Brooks Brothers Gets Ready for the Spring

Brooks Brothers recently launched its Spring line and I think it looks pretty good. It’s not cutting edge or breaking any new stylistic ground, but the design team has decided to channel the golden age of menswear – 1930s and ‘40s Hollywood. They have done a pretty good job of capturing the flair of that era, while at the same time reinterpreting the fashions for today’s consumers.

There is a pleasing balance to the overall style, timeless classics like sport coats cut for warmer weather in silk and merino blends and lightweight Harris Tweed, shawl collared cardigan sweaters, and elegant shirting. There are also a few items that take some sartorial guts to wear, like the Ghurka styled belted shorts and pink seersucker blazer. Neither is particularly edgy, but sometimes it’s easier to be outrageously shocking than truly classic.

This season’s collection, as with nearly all since the company was acquired by Italian Claudio Del Vecchio in 2001, has a distinctly European feel. The overall message is American glamour, but the execution is quite continental. Not that Brooks Brothers has ever been slacker when it comes to actual quality, but until Mr. Del Vecchio took the reins, there had been a very distinct sense of sartorial stagnation.

Not too long ago, I also stopped by Brooks Brothers’ flagship store on Madison Avenue to check out the Black Fleece line. Thom Browne’s joint venture with Brooks has been both lauded and paned. Up on the third floor of the store, with a huge plasma screen showing runway clips in a slightly industrial showroom style setting with freestanding sample racks, I found a hipper version of the Brooks Brothers’ traditional clubby feel. Overall, I was impressed.

I ran into two Japanese gents trying on Black Fleece oxford shirts and asked them for an opinion on fit; “definitely a slimmer fit,” came the reply. But they both seemed pretty impressed; and so was I. The samples on display, turned inside-out, highlighted exceptional tailoring and the fabrics were alternately butter soft or weighty and dense - each appropriate to the piece.

The general feel of the collection is a merger between the pared down monochromatic aesthetic of 1950s America and the restrained yet stylized European body conscious look of today. It’s not your dad’s Brooks Brothers, but it’s also not abandonment of classic style. That same traditional sensibility is there, but with a twist.

Some things however, like the dove gray morning coat tricked out with white trim, a la boating jacket, are wholly decorative and practically nonfunctional in the real world (at least mine). Browne’s trademark shrunken suit has been elongated to the more realistic proportions of actual men who don’t work the runways for a living. It’s a fresh breath of air for a classic label.

Another strong design season is putting Brooks Brothers back on the style map.

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It Could Have Been So Much Better

Among my peers, Savile Row, its suits and tailors, is a thing of aspiration. It makes the best suits, has dressed the best people and justly carries an air of arrogance. One day, when we have enough money to sensibly spend a lot of it on a very nice suit, that is where we will go, with a certain amount of trepidation. There is a readymade market among British youth there, all with accelerating income and aspirations to luxury that include Huntsman, Poole and the rest.

The tragedy is that the BBC series on Savile Row may have popped this bubble, by trying to lure exactly that youth market.

Monday’s final episode in this series was entitled New Blood, and focused on the need for Savile Row to hire talented young tailors that are willing to stay in one unglamorous career their whole lives, for the love of the job and without much pay (at least to begin with).

Unfortunately, all it did was highlight once again Savile Row Bespoke’s mistaken efforts to brand the street as a whole, to bring together disparate individuals into one marketing exercise. The SRB association is planning to set up an academy to train young tailors. Unfortunately, one tailor further down the Row that is not a member of SRB has the same idea. Or, rather, a slightly different idea: he wants his own academy because he feels the work done on the rest of the Row is not up to scratch.

The two meet, have a reasonably gentlemanly discussion and depart, each refusing the other’s offer. So now any young man (or, increasingly, woman) wanting to be trained by the best has to choose between the Savile Row Academy and Savile Row Bespoke training. Both claim to be superior and to be aiming for the same thing, and will likely offer nothing to the potential tailor that clarifies the situation.

It reminds me of the many language schools that set up in Oxford so they can call themselves The Oxford School of Languages, trying to lure in foreign students who think they are somehow being admitted to Oxford University. Some even set up on Oxford Street with the same intention.

