How Chic Is J.C. Penney?

The New York Times apologized on Sunday for its attack on the venerable department store as a haven for overweight polyester fiends. Renata Espinosa defends the store, and finds everyday couture. VIEW OUR GALLERY.

Last week, The New York Times’ “Critical Shopper” columnist, Cintra Wilson, reviewed the new J.C. Penney store in New York. Located in the Manhattan Mall on 34th Street across the street from Macy’s, Penney’s lands in a nexus of chain stores in the city and was a less obvious choice for Wilson’s scrutiny (compared to her usual jaunts at fashion temples like Prada and Balenciaga). But given the retail recession crunch and the more restrained buying habits as of late, it was a timely one.

In “Critical Shopper,” Wilson is known for her pithy and often scathing commentary about whatever store she’s visiting that week, painting a juicy picture of the kind of customer who might wear, say “a silk dress in gray-washed purple [that] might have been spun from the pelt of Barney the basalt-mining Dinosaur, or dyed with grape Kool-Aid in the Ganges.” (Answer: “tiny rich women and Japanese superhipsters” at Balenciaga.

View Renata’s J.C. Penney Couture

From the merchandise to the sales staff, no element at a store is left sacred or untouched—she takes the “critical” part of her title very seriously, but no more seriously than fashion takes itself. It’s refreshing to read someone unafraid to inject humor into a mostly humorless industry. She does what Sacha Baron Cohen should have done in Bruno, which is to bring the holy snobs of fashion back down to earth. But Bruno failed and took the lazy way out, humor-wise, by abandoning the fashion storyline ten minutes into the film and switching over to making fun of rednecks. And Wilson uncharacteristically failed, too, in her report on J.C. Penney, by being unnecessarily snarky at the expense of overweight people. Not surprisingly, she promptly found herself in the eye of an Internet maelstrom.

I also abhor generic fashion and I don’t believe that just because a store hawks something affordable and accessible, it’s suddenly newsworthy.

Essentially, Wilson concludes that J.C. Penney is a great place to shop if you’re average (over a size 10) and willing to settle for something less than great in the department of fashion. You’ll need to like polyester, (“a good 96 percent of the Penney’s inventory is made of polyester”) and because you’re a size 18 who can’t find a “a long psychedelic muumuu of a style generally worn by Rachel Zoe” or “a modified domino-print swing dress with padded shoulders.” For Wilson, J.C. Penney is a store that will appeal to clueless Middle American tourists who, for what they lack in taste, make up for in size: “No matter how many Grand Slam breakfasts you’ve knocked out of the park, Penney’s has a size for you.”