J. Crew brings its signature approach to styling to life with Claude

Online, shopping usually happens one product at a time, so a customer who finds a sweater has to search again for the pants and shoes that go with it. To change that, J.Crew today launched Style Advisor, an AI stylist on JCrew.com (opens in new tab) that helps customers shop by complete outfit. J.Crew’s team built it with Claude Code (opens in new tab) using multiple Claude models, from Fable to Haiku, each matched to the work it does best. It is available now for women’s and men’s styles in the U.S.

For more than 40 years, J.Crew’s own stylists have built complete looks by balancing proportion, color, and layering and by pairing pieces in unexpected ways. Style Advisor brings that expertise online. Customers describe what they need, such as an outfit for a beach wedding or a first job interview, and it answers with complete looks drawn from J.Crew’s own photo shoots. They can keep refining from there, so shopping becomes a visual conversation.

How it's built

J.Crew’s product team used Claude Fable (opens in new tab) 5.1, Anthropic’s model for complex, open-ended work, to plan how Style Advisor should reason like a stylist, then built a working prototype with Claude Opus (opens in new tab) 5.5 in Claude Code. J.Crew’s engineers took that prototype to production. In each conversation, Claude Sonnet (opens in new tab) 5.5 acts as the stylist and decides each step of the response, while Claude Haiku (opens in new tab) 5.5 handles quick, focused tasks so Style Advisor answers quickly. Because every look comes from J.Crew’s stylists, its recommendations stay consistent with J.Crew’s styling point of view.

How customers use Style Advisor

• Shop complete outfits. Every recommendation starts from looks J.Crew stylists created for the brand's catalog shoots, and Style Advisor shows them in photos so customers see the full outfit.
• Build from a single piece. A customer can start with one item and get suggestions for the pieces that complete the look.
• Dress for the occasion. Customers can say where they're going, whether that's a vacation, a holiday party, or a wedding, and get recommendations for it.
• Get J.Crew's point of view. Style Advisor applies the same styling principles a J.Crew stylist would use in a store.

What's next

At launch, Style Advisor helps customers find new outfit ideas and shop with more confidence. Over time, J.Crew plans to make it more personal by tailoring suggestions to each customer's preferences and past purchases, and to bring it to more markets and product lines.

“As consumer expectations evolve and AI opens up new possibilities for retail, J.Crew is challenging the traditional model of online shopping, moving beyond individual product searches toward a more connected and inspiration-led experience,” said Libby Wadle, Chief Executive Officer of J.Crew Group. “For a long time, we’ve been thinking about how customers will want to shop in the future, and how we can lead that evolution rather than react to it. We see an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the shopping experience. Through our work with Anthropic, we're bringing decades of J.Crew styling, merchandising and creative expertise together to help shape what’s next for customer behavior.”

“J.Crew has one of the most recognizable points of view in fashion, and its team used Claude to bring that expertise to customers in a new way,” said Paul Smith, Chief Commercial Officer, Anthropic. “They used a frontier model to build the experience and faster, more efficient models to run it, so customers get quick answers that stay true to the brand’s styling.”

Start building with Claude Code (opens in new tab) today.