This view of the Row – as confused and unwieldy, amateurish in the extreme – is bemoaned even more by those closely associated with it. As Thomas Mahon says on his excellent blog English Cut, “I never thought I’d see the day that a programme about the business I’ve been involved with all my life could possibly make me cringe so much. It was all very sad and tragic.”

“It appears that Savile Row Bespoke is doing a better job than all the high rents, bad exchange rates and global fashion brands could ever do at eating away at the core of what makes Savile Row a wonderful and unique place.”

It will never puncture the image of Savile Row sufficiently for me. But for others it may well have done. It is a real shame that SRB (credited by this programme and therefore presumably involved) thought a documentary would help spread the Savile Row word, when it has undone anything positive that professional, targeted advertising would have achieved.

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An Interview with Suit Supply

Following on from Permanent Style’s posting on February 1, the following is an interview with Suit Supply staffer Richard Finlay-Newton about the brand’s economies of scale, and how to get value for money in your suit.

Permanent Style: How is Suit Supply able to offer made-to-measure suits more cheaply than other stores?

Finlay-Newton: Suit Supply is a vertically integrated company, so we design, make and sell our products ourselves. Therefore, the best and most direct line to the end customer makes a better price. We don’t have to pay for agent’s, trade fairs etc.

PS: What quality signs, such as fineness of wool or canvassing, should readers look for in suits generally, and how does Suit Supply compare here to other stores?

A suit does not take shape from itself, you need to put something inside a suit to give it form, a structure, the inter-lining. There are many ways to make this structure, most common even in the more expensive suits being a fused construction in which a plastic layer is fused to the outer fabric. We use the old-fashioned technique: a canvas of cotton and horse or camel hair. If you bend these hairs they come back, these hairs have long lasting ‘form memory’ and we use them to give form to a suit. The result is a suit which follows the form of the body, one that does not make you feel locked up, and which will keep its form even through the valeting process.

PS: How much of a suit’s price is attributable to branding and advertising, do you think?

Around 60%

PS: Where do most other brands have their suits made these days?

Quality suit making is still concentrated in a few areas, where we and other brands make our suits. These towns contain the people who have the required skills in their fingers. So we all stick together in a way. The skills don’t migrate as fast as in other more industrialized trades. So we and our competitors still produce a great deal in Italy, but China is also moving up in quality garment making.

PS: Do different brands tend to be made at the same factories and even with the same wools ?

Cloth can be sold from one mill to several companies, with the suit possibly being made at the same factory. The main difference is often the cut of the jacket. Each company will aim to create a shape that sets it apart from its competitor. You may still find the same cloth in different shops at different prices.

PS: What other industry insights can you offer about how suits are made and how to get value-for-money?

The make of a suit is just the starting point. The satisfaction you will get from a suit is decided largely by how it fits you. If the person measuring your suit has got it right you will feel better in the suit, and wear it more often. It is about expertise in making the suit, but just as important in the skills of the people measuring you. You can buy an ill-fitting suit for a lot of money. That is the reason why we focus on just one thing: suits, and do not divert  into casual wear, shoes etc. It enables us give our full attention to the promise we give to every customer a perfect fitting suit.

PS: Does Suit Supply have any plans to extend to the US or any other markets?

The first months of trading have been very successful, so we are going to open more stores in the UK this year. We are also planning to open a store in Milan and Zurich in the next 12 months. The UK is in a way a portal to the US, although suit wise there are some big differences – our orientation is probably more westwards in this regard.

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Style of, by and for the People

The fact that technology has revolutionized traditional media is nothing new, but the way in which it has transformed the fashion world has been comparatively under-acknowledged. No more than ten years ago, the only outlet men had to learn about fashion and trends was either their monthly GQ or Esquire. Online media has progressively challenged the monolithic print publications, which have themselves moved increasingly into online space.

Now that everything is constant and on-demand, trends have a much easier and faster way of diffusing. Whereas it might take a print publication a month to pick up on something, another month to fit it into the next issue, and finally the extra time it would take to catch on in the general public, the Internet has greatly shortened the time needed. What is on the Sartorialist one day can easily become popular in the span of a single month, if not sooner.

