J.Crew Is Bringing Back Two Classic '80s Pieces

Though J.Crew releases fresh collections a few times per year, we find ourselves revisiting the same silhouettes season after season. We'll buy the tissue turtleneck, the crewneck sweater, the ankle-crop trousers, regardless of how the trends are ebbing and flowing. Over time these hallmark J.Crew styles develop cult followings. And though this status doesn't always ensure that the pieces will stay in stock indefinitely, it does increase the likelihood of their staging a comeback. And for Fall 2017, J.Crew is bringing back not one but two of its seminal eighties knit pieces.

Check out J.Crew's new arrivals, and you'll be transported back to the 1980s, when two of its hallmark autumnal pieces were the roll-neck sweater (from 1988) and the rugby shirt (from 1984). Neither style was ever officially discontinued—more like moved aside for pieces that felt more in line with the retailer's push into Fashion with a capital F, and both have resurfaced in various J.Crew collections over the years—but they're perhaps best known for their cameos in the retailer's outdoorsy eighties catalogs.

But as with all fashion trends (especially those from the late twentieth century), both pieces were poised to come back in style. Somsack Sikhounmuong, J.Crew's chief design officer, first reintroduced the rugby shirt as part of his Fall 2017 collection for the brand, which was presented as part of New York Fashion Week in February. Of the brand's autumnal selection, he said the pieces were "a combination of old and new schools…old-school as in nods to classic Scottish symbols—tartans and plaids, kilts, the Queen’s holiday home of Balmoral Castle—and new-school as in vibrant colors, camouflage, and tulle-covered silhouettes."