Brooks Brothers

I suspect there are a lot more stories and emotions for women around this store or that one visited while growing up with sister or mom or friend.  Clothes magically appeared in my life.  I hardly remember buying them at all until I was maybe in my 30's.  Definitely not a clothes horse.  Clothes and cars have always been disposable tools for me.  I was not and never will be cool.

But one day an event occurred that I'm pretty sure was a seminal one for my father, a passage day.  He took me to Brooks Brothers in NYC to get fitted for a gray three piece suit.  I think I must have been 15 and home on holiday from prep school.  In retrospect it was something out of a movie.  It did not mean much to me but I know to him having the money to buy me a suit without looking at the price tag and having his son be tailored in a three piece at Brooks Brothers meant a lot.  Unfortunately that is as close as I got in his lifetime to being part of his culture.  It was all downhill from there.  This was 1968 and I was becoming more of a fan of Abby Hoffman and Eldridge Cleaver than the Brooks Brothers.

So I saw the beginning of the end of Brooks Brothers through two inner eyes today.  

The first was what most of the world sees "who cares.. it is time."  

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