Feraud
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I've never been a fan of the poly mix non-iron dress shirts.
From the WSJ online -
From the WSJ online -
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303933704577528922332227912.html#articleTabs=articleNo matter how dismal and desperate, or just silly, things get in the world, one thing has remained constant—serving as a sort of polestar to reassure that while fashion, politics and technology might change, tradition, quality and modesty remain as the bedrock of our republic.
I'm talking about the Brooks Brothers button-down cotton Oxford shirt. I probably first came across it in my mid-20s, not long after college. It doesn't sound as if wearing a Brooks Brother shirt should constitute an act of rebellion, but it was in our family. When I was in my teens, my mother discovered polyester. With four boys, she couldn't imagine anything better than being able to throw shirts and pants in the wash and have them emerge from the dryer essentially wrinkle-free. That they felt and looked artificial wasn't of great concern to her—it was a blessing that she, or her housekeeper, didn't have to spend all day ironing. And because my brothers and I knew no better, we didn't complain. Besides, what 15-year-old boy cares what he puts on, certainly back then, with all his peers probably wearing polyester, too?
But once I discovered 100% cotton—my recollection is that my future wife probably had something to do with it, realizing my unbecoming wardrobe was one small area where she could exert a positive influence—I came to appreciate that natural fibers felt better against the skin. They breathed and looked better, too, allowing one to present a sense of seriousness and responsibility in the workplace, even when the reality was anything but.
Purchasing several Brooks Brothers shirts became an annual ritual, usually during the store's Father's Day sale—when prices were modesty cheaper than they were the rest of the year. I also only shopped at their Madison Avenue and 44th Street flagship store; it might have been their sole location back then. Nonetheless, stepping through its brushed-steel double doors, like those of a bank vault, you felt as if you were crossing from the chaos and flimsy values of the outside world into something immutable, almost a private club, its members united not by religion or politics or a passion for stamps or sports, but by clothing and men's accessories that flattered the wearer as much for their ethical values as for their quality and cut.
I have no idea whether there was any connection between Brooks Brothers and writers and editors such as Max Perkins, Harold Ross, Fitzgerald and Cheever. But it always felt as if their ghosts were roaming the aisles alongside you, debating with themselves whether they should stick to white or whether they could pull off pink or pinstripes this season. The store served as connective cultural tissue between different generations of New Yorkers: What we all had in common was an eye for authenticity and an intellect capable of seeing through the fads and false gods of our fellow man.
Thus, it came as something of a shock when I visited the store this June and discovered that amid the sea of shirts for sale—table after table in traditional, regular, slim and extra-slim fit; colors, stripes and solids; both long- and short-sleeved—only one table remained devoted to the shirts that helped define adulthood for me: the classic, all-cotton, traditional fit. Everything else was "non-iron."
In other words, we've reverted to the age of polyester. I'm not saying it came as a big surprise that the culture at large would do so (our orbit seems to have been decaying for some time now), but only that Brooks Brothers seemed to be embracing such questionable values along with everybody else.
In the store's defense, I should note that their "non-iron" shirts are, in fact, 100% cotton. To my eye, they also look indistinguishable from their must-iron brethren. And I own several, appreciating the convenience and economics of being able to throw them in the wash rather than having to take them to the cleaners around the corner. But they feel different—stiffer.
I thought it might have been my imagination. After all, I respect Brooks Brothers and its track record enough to defer to its judgment. So I asked the salesman assisting me whether I was misguided, whether the traditional cotton felt different from the non-iron or if I was just emotionally, perhaps even irrationally, attached to the past.
He confirmed my suspicions. "They do get softer," he confided, of the classic all-cotton shirts.
Why, then, I asked incredulously, has Brooks Brothers gone down this ill-advised road? "We invented the non-iron," he explained, "so I think they really want to make it work."
I contacted Brooks Brothers and Jeff Blee, its divisional manager of men's furnishings, hoping gently to persuade him of the colossal merchandizing, and also moral, error the store was making by placing the vast majority of its eggs in the non-iron basket. But he reported that customers love them.
"It's basically a nine-out-of-10 kind of deal," Mr. Blee said—meaning that 90% of customers now buy the non-iron shirt. "And it happened in the space of 10 years—a 200-year-old company that basically revolutionized their most important category in the space of a decade. Today, that's now the Brooks Brothers shirt. It was a customer thing. It was a pull and not a push. Once the person had experienced the wear and tear of that shirt, they were converted."
I realize it would have been fruitless to explain that what made Brooks Brothers great wasn't that it catered to the public's taste; it created taste. What attracted me to the store in the first place wasn't that it reaffirmed my questionable fashion instincts; Brooks Brothers elevated them. There are a thousand opportunities every day in New York to wallow in the hoi polloi. By donning a Brooks Brothers shirt, you instantaneously distanced yourself from it.
I decided to call my friend Sid Holt, a longtime Brooks Brothers customer, hoping to commiserate. If memory serves me correctly, Mr. Holt, the chief executive of the American Society of Magazine Editors, many years ago clued me in about the store's Father's Day sale. If Mr. Holt had gone over to the non-iron side, I felt all would be lost, that the America I knew and loved no longer existed.
Fortunately, he hadn't. "I personally think the non-iron feels a little unnatural," he said unprovoked, almost diffidently. "I also have the pockets removed."
I was astounded and bewildered. To me, the convenience of a pocket to store glasses and pens is essential. "I don't use them," he went on, "and they offer that service. I think it's $3."
Mr. Holt recalled that only once did he purchase a Brooks Brothers non-iron shirt.
"I bought it by mistake," he said. "I just grabbed a pink shirt." (Perhaps that explains their popularity; the brand's classic Oxfords are so iconic that customers don't realize they're buying something else.) Mr. Holt only realized his mistake when he sent the shirt to the cleaners for the first time.
Normally, it would come back without any trace of the removed pocket. "The outline of the pocket still shows on the non-iron," he explained. "At least it did on this particular shirt."
I asked Mr. Holt what he did. "I took it back," he stated flatly. As any classic, self-respecting, all-cotton, traditional-fit, button-down Brooks Brothers dress-shirt customer would.
—ralph.gardner@wsj.com
