I never got to experience the BB of old.  I have purchased and will continue to purchase select items from them.  It does not seem that BB is no longer one stop shopping for those interested in the Ivy look.  Thankfully, the internet has made it much easier to learn about and purchase from other retailers.

Brooks is not the store that I knew. But the store I knew could not have become a large national retailor. JAB is the only rival on the scene. RL pretends to be a national retailor but is not: they really have a shirt franchise which supports the rest of the empire. They really don't have many actual retail stores, as opposed to factory stores, of which they have a bunch.
     Brooks is the only national retailor of fairly expensive men's clothing. I wish they had remained a regional retailor. But the economics of any publicly traded business usually dictates growth.
     Of course now it is a private business. Maybe they will shrink now that they don't have to worry about quarterly financial statements.
      One of these days I will put up a post about the old Brooks as opposed to the new. The stuff that endures. the stuff that is better.
      For the moment: A Brooks cashmere sweater fashioned in Italy but woven in Scotland is as good if not better than anything Brooks did in the old days. And the color selection is at least as good. An incredible improvement over what was offered for the last twenty years.

Last edited by tom22 (2008-11-11 17:27:15)

English woolen robes. Actually Brooks offers a bit of a wider selection than in days of yore. They always offered a camel hair robe at many times the price of the wool one. and they always offered a silk lined cashmere robe made in England at an extravagant price. Not too much of a change in this area. The wool robe was always an indulgence. The others were priced by a multiplier. Just like today.

Last edited by Horace (2008-11-12 22:16:04)

I remember being an associate at a law firm in Westport in the early eighties. The Brooks catalogue was passed around. As someone said. "They aren't as expensive as a lot of other places". Some of the stuff was expensive. I think they marketed a lot of stuff that was affordable. They did have a marketing scheme that started you off in prep school or college, offered very good value stuff for someone in their twenties and later tried to hook you with the luxe English shoes and Golden Fleece suits (the idea was aspirational: you just graduated from level to level). But they were not a national franchise back then.  Their then sports clothes: sweaters and corduroy pants and those oxford shirts, were always a bargain on sale, at least in my time. The idea was cradle to grave.

Last edited by tom22 (2008-11-13 22:22:01)