That Brooks Brothers Look

The famous Madison Avenue, New York, outfitters to gentlemen and satorial emporium par excellence, Brooks Brothers, with branches in Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and impassioned devotees from Bangor to Bombay, is once more in the news. It seems that "The Brooks Brothers Look" has broken out of the cracked-leather-and-brass-tacked confines of the Yale, Harvard and Princeton Clubs and is spreading like the oak blight to yonder hinterlands, lending its polished luster to -- horrors -- the lesser breeds. It's really about time the rest of the world got wise. It's a rotten shame that they've missed so much all these years. For there is nothing new about The Brooks Brothers Look; it has flourished like the flora and fauna in certain geographic areas of the United States for literally generations. Without it, for instance, you are branded a Bolshevik in most eastern universities, an untouchable in Boston and New York societies, a plain damned fool in the financial salons of Wall Street. Without it you can't possibly "succeed in business without really trying." What, then, is it?

The Brooks Brothers Look is not merely a look -- it's a religion. It exceeds Buddhism, Hinduism, Mohammedism and Shintoism in its fanatic fervor. It is a way of life. You are initiated into its ancient and honorable cult when you enter Hotchkiss, Andover, Exeter, Groton, or any other of the fashionable eastern prep schools, including dear old Pomfret. Your father takes you (as his father did before him) to Brooks Brothers, or to one of its multifarious imitators, and you are transformed -- presto chango -- into a "man who belongs." You emerge wearing a suit with no shoulder padding, a straight-hanging (no fitting through the waist, please) three-botton coat with narrow, notched lapels, pleatless trousers narrowed through the knees to a neat eighteen-inch cuff. For two bucks extra you can have the buttons removed from the fly and replaced by one of those new fangled zippers, although the salesman really won't approve. It is preferably a dark Oxford grey flannel, but any similar funeral tone will do. Cambridge grey was all the rage last year -- a touch darker, you know. The piéce de resistance consists of a selection of white, button-down collar, Oxford weave shirts embellished by several silk repp English regimental striped ties. Shoes pose a problem. The Brooks Brothers Look demands old shoes of very good leather (preferably slightly cracked) and polished to a high sheen. New shoes are déclassé. The answer to this is to buy a new pair of shoes and wear them furtively until they are properly aged, or else buy them at a second-hand store. Thusly clad, you can enter any prep school you please and rest assured that nobody will find you different from anyone else. Like we said, it's a way of life.

Once this pattern is established it remains, unchanging, throughout prep school, college, marriage, divorce, remarriage, and death. At college (eastern, again) you don't make a fraternity unless you've conformed to the venerable BB formula. It has its advantages, for during rush period it's easy to detect "your type," the kind with whom you can "really get along." Naturally, he's wearing a Brooks Brothers suit.

In business, too, you know whom you can trust. Not that wiseacre with the padded shoulders and glaring chalk stripe who approaches you with that over-genuine, asinine smile. No, Timothy Groton is the guy you want to pitch pennies with. Timothy Groton is a decorous gentleman with a slightly pinched face and shoulders to match, á la Brooks Brothers. His iron grey eyes harmonize beautifully with his Oxford grey suit. His silk repp tie with regimental stripes (Fifth Royal Fusiliers, you quickly note) attests readily to his reliability. Timothy, by his charming superciliousness, his slightly British accent, and, above all, his impeccably austere dress, is a man to be trusted. Timothy is most at ease as he rests his narrow-brimmed, high-crowned John Locke hat on your desk and politely, yet firmly, solicits your contribution to the Poodle Obedience Club of Upper Montclair. The clan spirit overwhelms you. How does one dare go against his own tartan? Timothy, strengthening the bonds of Comraderie, whips from his tattersall vest a subscription book which you sign without hesitation. It's a mere pledge of fifty clams. Brooks Brothers wins again, and you are duly enrolled as a patron of the Poodle Obedience Club of ... where was it?

Brooks Brothers, through it all, sits dauntless and unperturbed on its traditional site at 44th Street and Madison Avenue, New York -- the mother of them all, a citadel of conservatism, unmoved by the vagaries and vicissitudes of male fashion. In this fickle world of change, one can always count, on Brooks Brothers to remain faithful, to its style. It will go on ad infinitum clinging jealously, tenaciously, to its, tried-and-true measurements without which one is certainly no gentleman. Too bad that this noble invention has no patent, that it must be dispersed promiscuously to the let-them-eat-cake segment of our populace.

Nightclub comedians, TV crooners, band leaders have dipped into the Ivy League Pandora's Box of fashion and emerged with crew cuts, horn rimmed glasses, and that BB Look. It used to be you could tell a Yale, Harvard, or Princeton grad four blocks down Madison Avenue. Now, you aren't sure. It could be the alto saxophonist of Guy Lombardo's band, or maybe the m.c. at the Copacabana.

Bookies, disc jockeys, even presidential candidates have felt the influence of conservative eastern dress. It has reached clear across the continent to once-radical Hollywood. Now a story conference at one of the major studios looks like a gathering of Yale alums at Mory's. Imagine Bob Hope in a banker's pin stripe starring in "Road To Upper Westchester County," with Bing Crosby, in British tweeds and crew cut, groaning Boola Boola in the background. Dorothy Lamour, of course, would be wearing a grey flannel sarong.

I'm mad! I've invested several hundred dollars in my Brooks Brothers wardrobe and I resent its intrusive, impertinent adoption by the barbaric hordes. How the hell can I preserve the aura of distinction that shrouds any wearer of a BB suit when every Tom, Dick, and Harry in America is wearing a shabby imitation.

Damn it, I'd planned on succeeding in business without really trying, myself!

In this drawing from Shepaerd Mead's book "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," (Simon and Schuster) artist Claude illustrates the proper dress for men who expect to amount to something.