FROM OUR NOVEMBER ISSUE: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MENSWEAR

The entire MR team proudly presents our November 2024 issue. If you haven’t received a hard copy, please page through our digital version, and we’ll continue to post individual stories here on  MR-mag.com. If you haven’t been getting MR in print, be sure that you are on our mailing list for future issues by completing  this form.

Seventeen. My junior prom with the girl of my dreams. A navy vested suit, French blue spread collar shirt, brown cap toe shoes. All from Rogers Peet on Beacon Hill. The only thing missing was the tie. I knew it had to be the right one, or all would be for naught.

So I summoned up my courage, walked over the Hill, down through the historic Boston Common, and headed for the venerable Louis of Boston. It must have been fate or the fashion gods, but there it was. In the far-left window, labeled The Berkeley Shop, was the perfect tie: a gold club tie with a navy and maroon crested helmet, distinctively appropriate for a Boston Brahmin, which, by the way, I certainly wasn’t. But I thought I could play the part. For that’s the beauty of clothes, isn’t it: to role play, to aspire to our better selves, to make lasting first impressions. I bought that tie for a whopping five dollars. I got the girl, was voted best dressed in my senior class, and landed a part-time job at Louis.

Much has happened from that day to this, for me personally and for the menswear industry. I spent the better part of my career designing my collections in the Golden Age of Menswear, the 1980s and ’90s, when tailoring was king and men dressed every day to impress and succeed. The shape of a shoulder, the nuanced palette of a printed tie, the soft, textured fabrics from the best mills in Italy: these created an exquisite portrait of that fashionable moment in time. Men were the canvas on which we painted.

But while the past holds wonderful fashion images, it’s not the formula for the future. We live in a very different world, and we dress for this new world order: more practical, more casual, and a hell of a lot more boring. As a true devotee of our industry, I study the trends, read my fashion publications, and watch men’s runway shows around the world. I’m tired of the hoodies and $5000 sweatshirts, the extreme swings from uber skinny muscle bulging suits to amorphous oversized shapes that have nothing in common with the beauty of the male torso. Unfortunately, these trends and runway presentations rarely resonate with consumers who simply want intelligent style information to make their buying decisions. Fashion is art, I get that, but menswear does not thrive in extremes: too big, too small, too short, too long. It does thrive, however, in the middle, where good taste and style will always rule the day.

As menswear searches for its new North Star, all hope is not lost. The salvation? The great men’s specialty retailers across this country who continue their love affair with menswear. Their dedication to providing impeccable customer service with innovative fashion choices in a personalized setting is their lifeblood and a welcome respite for the fashion-hungry. We’ve lost a great many of them, specialty stores that is, too numerous to mention. Yet as grass grows through the sidewalks, new men’s shops are sprouting up in small towns and cities across this country, names I might not recognize but with a distinctive style all their own.

What is it, then, that separates the great stores from the mediocre? It takes creative courage, imagination, storytelling, alluring displays, and an emphasis on special product rather than a name on a label. There’s a winning formula here: intellect and aesthetics equal success.

Over the years, I’d often tell my design teams, “Show me something I don’t know.” That should be the mantra for great men’s specialty stores today: show your customers (with conviction) something they don’t know, new ways of dressing in appropriate attire for the here and now. The legendary retailer Murray Pearlstein once taught me this: You can’t be all things to all people, so take a stand on what you believe in.

As for me, I’m starting my next chapter by creating a whole new concept that I humbly believe is the beginning of an exciting menswear evolution. I don’t have all the pieces yet, but I will soon. And I’ll keep on climbing the hills and looking into windows until I’m sure I’ve got it right.