Jane Bishop: How I Shop

We all buy clothes, but no two people shop the same. It can be a social experience, and a deeply personal one; at times, it can be impulsive and entertaining, at others, purpose-driven, a chore. Where do you shop? When do you shop?

How do you decide what you need, how much to spend, and what's "you"? These are some of the questions we're putting to prominent figures in the fashion industry with our column, "How I Shop."

Jane Bishop is a California girl turned Brooklyn-based fashion editor with retail in her blood. The co-founder and creative director of JeanStories.com — a site devoted to all things denim, from the people who wear it to the people who make it — grew up working in her family's LA store, named after her father Ron Herman. She came to New York for college and earned her chops at Elle and Vogue before working at Gap with Patrick Robinson. She is now the style director at Travel + Leisure and a contributor for Lucky, Glamour and Vogue.com. Bishop and I met in Savannah last week, where she was in town to moderate a panel on denim with Jean Stories co-founder Florence Kane at the Savannah College of Art and Design. 

I am a uniform dresser, to a certain extent. Everything I wear is a version of a theme. I tend to dress in a blue, white, black, gray color palette, sometimes red. I remember around the time that I was turning 30 and becoming more confident in my own personal style, I had just left Vogue or was just about to leave Vogue. I had been there for six and a half years and seen a lot of trends come and go. I observed enough of fashion to know what was me and what wasn’t me. It was at that time that Phoebe Philo came to Céline and minimalism became the catch word, minimalism was having its moment. It wasn’t just Phoebe, there were a number of others like Tess Giberson, even contemporary price point designers that were doing very minimalist, very clean clothes. When that happened, it all made perfect sense to me. I was done with my Pucci scarfs and my circle skirts, although I do have a soft spot for Dries [Van Noten] and I will wear a print, embellishment or sequins if it’s Dries. The two things happened sort of simultaneously — minimalism really came back into fashion and I came of an age where I felt like figured it out, didn’t need to experiment anymore and knew myself really well. 

That’s what I always say about jeans, too. The best thing about your favorite pair of jeans is that the second you put them on, you feel like yourself. They’re comforting not in the sense that they’re comfortable, but in the sense that you put them on and you know that they’re going to fit you this way and you know exactly what you’re capable of doing when you’re wearing them. You’re capable of doing most anything. I live in Brooklyn, I commute to the city every day — I need things that are practical, clean, well-tailored. I coordinate pants every single day so I need things that always go together.