J. Press is ready to reclaim its turf. Founded in 1902 in New Haven, Connecticut, the American Ivy prepster brand has gone quiet in the US, even as the aesthetic it helped originate has risen in popularity and the business has grown significantly in Japan. With a new creative director — Jack Carlson, who built and sold modern prep label Rowing Blazers — and a slot on the New York Fashion Week calendar, a comeback is coming into focus.
Carlson joined the company six months ago, and sees today’s New York Fashion Week show as an opportunity to make a statement. “J. Press is the last brand standing of its ilk. I think it should really own that role and take up that mantle,” he says. One of his first moves when he joined was to put a runway show together, off calendar at NYFW in September. This season, it’s one of few menswear brands on the schedule. The brand prioritizes cut and fit. Most of its pieces are still made in the US, by American mills and manufacturers. “If you’re going to be the standard-bearer for American menswear, you should be there bearing the standard during New York Fashion Week,” Carlson says.
Carlson was hired by Japanese owner Onward Holdings (which also owns British label Joseph) to modernize the preppy sleeper brand. Carlson was chosen, in part, for his ability to attract younger consumers to this distinctive aesthetic; Carlson founded collegiate-inspired Rowing Blazers in 2017, built it into a recognizable, sometimes viral brand (remember the Princess Diana sheep sweater?) and sold it to Burch Creative Capital for an undisclosed amount in 2024. He exited the brand in 2025, and later that year joined J. Press. At Rowing Blazers, Carlson helped to spearhead the resurgence of Ivy League style among younger shoppers. Now, he’s tasked with aligning J. Press with this shift.
Lucky for him, consumers are gravitating towards American sportswear and Ivy styles. “With the consumer becoming more educated, and with this look coming into the mainstream, it changes the game as far as what the reach and appeal of J. Press can be,” he says. “It is the embodiment of Ivy style in 2026, but without it feeling stuffy, without it feeling like cosplay, without it feeling like something that’s just being recycled.”
Carlson’s second collection is inspired by the book Take Ivy, the 1965 Japanese book which documents the preppy, collegiate fashion of Ivy League university campuses in the US throughout the sixties. It’s an apt source of inspiration for Carlson, who joined a brand known for its American prep — J. Press was founded at Yale in 1902 — that has been owned by Japanese apparel company Onward Holdings since 1986.
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