Adrienne Lazarus, president of J.Crew Group’s Madewell brand, has left the company, WWD has learned.

J.Crew Group on Thursday confirmed Lazarus was no longer working at the company, indicating that it was “a mutual decision.”

No successor has been revealed, though one possibility is for Libby Wadle, chief executive officer of J.Crew Group, to fill in, at least temporarily. Before Lazarus joined Madewell in September 2023, Wadle was overseeing both Madewell and J.Crew brands. The group also operates J.Crew Factory Outlets and Crewcuts.

“We have a talented leadership team at Madewell who is well positioned to build on the brand’s momentum,” a J.Crew Group spokesperson said in a statement to WWD.

Lazarus, a 32-year veteran of specialty retail and direct-to-consumer companies, was recruited to Madewell to help grow and evolve the brand. In February 2024, Madewell implemented what Lazarus characterized as a “brand reset adjusting the collection to be a bit more refined, a little bit more grown-up,” while maintaining denim as the core of the collection. The brand strives to offer a premium denim look at prices more accessible than other premium denim brands.

The addition of Lazarus at Madewell also enabled Wadle to perform more of a strategic role, setting future directions for both Madewell and J.Crew, and also devote more time to J.Crew, where at the time work was needed to recapture the popularity, style authority and cool factor it once had.

Prior to joining Madewell, Lazarus was co-CEO of Cuup, a direct-to-consumer intimates brand, and a senior adviser at McKinsey & Company, counseling retail and apparel clients. Earlier, Lazarus served as CEO of Bandier, CEO of Frye, and president of Intermix. In its announcement upon her joining the company, J.Crew Group credited Lazarus with “leading those companies through substantial periods of growth and driving two successful transactions.”

In a WWD interview earlier this year, Lazarus discussed how Madewell differentiates its denim from the many other denim brands on the market, saying, “There are three pillars — quality, fit and style. From a quality perspective, we are using the most premium fabrics out there. Our value proposition is incredible in terms of what we’re offering and our customer recognizes it.

“From a fit perspective, we have a variety. But it’s not just about the amount of variety, it’s about how hard we’ve worked at perfecting it. We have curvy. We have petite. We also have tall. So we want to be able to fit a really wide scope.

“And lastly, through new marketing, it’s about educating customers on how to style the denim with the other apparel and accessories sold at Madewell. We are really leaning into the Madewell style and how to style Madewell denim,” she said, using one word to describe the Madewell aesthetic: effortless.

A fourth differentiator could be Madewell’s pricing.

“We’re in this beautiful price point where we’re [offering] a very premium product, but at a price point which doesn’t really exist in the market,” Lazarus said. “So that’s been a really powerful positioning, and denim is a great example of that. But we are definitely offering that [pricing] in all of our products. We’re definitely offering a premium product at a more accessible price that is part of our brand ethos and DNA.”