Online Shopping & Men

Last year, I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal that discussed how luxury makers who traditionally target women are taking aim at the men in their lives. While this is not a particularly new trend, the intensity and focus surrounding the effort is definitely growing.

I also read about Longchamp reviving its line of men’s bags, and it turns out that was only the opening salvo. Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Lanvin, and even Dolce & Gabbana have all ramped up their menswear related offerings.

While men are beginning to actually shop more like women, achieving the same level of brand loyalty is still an elusive goal. Generally speaking men are still more comfortable switching brands if one maker does not carry a desired product.

Men also appear to be taking that hunter/gatherer shopping approach to the mall. In 1995 52% of men bought their own clothes, compared to 75% in 2006. In addition, the menswear segment of the retail landscape has become quite profitable as guys across the board ease into the role of acquisitive spender. After observing this growing trend, retailers are taking action.

For example, in 2007, Tiffany & Co. and Hermes both opened new stores in the Wall Street district of New York City. Each of these locations specifically target male shoppers. The Hermes store even has a separate salon dedicated to its custom tailored clothing; the first of its kind in any Hermes outlet.

In this past week’s Wall Street Journal, another layer was added to the mix: Internet shopping.

According to Forrester Research, men are also the alpha species when it comes to shopping online. We spend more, make fast decisions and as a group, tend not to return the stuff we don’t really want. As to the spending, another market research group found that in the previous three months, men dropped an average of US$2,400 online compared to women who spent closer to US$1,500. And men spent most of that money almost exclusively on luxury goods.

Retailers are responding to men’s web based demands as well. With this new insight into how men shop online, Brooks Brothers has cut in half the time it takes for images to pop up on its website’s pages - now literally a fraction of a second. This way, guys can quickly pull up what they want to see and decide on a purchase without losing interest because of loading delays. Brooks has also introduced a new tool that lets customers shop magazine and newspaper ads. Pull up the ad on the Brooks Brothers site and just roll your curser over any item you want to buy.

Many companies have expanded existing or created brand new men’s departments on their websites. Others are tweaking their sites to be more men-friendly. Neiman Marcus has revamped how it presents ties on your computer screen; where once you could only view nine at a time, now a whopping 52 instantly pop up.

This is handy because, just like in the bricks and mortar world, men don’t like to waste time shopping online. On average, a guy will take a third of the time a woman does to make a purchase. And once a sale is made, should the reality not match up with the dream, men return less than 10% of their apparel purchases while women return more than 20%.

Men are not yet the next women when it comes to shopping – online or otherwise – but maybe it doesn’t even matter. Men are now interested in shopping for themselves. They care about the experience and are more knowledgeable than ever before. If you are a retailer, that’s what you should really be focusing on.

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Fashion Rolls in Its Own Muck

Apparently, there’s a war on. It’s a war of attrition, as designers from both sides throw model after model down the runway. They are battling for our wallets. The two entrenched sides are – again, apparently – narrow trousers and baggy trousers.

According to a feature in the Financial Times, on one side are Dolce & Gabbana, Dries Van Noten, Galliano, Antonio Marras, Vivienne Westwood and Giorgio Armanni. These apparently favour the baggy trouser, though I’m sure I’ve seen narrow suit trousers on D&G models just as frequently as wide ones. On the opposing side are Burberry, Roberto Cavalli, Daks, Costume National, Fendi, Prada and Marni. Though I’ve yet to try on a Daks suit that has narrow or cropped trousers.

Whatever the truth of it, this war feels like the fashion world rolling in its own muck. Having created a world that obsesses over people and brands, and insists on changing the hot new item every few weeks, fashion can now create its own little battles and stories, its own tiffs, face-offs and fights, all played out in an entirely artificial world.

The situation isn’t helped by fashion journalists. You can see them all crowding around the catwalks, all desperately looking for “this season’s trends”. They all have to go home and right exactly the same feature: what the runway shows mean you will be wearing (or should be wearing) next season. Because there are so many designers, with so many different ideas, a trend is hard to find. So journalists frantically cobble together examples from different shows, shoehorning one look into a trend. Sometimes journalists just give up – GQ’s coverage of the spring/summer shows went with theme of celebrating diversity.

Men’s suit trousers are the pinnacle of this self-involvement. Granted, trousers change over time. Jeans are narrower than they were three years ago. But suit trousers rarely change that much. Perhaps they lose or gain pleats, or cuffs. The rise has certainly lowered in the past ten years. But the idea that they are that affected by fashion is ridiculous.

Suit jackets are complicated. The number of buttons, width of lapels and padding of shoulders does change significantly. Ten years ago it was cutting edge to have four buttons. Today that figure is one. It’s not hard to work out what the man interested in permanent style should do: go for two or three. Equally with shoulders, lapels or vents – pick something that suits you (don’t go for a very natural shoulder if you already have rounded shoulders, like me) and stick with it through fashion changes.

But trousers aren’t complicated. They should be straight, not wide or skinny, and pleats/rise depends more on your figure than anything else. This (apparent) war just doesn’t affect men and their formal dressing at all. Ignore it and move on.

Pictures credit: men.style.com.

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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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