My love-hate relationship with Brooks Brothers

After posting my memoir about finding my inner prep, it felt like a good idea to follow it up with a piece I’ve been working on about Brooks Brothers, one of the original Ivy League purveyors. This has been many months in the making because I’ve been waiting for the company – through their Canadian PR agency – to answer some of my questions as well as give me permission to photograph their large new Toronto store. Seeing as the answers and permissions are not forthcoming…

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Things are kind of complicated between me and Brooks Brothers. On the one hand, I love their story, their tradition and what they used to stand for. On the other, I am always dismayed by how trendy and un-Brooks Brothers much of their offerings are. A fair amount of my wardrobe staples, especially shirts and pants, are from Brooks Brothers, but whenever I shop there I complain to the staff  about how far the company has strayed from its roots. I look disapprovingly at their latest catalogues yet type all this while wearing a Brooks Brothers polo shirt.

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Subterranean man den – Brooks Brothers press photo by JJ Thompson.

Entering the menswear department of the massive Brooks Brothers at 110 Bloor Street West means having to go through the main floor woman’s department. As you move down the escalators to the basement, you are surrounded by photos and advertisements hearkening back to Brooks Brothers’ long and storied history. Sadly, however, these seem more like old-timey decorations in a themed suburban pub than a true honouring of the past. This is not the past, as clearly stated in the store layout: Brooks Brothers used to be purely a men’s store. Now the men’s clothing is relegated to the basement. Like a discount section.

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Why does it get to me? Why does the state of Brooks Brothers bother me far more than any other retailer? Well, we’re always most critical of the ones we love, aren’t we? Love is perhaps too strong a word, but I feel a strong affinity for Brooks Brothers, especially what they used to stand for: quality, good taste and reasonable prices. As G. Bruce Boyer wrote in his 1985 book on classic menswear Elegance, “In its role as a tasteful innovator, Brooks is perhaps the greatest single influence on American menswear.” And what innovators they were: Brooks Brothers introduced the button-down collar to retail shirts, reversed the angle of British regimental stripes to create the repp tie, brought Fair Isle sweaters from a tiny Scottish island to the American masses, even introduced madras and seersucker fabrics to the world of fine menswear.

The Brooks Brothers sack suit, from a 1942 advertisement.

The Brooks Brothers sack suit, from a 1942 advertisement.

But possibly their greatest influence in menswear was the sack suit (which they cemented as an American classic along with J. Press, the other great Ivy League outfitter). Again, Boyer: “The line, whether for jackets or shirts, is freer flowing, more natural and loosely cut, than European clothing, which is generally more shaped and contoured. A Brooks jacket is often said to be not felt on the body, since it falls easily from the shoulders and has as little padding as a jacket can have and still have a constructed appearance. This look solidified in the 1940s, and Brooks has stuck with it and promoted it through all the ups and downs of masculine fashion trends…”

So what happened? Why is Brooks no longer the bastion of conservative American dress? How did they succumb to those ups and downs? In short, the Brooks family sold the company, which was then sold to a British retailer and eventually, an Italian fashion conglomerate. We have the current owners to thank for bringing Brooks Brothers back from the brink (although they were greatly helped by the recent upswing in menswear interest.) But I think they have done little, other than the posters on the walls, to honour the history of the company.

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I am not a lone voice in the wilderness: visit almost any trad or prep men’s style forum and you will find pages and pages of diatribes on how far Brooks Brothers has fallen. But I think Christian Chensvold, editor of Ivy Style, said it best in reacting to a new Brooks Brothers madras jacket that had some of the hallmarks of the traditional model: “I don’t know what’s more frustrating: that Brooks merchandisers chose double vents to deliberately break with the American tradition, or that they’re locked in such a Continental mindset when it comes to tailored clothing they don’t even realize it’s a break with American tradition.”

I too have examples that get under my skin. You cannot find, in any of the three Toronto locations of Brooks Brothers, their most iconic shirt in all fits and colours: the oxford cloth button down. There’s plenty of formaldehyde-soaked non-iron versions, but I had to order my shirt online. And don’t even bother asking the staff about the sack suit – which I do almost every time to perplexed expressions. The “1818 Sack Blazer” is the closest thing in the modern catalogue to the old classic, but falls well short of the mark, quite literally: the jacket needs to be a few inches longer, have its button lowered and lose some of the shaping.

The contemporary `sack`blazer.

The contemporary sack blazer.

This all had me wondering, when I recently interviewed Bruce Boyer on the 30th anniversary of his book, that perhaps today’s Brooks Brothers is more a simulation of the past than a continuation? “It’s probably worse than that,” Boyer told me. “Today, Brooks Brothers seems to be a low-rent Italian department store. Brooks was never a high-priced store. It prided itself , and made it’s reputation, on being good quality at a fair price, which along with conservative understated taste appealed to The Eastern Establishment. Today I’m not sure to whom Brooks appeals.”

The sad truth is that while some people are newly interested in heritage, tradition and authenticity, they also want to look modern and trendy. Brooks Brothers is just responding to the market. And that’s what really gets to me about the store: its change is symbolic of our society’s shift away from quality and tradition. This former stronghold of classic menswear seems more and more like so many other retailers, following trends instead of upholding its own vision. That said, I absolutely love and really, really want these new madras-style Bermuda shorts.