The Rise And Fall Of Juicy Couture
Irene Kim: Juicy Couture was an iconic part
of early 2000s fashion.
Its velour tracksuits and matching oversized bags
were everything and everywhere.
But Juicy went from making $605 million in sales
at its peak in 2008
to being sold for less than a third of that
five years later.
So, what happened?
Juicy's story begins with these two ladies,
Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy.
They met while working at a Los Angeles boutique in 1988.
When Nash-Taylor became pregnant,
she couldn't find any fashionable maternity clothing.
As a solution, she started making maternity pants
out of her husband's jeans, which inspired her
and Skaist-Levy to start a maternity clothing line,
Travis Jeans for the Baby in You.
The pair's stylish maternity jeans took off,
despite their $89 price tag.
By the early 1990s,
it expanded into a full maternity line.
But around 1994, after feeling like
they lost touch with the maternity market,
the pair decided to pivot to something new:
developing the perfect luxury V-neck shirt.
Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy focused on four things:
fit, fabric, comfort, and color.
They both tried on their samples
to make sure the V-neck covered the right part of the arm,
didn't plunge too deep,
and, overall, made your body look as good as possible,
things male designers fitting T-shirts on size 0 models
maybe weren't taking into consideration.
After perfecting their design,
they released it in 26 colors
under their new label, Juicy Couture.
When Juicy first started in 1995,
the economy was beginning to recover
from the 1990 to 1991 recession,
and consumers were hungry for expensive,
or at least expensive-sounding, products.
So Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy
wanted the brand name to convey luxury.
They also loved the irony of naming
their casual T-shirt line "couture."
Juicy Couture quickly grew in popularity
and expanded to include knit tops,
accessories, and a successful Juicy Jeans line.
But it wasn't the full-fledged lifestyle brand
its founders wanted it to be...yet.
Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy looked to the brands
they grew up with during the '60s and '70s for ideas.
Both thought terry cloth was
"the most amazing 1970s fabric"
and came up with a line of tops and bottoms made from it.
The silhouette of what would become
Juicy's signature tracksuit was created
with the same purpose as the original Juicy V-neck:
to be as flattering as possible.
The zip-up hoodie was designed with front pockets
to hide any stomach pooch
and cut with an hourglass shape to nip in your waist.
Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy also added custom hardware:
a J-pull zipper that branded every tracksuit
as uniquely Juicy Couture.
The tracksuit bottoms were originally made
with an underwear elastic,
but when that proved to be too loose,
Juicy's founders switched to a quick cord
they'd used for their maternity line.
It worked perfectly.
Juicy Couture released its now iconic tracksuits in 2001,
and they became a phenomenon.
Not to mention, at $155,
Juicy Couture's tracksuits weren't cheap,
but they were accessible.
Julia DiNardo: The price point was a little bit high
for essentially a glorified sweatshirt,
but with a little bit of midriff showing, the cool bootleg,
and seeing celebrities in some oversized sunglasses
wearing it out and about, it kind of met
that balance of just-within-reach pricing
and somewhat of a luxury item pooled into one.
Kim: And it was seeing celebrities wear Juicy Couture
that really drove the brand's success.
Around the time Juicy Couture launched,
tabloid celebrities like Paris Hilton
and Lindsay Lohan were becoming a national obsession.
Tabloids like Us Weekly and People
were documenting everything
America's favorite stars were doing,
and Juicy was able to take advantage of it.
Because its founders didn't have the funds
for traditional marketing, they got creative,
gifting tracksuits to celebrities.
While this is pretty common today, Skaist-Levy
and Nash-Taylor were one of the first to do it.
They didn't find success overnight, but eventually
Juicy's tracksuits were being seen
on all the right celebrities.
DiNardo: The attraction to celebrity culture
in the early 2000s is really what contributed
Juicy to become such a popular brand.
It really was the height of:
"Celebrities! They're just like us."
Seeing Britney Spears go get a cup of coffee at Starbucks
in her Juicy Couture tracksuits, seeing Paris Hilton
shopping all over town in her Juicy Couture tracksuit.
