Spotlight: J. Crew @ Short Hills...

Wendy Sherman peered into the J. Crew store at The Mall at Short Hills, and frowned.

“It’s all really boxy. Not really flattering,” Ms. Sherman, a literary agent from nearby Livingston, N.J., said on a recent afternoon.

One mannequin jauntily wore a bright pink jacquard shell over a pair of blue ikat-patterned shorts while another paired an oversize bright blue sweater with a blue-and-white horizontal striped skirt. “I mean, would you wear it?” she asked.

A loyal J. Crew customer, Ms. Sherman had, nonetheless, exited the store empty-handed after picking up — and quickly putting down — a $70 shirt. “It was cute,” she said, “but it will go on sale soon enough.”

These days, Ms. Sherman’s glum assessment pretty much sums up many of the problems facing the retailer. Boxy styles. Strange sizing. And customers who loathe paying full price when many items are either quickly discounted or can be bought online for less.

On Wednesday, the reckoning began. The company announced that it would be eliminating 175 jobs and that the head of women’s design at J. Crew had departed. He was replaced by the head of women’s design at Madewell, the smaller but fast-growing hipster brand at J. Crew.

The actions came just days after the J. Crew Group reported another quarter of bad news. Same-store sales for its flagship chain fell 10 percent from a year ago. Profit margins are shrinking. Because of more than $1 billion of various charges and write-downs in recent months, losses are swelling and executives are warning that things are not expected to improve anytime soon.

J. Crew executives attribute the poor performance to a few fashion faux pas, like the “Tilly,” a cropped sweater that was universally unloved and wound up on the sale pile.

“The Tilly was a disaster. An absolute disaster. They should not have gone that way,” said Rynetta Davis, 38, a professor at the University of Kentucky and J. Crew obsessive who recites the articles of clothing by their catalog names and posts pictures of herself wearing the chain’s outfits on her blog, jcrewismyfavstore.blogspot.com. 

Culled from nytimes.com.