Saturday, May 26, 2018

Wisdom Of The Week

The best thing about Brooks Brothers apart from their essential catholicity is their conservatism. There are very few items for sale in their stores or online that would have turned an eyeball in 1960. (They have been serious about doing women's clothes for about as long as Donald Trump has been a Republican politician.) Despite the upheaval of the garment industry at the hands of free trade, they have tried to hold fast to ethical manufacturing standards. To this day they have factories in Queens, New York (ties); Garland, North Carolina (shirts); and Haverill, Massachusetts (suits). Even the eight pairs of coral-colored wool socks I bought 50 percent off a few months ago were made in Italy by people paid a just wage rather than by wage slaves. There is virtually no other men's outfitter in the United States of whom this could be said.

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I reflect upon these things with quiet satisfaction when I open my closet and see outnumbering the Tyrwhitts and the casual western shirts, the lone Versace of unknown provenance, in a row of stolid whites and blues, with the occasional pink or orange gingham popping up like an embarrassed spring flower, all the sensible items I have acquired from Brooks Brothers. No matter where I am going — to Mass, to my uncle's for a few drinks, to my office downstairs for the morning's work — I know that I will look and feel all right.


- In Praise of Brooks Brothers


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