Priya Elan 

Juicy Couture: the end of an era?

Its signature towelling tracksuits used to be an inescapable feature of Heat magazine celebrity stories. Now, the company has been sold off to new owners and is closing its flagship stores
  
  

Charlotte Church Juicy tracksuit
Charlotte Church wears Juicy in 2002. Photograph: Huw John/REX Photograph: Huw John/REX

Juicy Couture – the American brand famous for its tight-fitting velour tracksuits – could be heading for a zip-up of production. A year after its parent company Kate Spade sold the brand off, sales have continued to plummet and plans to close all its US stores have been announced. Though Juicy is still alive – it recently publicised collaborations with Steve Madden shoes and Kohl's department stores – it is much diminished. According to the US fashion website Racked, new items will only be available internationally.

While Juicy tracksuits now seem to be sealed in the same noughties time capsule as sex tapes and The Osbournes reality show, it was once a very different story. Just a few years ago having "JUICY" splashed across your derriere was percieved not only as a bit of Katharine Hamnett-style fun, – it was also big business.

In 2003, the New York Times noted that Juicy's co-founders, Gela Nash-Taylor and Pamela Skaist-Levy, had built the company up "from a $200 start-up to a $51m concern over six years". The peak of the company's popularity coincided with the rise of gossip magazines such as Heat, which specialised in stories that consisted of multiple pap shots of celebrities.

A common feature of many of these photographs was the Juicy tracksuit. This was no accident. In their book, The Glitter Plan, Nash-Taylor and Skaist-Levy likened the company's relationships with the famous to "a well-oiled machine", detailing how they gave thousands of Juicy items away, including monogrammed tracksuits for Madonna ("Madge"), Jennifer Aniston ("Mrs Pitt") and Cameron Diaz ("Cameron").

Glamorous and aspirational, with an urban edge, the Juicy Couture tracksuit was quickly adopted by the high street. Taylor told the New York Times: "We have a weirdly large demographic, from kids to 65-year-olds".

From Glitter-era Mariah Carey, to Colleen Rooney popping out to the shops, and Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie on The Simple Life, the Juicy Army was everywhere.

But the brand's cachet did not last long. The Young Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair from 2003 includes a conversation in which Ashley Olsen is asked why she owns so many Juicy tracksuits. Her answer? "They're from two years ago when they were hot."

The brand's ubiquity and affordability was perhaps its undoing. And Britney Spears's marriage to Kevin Federline – members of the wedding party wore Juicy tracksuits emblazoned with "Pimp Daddy" (for the boys) and "the Maids" (for the girls) – can't have helped, either.

Whatever its future may hold, the Juicy tracksuit will live on in at least one sense. For a while it was an inescapable and undeniable feature of the pop-cultural landscape. As such, it has well and truly earned a home in the Victoria & Albert museum's permanent fashion collection.

 

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