SIBLING RIVALRY

Brooks Brothers @ Crossroads (Again)

By Alan Flusser

Brooks Brothers lies lifeless, as if on an operating table waiting for someone to resuscitate it. For months now, observers have pondered whether the right doctor with the right medicine will appear… Or whether the Godfather of American menswear be the victim of yet another well-meaning but ill-qualified owner who, like his predecessors, ends up chipping away at this once mighty fortress of men’s fashion and style.

 On September 1, Authentic Brands Group LLC and SPARC Group LLC announced that they’d completed the acquisition of the 202-year-old institution — outfitter of 41 of 45 American presidents and the first retailer in the country to sell ready-made clothing for men. With the matter of a new owner resolved, the question for Brooks Brothers now is, where to from here?

Since the company filed for Chapter 11 in July, Brooks’ future has been the subject of fevered discussion. The most draconian of rumors has it that the majority of the famed retailer’s stores will likely disappear along with its three American factories. Distribution will move down-market to cheaper and more efficient online sales as opposed to the traditional, in-person experience that customers have long relied upon.

PEAL & CO., LONDON

SHOE SHINE

By Richard Carreño

[WC News Service]

I might be in the running for this year's Imelda Marcos Prize for Acquiring Too Many Shoes. JV, Men's Division. I have almost fifty pairs. In all designs, colours, and materials. Wing-tips, cap-toes, monk straps, bowlers, duck boots, boat shoes, Chelsea boots, hiking boots, an assortment of slip-on moccasins, rubber field boots, tennis shoes, brogues, and lots of things in suede. And opera slippers. More than I need, of course. But that's a bit beside the point, init?

 

I have my favourites; usually preferring lace-up Oxfords.

 

Apart from sport shoes, my choices are mostly all in leather in either black or brown. Though I do have blue pair of suede wing-tips and a sort of orangery-coloured pair of Oxfords. (I got these in Madrid).

 

All are in name-tagged in wood (mostly cedar) shoe trees. All are polished to a spit-shine. This kind of maintenance is labour-intensive. I use good tools. Horse-hair brushes and the like. Like John O'Hara, I do the polishing myself, finding the cleaning and brushing, in an odd way, as O'Hara did, relaxing and therapeutic. And I won't deny taking pleasure in the wafting aroma of boot wax that fills the air of my dressing room.

 

When done, laces are tied. Buckles are buckled. And the shoes are queued in rows, by colour and style. They shine like Horse Guards on parade.

Cable Car Clothiers

Richard Carreño/WritersClearinghouse News Service

More Oxbridge than Ivy
A San Francisco Treat

By Richard Carreño

[WritersClearinghouse News Service] Posted 2 August 2014

San Francisco

Until a few years ago, almost every American city of size -- even some smaller places, especially if they were college towns --  featured at least one haberdasher known to its residents as the university, or Ivy shop, local purveyors of traditional men's clothing. These clothiers also bred what was to become known as the 'preppy look, the full definition of which flowered in the mid-20th century in a combination of American and British styling. In other words, think of an earlier version of Brooks Brothers, which through the 1900s vigorously marketed its singular American look via a coast-to-coast network of branch shops.

 

Or, in this city, think Cable Car Clothiers, which, since 1939, has been emphasizing its own British pedigree in its clothing lines. At Cable Car, it's more Oxbridge than Ivy.

