Lyons worked at J. Crew for an impressive 27 years, beginning as an assistant menswear designer, back when the brand was a small Mom-and-Pop outfit looking to reinvent itself. By the time of her exit, J. Crew had been through multiple reinventions and gone global. Lyons, meanwhile, had become a bonafide celebrity in her own right, an influencer in the pre-Instagram sense of the word, whose bombastic Met Gala looks (!) made news on their own. Her personal life, too, garnered headlines: From her 2011 divorce from husband Vincent Manzeau to her more recent split with jewelry executive Courtney Crangi. Amid all this flux, a pause and a retreat from public life became crucial as Lyons contemplated the next chapter — or chapters, as the case may be.