More specifically though, a new breed of online media may further revolutionize the world of fashion: the user-generated site. These sites, rather than being directed by a group of editors or industry-insiders, are intimately in touch with the realities and limitations of regular people. For example, while GQ might recommend a $5,000 suit, the number of people able to go and purchase a suit half that price is very small.

This facility to share information and opinions may have a powerful effect on style and fashion as a whole. On one hand, it makes fashion more accessible and available to those with a curiosity or interest in learning some of the fundamental ‘rules.’ On the other, doesn’t it seem a bit like a case of the blind leading the blind?

According to Yuli Ziv, editor-in chief and founder of the online user-generated magazine MyItThings, “Print magazines used to have the power to dictate fashion. The Web 2.0 revolution and social shopping movement have brought user-generated content into the ultra exclusive world of fashion and now are changing the rules. Today’s trends are controlled not only by selected editors and columnists; they are also driven by the wisdom of crowds.”

Social shopping sites of this nature are almost exclusively tailored to women, though it will be interesting to see whether there will be an analogous venue for men. Clearly, the interest is there. Look no further than the first page of either Style Forum or the men.style.com forums to find threads of men sharing pictures of their shoes and recent purchases.

Because style is such a subject field, it would make sense that a ‘crowd’ would be just as effective as any style guru at judging what is ‘stylish.’ After all, we normally judge ‘good’ style as what is acknowledged to be attractive by a broad group. The only question yet to be seen is the collective taste of the masses.

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Savile Row Splutters Abroad

I liked the first episode of the Savile Row TV series. But episode two kicks it into touch. Gone are the reverential shots of tailors and their workshops. Gone the image of a British institution comfortable with itself. And gone the unity that attacking Abercrombie & Fitch briefly sparked.

Savile Row is trying to modernise itself and market itself. But no one in the Savile Row Bespoke council seems to know what they want (or how to go about it). And they all fail to know what they want in slightly different ways.

To ward off competition and retain the purity of Savile Row, the council is drawing up rules about who can qualify as Savile Row Bespoke. Most clothes must be cut and made on the premises, on the Row or within 100 yards of it. But two tailors, Edward Sexton (of 1960s and Tommy Nutter fame) and Ravi Tailor were excluded. Sexton had moved to a Knightsbridge address a while ago, and Ravi was forced out after a mistaken partnership with Japanese jeans company Evisu. Both were judged to be more than 100 yards away (despite a heartbreaking scene when Ravi’s young son paces out 78 yards to the new store).

But surely the point of the association was to prevent new tailors using the Savile Row name, and keep the spirit of the brand pure. It was meant to be forward-looking. Little seems to be gained from excluding these two historical names from the list because of rules just invented. Moreover, different members of the council seem to have different views of the point of this rule, and some even think it is 50 yards, rather than 100.

The project seems even more ridiculous after a section following Henry Poole’s expansion in China. They have one store already in Beijing and are setting up another close by, both managed by a Chinese tailor. Not only is this nowhere near Savile Row, but the staff working and cutting in the new store are not Henry Poole staff. They use cloth sent from England, but no mention is made of the training Chinese staff receive.

(It has also been suggested that the exploits of Henry Poole’s man in China are rather like David Brent abroad. This may be unkind, but the beard and lack of social graces are certainly there. See Andy Forum discussion here.)

It is also instructive that no mention is made in the programme of two Savile Row brands that have successfully expanded their marketing and appeal – Kilgour and Richard James. Kilgour recently began offering a service that uses Chinese tailors that are hired and trained by Kilgour, but work in China. This cuts around £1000 off the price of a suit.

When this is mentioned to Henry Poole cutter Angus Cundey on an ill-fated branding exercise in Florence (their designer produces table placings with “Savile Road” emblazoned on them) he disowns any suggestion that he has operations in China. Apparently it is better to have a store there but no workers that export work back to the UK, which seems a little academic.

The story of Savile Row’s tailors and their expansion is a fascinating one, but you can’t help feeling that with so many individuals among them, they would be better off branding individually. Follow the examples of Richard James and Kilgour, or what’s left will be a vague “save the Row” campaign, not a modern business plan.

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