The ghost of our recent neighbor and competitor at 346 Madison Avenue lies naked in blessed memory of its once glorious past. I write this confession more in sorrow than misplaced glee.
In 1950, when I was 12 years old my grandfather, the eponymous Jacobi Press, took me to Brooks Brothers for my Bar Mitzvah suit. He took it back to his shop across the street for alterations and the first thing he did was rip off the Brooks Brothers label and replace it with one of his own.
Grandpa Press’ dismemberment of a Brooks Brothers label from my size 14 grey flannel suit followed the protocol first established in New Haven turn of the last century: namely, emulating Brooks Brothers.
All the players alongside the Yale campus — Langrock, Fenn-Feinstein, Arthur Rosenberg, White’s, Isenberg’s, the Yale Coop “followed suit” in mimicking Brooks Brothers. And when LIFE Magazine proclaimed the coast-to-coast explosion of the Ivy League Look, mainstream retailers got into the act by further copying the Brooks Brothers Number One Sack Suit, not to mention exploiting the famous button-down shirt, repp tie, seersuckers, Indian Madras, polo coat—the whole works.
However, in a memoir of his days at Yale, Episcopal Archbishop of New York Paul Moore, Jr. credited Jacobi Press with doing more than anyone else to establish the Ivy Look. “His tweeds were a little softer and flashier than the Brooks Brothers tweeds,” Moore writes, “his ties a little brighter.”
Soon his sons Irving and Paul used the Brooks curriculum to devise their version adapting a flap pocket on their dress shirts, center hook vent on sport coats, blazers, and suit coats and further adding a raised notch on the jacket lapels. I got into the act in the 1960s bringing Brooks’ 6th floor 346 two-button suit model for our modified requirements on 16 East 44th Street.
Manufacturers and retailers together joined in the conspiracy to clone the Golden Fleece including Gant and Sero in New Haven, Hathaway Shirts in Waterville, Maine. Norman Hilton in Princeton, Julie Hertling in Brooklyn, and Haspel Brothers in New Orleans.
Demise of the hallowed ground of 346 Madison brings to mind Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias, “Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone level sands stretch far away,”
RICHARD PRESS
22 comments
During my wall Street days I was shopping at Brooks Brothers on Liberty Plaza and a photographer started to take pictures of me trying on various suits and sports jackets. I returned to my office and there were half a dozen phone calls from the store store manager at Brooks. I called back and Daily News business section wanted to run an article about the Dow hitting 10000 and the Wall Street Bulls were once again spending extravagant sums of money on wardrobes! When the article was published and all my friends from the Bank and Union League club me to give a hard time I explained that I was an equal opportunity man of fashion! My suit was from Brooks,my neck tie was from Hermes,shoes Gucci,shirt and cufflinks Paul Stuart,pocket square and belt strap J Press. Those were the days!!! Now everyone is on zoom calls wearing sweat pants.I always felt welcome at JPress keep on going strong!. Brooks closed at the Americana Mall just recently customers are devastated. If you need seed money to open a new store email me.
I need to check you out. I have been a BB fan for years.
I hear you ROBERT W. EMMAUS. I am a 12-14 inch drop…depending. Unfortunately, I missed out on the whole Martin Greenfield and Southwick era. But, just as well, as they wouldn’t fit me anymore. I really like the J.P. hooked vent as well as lower BB lapel notch.
Some items from BB are still worth purchasing.
At a wedding two years ago, a former executive at B. Altman was wearing his Navy blazer; he complimented me on mine (I have two).
I enjoy wearing the Clark trousers from BB; the crease is sharp and my mother (she’s 95 and grew up in Richmond, Virginia admiring the styles of the fellows from UR) thinks they’re wonderful. She even told one of my younger brothers to buy some.
For shoes I stick with Allen Edmonds; the selection from BB is dreadful.
Brooks in its heyday was indeed a colossus, and Richard’s tribute to them speaks of his own graciousness as a competitor. I had a number of suits made to measure at Brooks — the first group were made for BB by Martin Greenfield, and a later batch by Southwick (after Brooks purchased their factory); I prefer the former. Ultimately Brooks was undone by overexpansion as well as a changing market; covid was the nail in the coffin.
With the demise of Brooks, I have found J. Press to be a worthy alternative to the classic Brooks quality and style. Most of Press’s goods are made in U.S.A., whereas it’s almost impossible to find domestically made merchandise in a Brooks store nowadays.