Kim: Juicy's founders even kept a photo wall
of every celebrity who wore their tracksuit.
Soon, Juicy Couture was exclusively sold
at upscale department stores
like Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue.
In 2003, Juicy Couture was purchased by Liz Claiborne,
now known as Kate Spade & Company, for $226 million
to be paid over a five-year period.
Juicy was colorful, fun,
and covered in logos during a time when people
couldn't get enough of showing off the brands
they were buying and wearing.
DiNardo: It wouldn't be a Juicy product
without the Juicy label or insignia or logo of some kind.
Skaist-Levy: It makes people happy.
Nash-Taylor: Juicy, it is, it's a happy brand.
People love it.
Kim: Net sales nearly doubled from 2006 to 2007.
By 2008, Juicy Couture had 100 stores
generating a total of $605 million in sales.
The brand also expanded to include jewelry
and a successful fragrance line with Elizabeth Arden.
But then the recession hit.
While most brands struggled following the recession,
Juicy Couture's flashy branding
particularly stopped resonating with customers.
DiNardo: So, during the 2008 recession,
fashion was at a point where the "it" bag
was really not an "it" thing anymore.
It felt a little bit too gregarious, over the top,
and proud in the wrong way, so things started to recede;
not that people weren't shopping,
but they weren't buying things that were so blatant
as to what they were and how much they cost.
Kim: The recession inspired a movement
towards minimalism, which was pretty much
the opposite of what Juicy Couture embodied.
DiNardo: Juicy as a label was all about
that flashiness and that fun.
And so, there was a somberness to fashion, a seriousness,
after 2008, and it really wasn't on-brand for Juicy.
Kim: Sales fell 11% year-over-year in 2009.
In 2010, founders Skaist-Levy
and Nash-Taylor left the company,
citing a loss of ability to help their brand evolve.
Sale numbers continued to drop as Juicy failed to keep up
with the growing contemporary fashion market.
While labels like Alexander Wang
and Theory quickly pivoted to add
more pieces to their collections, Juicy didn't.
In 2013, Juicy Couture was officially sold
to Authentic Brands Group for $195 million.
The company has an eclectic portfolio,
including the licensing rights for the estates
of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe.
The group announced plans to close
all of Juicy Couture's US stores
but said it would reopen five to 10
as it rebuilds the brand.
ABG later made a deal with discount retailer Kohl's
to sell Juicy-branded products, effectively abandoning
the brand's veneer of luxury for many loyal fans.
Despite its fall from department store to discount bin,
Juicy Couture has been angling for a comeback for years.
A 2016 collaboration with cult fashion brand Vetements
re-sparked interested and lent Juicy some street cred.
Kylie Jenner even posted a picture
wearing a pricey tracksuit from the collection.
In 2017, Juicy Couture appointed Hollywood stylist
Jamie Mizrahi as its new creative director.
The brand debuted its new collection
with a New York Fashion Week party
with OG Juicy Couture lover
and living brand embodiment Paris Hilton.
Pieces from the collection were available
on Juicy's website, as well as Nordstrom
and Bloomingdale's, with prices ranging from $30 to $400.
This marked an upscale pivot for the brand
after being sold at Kohl's since 2014.
In 2018, Juicy Couture released its first-ever
runway collection to show pieces
from its main contemporary line, Juicy Couture Black Label.
It also released two new cosmetic collections,
which have been met with varying degrees of excitement.
As for whether we'll be seeing
Juicy's tracksuit everywhere again:
DiNardo: I think they could capitalize
on those customers that were in their teens
or late teens when the brand was popular.
Now those women are moms,
and they want something comfortable but pulled together.
It's quite possible that the tracksuit could be that item.
Kim: Plus, Juicy Couture could fit right into
the athleisure market that's continuing
to dominate the fashion industry.
And with so many other early 2000s fashion trends
coming back, who knows?
2020 could be Juicy Couture's year.
