Millard "Mickey" Drexler doesn't use the word "luxury." But he has jump-started retailer J. Crew with premium merchandise--cashmere from Loro Piana and leather from the tannery used by Hermés--that's very luxurious indeed. Since Drexler, the whiz behind Gap's phenomenal rise in the 1990s, took J. Crew public last year, the stock has more than doubled. That's great news for the largest individual shareholder, CEO Drexler, whose stake is now worth $400 million.
Photographed outside the J. Crew store in New York's SoHo
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