J.Crew Teams Up with an NYC Icon for What Might Be Its Best Jacket Ever

When J.Crew’s relevancy peaked in 2011, it launched a menswear label called Wallace & Barnes that tapped into the vintage workwear zeitgeist.

Named after the intersecting streets where the then CEO Mickey Drexler grew up in the Bronx, it was an outlet for Men’s Creative Director Frank Muytjens to offer deep-cut designs for the #menswear scene.

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As the company’s fortunes changed, Muytjens left the brand in 2016, and Drexler stepped down a year later. Wallace & Barnes kept rolling with repeated designs until the current Men’s Creative Director, Brendon Babenzien, took over in 2021.

It makes sense that Babenzien wanted to start with a clean slate, and Wallace & Barnes had lost its charm. However, the sub-label’s early roots in 1950s and 1960s American blue collar nostalgia strongly overlapped with the new creative director’s personal style.

That’s why it seems natural for J.Crew and Babenzien to give Wallace & Barnes a hard reset. The elevated — and pricer — men’s brand is back, and with it comes one of the best collaborations in J.Crew’s long history of cross-branded design.

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J.Crew teamed up with Schott, a fellow New York brand with even deeper roots in the city, for a limited edition black leather moto jacket. It puts a clever twist on one of the heritage jacket brand’s most beloved designs.

Hometown heroes

Like the Giants and Jets, Schott is a New York City institution that actually resides in New Jersey. However, the brand is inextricably linked to its roots in Manhattan and local icons like Lou Reed and the Ramones, who helped make it famous.

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J.Crew hasn’t offered a proper men’s leather moto jacket since around 2015, when it sold a distressed in-house interpretation of Schott’s legendary Perfecto.

Babenzien is a well-documented fan of vintage Schott moto jackets, having worn one multiple times while officially representing J.Crew. The Retro Moto Jacket puts the designer’s personal stamp on a Wallace & Barnes re-launch collection that otherwise reads like a survey of the label’s early 2010s heyday.

Buckle up!

The Retro Moto Jacket is built on the blueprint of Schott’s Duke jacket. However, the typical roughout leather is replaced with the same black leather familiar from the Perfecto collection.

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Just like the Duke, the Retro Moto Jacket has a center zip front, a pointed collar, slanted vent pockets and open cuffs with tabs. Both designs share a full lining with an interior pocket, and a single vented chest pocket with a chain pull zipper.

Schott and Wallace & Barnes made the design unique by blending in some elements from the Perfecto motorcycle jacket. Along with the leather, the cuff buttons are replaced with polished snaps, the front zipper has a leather pull tab and the waist tabs are replaced with a removable belt.

The most significant difference, as far as comfort is concerned, is that the Duke is unlined while the Retro Moto Jacket has a full lining.

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Schott is the king of American leather jackets, but the brand sticks closely to its well-established designs, often only innovating with new materials. This Wallace & Barnes collaboration offers a rare novel look from the New Jersey-based brand.

It might be the coolest jacket J.Crew has ever sold (sorry, Barbour), and puts a bold punctuation on the return of Wallace & Barnes.

Availability and price

The Schott NYC x Wallace & Barnes Retro Moto Jacket is available for preorder now from J.Crew for $1,075.

Orders will ship out on November 4 and arrive in select stores, like the SoHo Men’s Shop, on the same date.

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