Madewell
Clothing · 160+ locations · NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Atlanta, Boston
Madewell sells itself on a 1937 workwear heritage. J.Crew bought that name in 2004 from a long-closed Massachusetts factory it had no connection to, then built the brand from scratch. Its parent now answers to the creditors who took it over in bankruptcy.
Part of J.Crew Group, Inc.
View the family treeThe Big Picture
Madewell's denim program is real: more than 90% of it now comes from Fair Trade Certified factories, and parent J.Crew Group publishes emissions targets with measured progress against them. That transparency stops at denim. Madewell names none of the 339 factories in its supply base, Good On You finds no evidence of living wages across most of it, and every decision runs through the distressed-debt investors who took J.Crew Group out of bankruptcy in 2020.
The Dirty Details
Ownership
Anchorage Capital GroupHedge Fund
Anchorage Capital Group is a New York credit and special-situations hedge fund founded in 2003 by Kevin Ulrich and Tony Davis. It became majority owner of J.Crew Group in September 2020, when the retailer's Chapter 11 restructuring converted roughly $1.7 billion of debt into equity; GSO Capital Partners (a Blackstone credit affiliate) and Davidson Kempner Capital Management also hold stakes from the same deal. J.Crew Group, in turn, owns both banners Ferret tracks. No primary source discloses the exact ownership split among the three creditors.
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Company data last updated August 2026
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