Barnes Storming

Weird on the Parkway By Richard Carreño Junto Staff Writer Mix dozens of Renoirs, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, arts guru Derek Gillman, and the irascible curmudgeon Dr. Albert Barnes, the late, great nemesis of the once- powerful Main Line Establishment, and, of course, you have another installment in the continuing Barnes Foundation museum kabuki. Oh, yes, don't forget to stir in about 20 protesters, notable for their creative signage ('Crime Scene Do Not Enter') and their Dr. Barnes-like enmity for anyone who'd violate Barnes' sacred memory -- and will. The occasion, the ground-breaking last Friday of the foundation's new $150-million home at the Parkway and 21st Street, was festooned with local arts glitterati, business and fund-raising mandarins, and political grandees who spent their time, before a crowd of about 200, congratulating themselves with more alacrity than an out-of-control Oscar recipient. Gillman, formerly of the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts and now the Barnes' well-respected new director, presided. The Lincoln University Concert Choir sang. The gaggle of notables, donning gold-colored construction helmets, acquitted themselves in the customary manner with shovels with silver-colored blades, and everyone drank coffee from power hotel Four Seasons. The high-octane morning brew didn't seem to do much for Mayor Michael Nutter, usually known for flip quips and humorous zingers, who just dead-panned his delivery on how the Barnes on the Parkway will be 'one of the greatest museums in the world, and it will be right here in Philadelphia.' Actually, Nutter was funny, unitentionally, when he went on to praise the great works of largely French Impressionism in the Barnes' collection, now located in Lower Merion. 'I'm not an art expert,' the mayor said earnestly. 'But I know great art when I see it.' It was that kind of event. Weird. How weird? Well, when I walked through the gantlet of protesters, picketing on 21st Street, one shouted at me:'Here's another rich guy.' How weird is that? The hour-long ground-breaking, housed under a Cirque-de-Soleil-sized tent, also unearthed some old wounds, namely the anger and frustration expressed by the protesters, coalesced around a group called the Friends of the Barnes, that Dr. Barnes posthumous wishes, will, and sensibility were being violated once again by Philadelphia's rich and powerful. No doubt, there's substance to their lament. The late Anne d'Harnoncourt of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Rebecca Rimel, president of the local Pew Charitable Trusts, have been said to have almost decreed that the move would happen. Interestingly, as well, the cri de coeur of the Barnes opponents has been picked up by some New York art critics, notably those from The New York Times and The New Yorker. Still, it's hard to side when protests are self-selective. Breaking bequests isn't new to Philadelphia. Was anyone complaining when Stephen Girard's Will creating his eponymous college for orphaned white boys was amended from its racist, sexist constraints? And were the New York critics howling when the Museum of Modern Art got a controversial redo a few years back? Moreover, according to Bernard C. Watson, chairman of the Barnes Foundation board, who also spoke Friday, it was actually the didactic Dr. Barnes himself, the fabulously rich inventor of a patent medicine, who provided in his will a loop-hole that allows the Barnes to move. It was the 'broke' clause. And, Watson said, the Barnes in Lower Merion was dead broke. Still, amid the back-slapping, defense of the move, and schmoozing (everyone seemed to know everyone), one hero of the moment, Billie Tsien, the new Barnes' architect, seemed to get overlooked. I asked a cheery PR honcho where she might be. 'I have no idea where she is,' he said plaintively. 'She's here somewhere. She's a very short Asian woman with her husband, a very tall man.' With such helpful, but hopeless advice, I never connected with Tsien, a principal in the New York-based firm, Tod Williams Bille Tsein Architects. (Tod Williams, incidentaly, was the 'very tall man.') Ironcially, as Tsien was going mostly unrecognized under the Barnes' Big Top, she was actually getting star billing at the Moore College of Art and Design nearby on Logan Square. She and Nancy Kolb, head of the Please Touch Museum, now located in brillantly remodeled Memorial Hall, were both being honored as Moore's 2009 Visionary Woman Award winners for their 'significant role in envisioning the transformation of space for major museums' and 'leaving an enduring mark on Philadelphia.' The college's ongoing installation includes photos and models of Tsien's ouevre. Overall, Tsien's Barnes probably won't be as breathtaking as her American Folk Art Museum in New York, which received the 2002 Arup World Architecture award for Best Building in the World. But, to my mind, at least, it certainly will be equal in creative concepts to her Skirkanich Hall at Penn. This, especially, since imposed guidelines required Tsien to model her Barnes on some existing architectural and spacial themes of the old building. Among major design points for the new building, Tsien explained in the Moore exhibit, will be a facade mixture of 'warm grey gold stone interspersed with metal.' And, 'Referring to the Kente cloth of West Africa, we are trying to create a "weave" of materials that will give the building a sense of richness and complexity.' What did the Big Apple critics think of the newly-announced design? Again -- now, almost predictably -- they hated it. (Richard Carreño, editor of www.Junto.blogspot.com, can be contacted via Writers.Clearinghouse

N.Y.C.: 11 June

Top to bottom

Photo-commentary By Richard Carreno

1. Times Square masquerading as Piazza San Marco. OK, San Marco doesn't have deck chairs....

2. The Carriage House, 136 West 18th Street. Once the residence of Elisha Brooks, one of the bruvthers of Blooks Blooders fame.

3. No. 1 Fifth Avenue. Up there, way up there in the penthouse I once interviewed Conor Cruise O'Brien, one of the true geniuses of our time. Did I know then. Hardly, I was a undergraduate journalist at NYU's Washington Square Journal. (Pic snapped from Kimmel Center, Washington Square South).

