CREATIVE ARISTOCRACY

Our annual guide to the people changing the world as we know it, with art, fashion, literature, food, music, film, and more. They may not be household names just yet, but trust us, it won't be long—and you'll want to be able to say you knew them all when.

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Jack Carlson

BY ALEC DENT

We are in the midst of a preppy revival, and Jack Carlson may be more responsible for it than anyone.

As the founder of Rowing Blazers, Carlson wasn't just at the forefront of the preppy zeitgeist, he was its leader. Then in September he was tapped to take over the ne plus ultra of preppy brands: J. Press, the original purveyor of Ivy League fashion.

“The Oxford button-down shirt with the collar roll and the flap on the front chest pocket, the navy blazer, the khaki trousers, the ribbon belts, the schoolboy scarf, and all these accoutrements—they are many decades older than the word preppy entering the mainstream lexicon."

The Official Preppy Handbook, which Carlson likes to call “the bible,” quipped that J. Press is the clothing store for men who think Brooks Brothers isn’t conservative enough. Not so under Carlson. His first collections for the 123-year-old brand feature the traditional staples—your tweeds, your Oxford collars, your Shaggy Dogs—but infused with hints of colorful eclecticism. A cheeky sweater reading “Old Enough to Know Better,” for instance, or a bright red hunt ball tailcoat—the sort of things that might irk the more staid menswear types out there but that, as Carlson points out, are still very much painting within the lines of prepdom.

Carlson's aspirations aren't limited to the brand's aesthetics. On the business side, expansion is on the horizon. One of his first priorities is to reopen a J. Press location in—where else?—Cambridge.

Aimee Ng

BY LEENA KIM