Arthur Cinader, founder of J. Crew, dies at 90

Arthur Cinader, who built a pastel-colored, turtlenecked fashion empire as the founder of J. Crew, popularizing a preppy aesthetic in the 1980s and ’90s through meticulously produced catalogs and sleek, wood-paneled stores, died Oct. 11 at his home in Santa Fe, N.M. He was 90.

The cause was complications from a fall, his family said.

Cinader created a company whose identity is neatly encapsulated in its name — inspired not by any ancestral James or Julia Crew but by the sport of rowing, which Cinader never played but favored for its Ivy League associations. He added a J. to the Crew because he thought the letter looked nice on the page.

Established in 1983 as a slightly downscale version of Ralph Lauren, the family-run business soon sold jeans, hats, sweaters, jackets and suits through glossy mail-order catalogs, delivered to several million doorsteps some 14 times each year.

Cinader’s daughter Emily, then in her 20s, oversaw the clothing’s design, expanding the company’s early lineup of moderately priced sportswear to garments such as rollneck sweaters and “barn jacket” outerwear. Cinader was chairman and ran the business operations of what became known as the J. Crew Group.

He estimated that fewer than 10 percent of Americans could be convinced to buy and wear J. Crew apparel, and, indeed, the company became a powerful brand but never a financial juggernaut. In 1997, when Cinader sold 88 percent of the business to a private investment firm for about $500 million, its $600 million in annual sales were dwarfed by those of Eddie Bauer ($2 billion) and Lands’ End ($1.2 billion).

But under Cinader’s watch J. Crew became an inescapable part of American fashion, successfully expanding from cataloges to brick-and-mortar stores in 1989, at a time when few brands offered high-end instore experiences. A decade later, it was among the first major brands to offer online sales.

Arthur Cinader was born in New York City on Sept. 8, 1927.

He married Johanna van Riel in 1958. In addition to his wife, survivors include five children, all of whom worked at J. Crew, including as models and photographers for the catalogue, and 13 grandchildren.