward. We’re not trying to capitalize on trends. We’re celebrating the history of this special American heritage brand and what it’s meant to fans from the very beginning.” So when the ’90s and ’00s trend cools off—which it will, eventually—it’s not like Juicy is going to stop making tracksuits. By then, if all goes according to plan, the Juicy tracksuit will already be cemented as a timeless, trend-proof staple.
“There has to be a balance of old, nostalgic pieces and new [ideas], but that’s the fun part of being at a brand like this,” Mizrahi goes on. “When I ask my friends about their first tracksuit, they all remember it was Juicy. There are so many memories [associated with the brand], and I’m still trying to appeal to those women who first fell in love with it back then. I think Juicy was my entire wardrobe—I remember my first waffle-knit tracksuit, my ruched baby doll dresses, my graphic T-shirts . . . Juicy created this fantasy. It was like a fairy tale, and those are the same feelings I have for it today.”
Mizrahi adds that more exciting collaborations are in the works, and she will present the Spring ’18 collection at Fashion Week in September. Her celebrity clients have already offered a few hints of what to expect: Katy Perry just wore a baby pink track skirt and hoodie that Mizrahi custom-made for her, and Sasha Lane stepped out in custom track shorts with a glittery sports bra. “It’s going to be about constantly pushing this brand in a direction where we can excite people,” Mizrahi says. “The possibilities are endless.”