Brooks Bros., ‘Made in America’ Since 1818, May Soon Need a New Calling Card

The Fabric of the Country

Few American businesses have as rich and resonant a history as Brooks Brothers, which Henry Sands Brooks founded in Manhattan in 1818 and is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the United States. Ralph Lauren started out as a salesman at Brooks Brothers in New York. It is the official clothier of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and has been worn by Clark Gable, Andy Warhol and Stephen Colbert. It has dressed all but four presidents, and its overcoats have been worn for the inaugurations of Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump, among others. It even made uniforms for soldiers during the Civil War.

Family run until 1946, and always produced in part in the United States, Brooks Brothers changed hands a number of times until Marks Spencer, the midmarket British firm, acquired it in 1988 and more production began to move offshore. There were complaints about diminished quality, and the brand was generally seen, said Thomas Davis, a salesman at the company for almost 50 years until 2017, as “falling into the abyss.” That was when Mr. Del Vecchio, whose father, Leonardo, is the 46th-richest man in the world, according to the Bloomberg billionaires index, acquired it for $225 million.

“Claudio loved factories and knew it was a source of differentiation for us,” said Jeff Blee, a former executive in merchandising at Brooks Brothers. “As America’s oldest clothing brand, being able to connect the dots from a sourcing, design, manufacturing standpoint — it helped bolster that story.”

Mr. Del Vecchio opened elaborate flagship stores in global capitals, and hired well-known American designers such as Thom Browne and Zac Posen to create high-end collections that could be shown during New York Fashion Week, with mixed results.

Steep growth in the first seven years was halted by the financial crisis. Later, the social movement toward casual Fridays, the rise of the dressed-down tech uniform and the shift toward online retail all began to chip away at the Brooks Brothers market, and it struggled to adapt.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/business/brooks-brothers-factory-closings.html