Jack Carlson is menswear's archaeologist-in-chief

Jack Carlson says he would be a historian if he wasn’t designing clothes. The good thing about his role at J. Press is that he gets to do both. This is a company that is ‘born back ceaselessly into the past,’ to pinch a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who almost certainly sported its blazers. J. Press will turn 125 next year, and there are few brands whose rich history is so vividly represented in the present. A time-travelling Yale man from the 1950s would feel instantly at home if his wormhole dropped him into the New Haven store — the Oxford button-downs, the sack suits, the ‘Shaggy Dog’ sweaters, the striped ties. The wider world, he would soon find, is rarely quite so reassuring.