4. Portrait of James M. Hester, NYU president when I was there (late 1960's). Portrait hangs in the Bobst Memorial Library, Washington Square South.

Junto photographs: Richard Carreno

Goofy X-Ray Machine

Actually, It's a 'Fluoroscope'

Philadelphia

10 July 2007

Paul:--

I, too, as a youngster, was the repeated victim of that infernal X-ray device. A measuring and fitting instrument, I recall. Still, I reckon it was more Buck Rogers than science.

This was during the 1950's when I was being fitted for shoes over the years at the 'old' Brooks Brothers shop at 346 Madison. I always thought the process was a bit dodgy -- more like a scarey doctor's visit than proper shoe-buying experience.

But my parents insisted. I was moving on up from Buster Brown models, you see. Adios Best & Co. Hola Brooks Brothers. All along, of course, I just wanted my black, high-top Keds.

The odd thing is that I'm sure that generations of we over-60-year-olds must have undergone the X-ray. (There was probably even one at the former Brooks branch here at Chestnut and 15th).

It's amazing we've made it to this age -- given how many minutes were stolen from us by the foot zapper. Let's see, 15 minutes X....

Still, you're the first person -- of any age -- who's ever mentioned the machine, in print or in conversation that I know of. Of course, I've never had ocassion to mention it , either -- though from time to time when I'm in the 'new' Brooks store at 346 Madison, I wander by the corner where used to be located (northeast side of the first floor) wondering about the zapper.

Of course, we've come a long way. For most Americans, getting fitted for ready-made shoes -- in any form or manner -- has become, of course, a quaint notion from the past. Just grab a pair from the rack!

Cheers,

Richard Carreño

Fashion

Established 1818: The Story of Brooks Brothers
By Richard Carreño
___________________________________________________________________________________
The Golden Fleece
(The following is an excerpt from a monograph).
___________________________________________________________________________________
When Brooks Brothers, in May, 1976, let it be known that its custom tailoring tailoring division would be phased out, The New York Times featured the announcement and reaction on Page 1. For The Times, Brooks' corporate decision was more than just a sign of the times.

Nearly 30 years earlier, when Brooks Brothers launched its buttoned-down polo shirt, in 1949, in pink -- the colour was considered so daring, so inventive, even so scandalous -- that Life turned over its cover to the shirt's début. It was a time when coloured shirts, especially the pink of the toff, were still associated with bohemian rebellion -- even with that love that had no name, homosexuality.

Fanfare is not new to Brooks Brothers. From earliest days, America's oldest continuing clothing store -- established 1818 -- has been in the public eye. The store is known to be old-fashioned, yet often at the cutting edge of sartorial innovation. This combination attracts public attention.

Brooks´ vicissitudes as a fledgling haberdasher in the teeming 19th century waterfront of lower Manhattan were chronicled in Valentine´s Manual, a prominent general circulation journal of the day.

More than 100 years later, in 1931, Brooks´s stature as a mature leader in American fashion was still of interest. At least, to the readers of Apparel Arts, who were regaled about the store´s remarkable history. The feature captured the fashion-minded style of the magazine´s editor, Arnold Gingrich, who went on to inject the same style and energy in his next editorial venture, Esquire.

Esquire writer George Frazier, just a few years later, refered to Brooks Brothers as the ''Brethren.'' Frazier continued to sing songs of praise to Brooks as columnist for the Boston Herald and, later, for The Boston Globe.

Among a contemprary panoply of confusting, sometimes contradictory, class values, Brooks Brothers has maintained a precarious status -- at least, perception -- as clothier to America´s WASP élite. Through the years, Brooks has outfiitted the powerful, the patrician, and the presidential. The shop´s ledgers include sales to Lincoln, Grant, Wilson, Roosevelt (Theodore and Franklin), Nixon, and Ford. Generations of Goulds, Astors, Morgans, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers have also been among the loyal flock.

Like no other store, and few institutions, Brooks Brothers has served as a class and societal metaphor, embracing the business and artistic worlds. This has been the stuff of the store´s unparalleled mystique.

As is the case with many legends, Brooks is old, venerable, and prominent. It is also the only surviving founding father of American Fashion.

(This work was written in 1981. The complete monograph is FREE with the purchase of six or more archived Brooks Brothers catalogs, available for purchase from @philabooks+philadelphia. Otherwise, the monograph is available at $10.00).