RadixJournal - The End of Mass-Market Prep

00:00:00.000 It's Wednesday, July 30th, 2020, and welcome back to the McSpencer Group.

00:00:06.440 We dress for the kinds of jobs we don't want.

00:00:10.080 Joining me again are Tyler Hamilton and Edward Dutton.

00:00:14.100 Topic two, the end of mass market class.

00:00:18.240 Brooks Brothers has fallen.

00:00:20.480 Sales have declined.

00:00:21.960 Factories closed.

00:00:23.500 And thousands of employees furloughed or fired.

00:00:26.780 Bankruptcy now seems imminent.

00:00:29.120 Founded in 1818, Brooks Brothers clothed Civil War soldiers, U.S. presidents,

00:00:34.720 and it was integral in the development of pret-a-porter menswear.

00:00:38.540 The fashion house was a foundation stone of what it meant to be preppy.

00:00:43.260 What does Brooks Brothers' demise tell us about consumer behavior and the decline of taste and manners?

00:00:49.360 More broadly, what does it spell for the human condition to be enveloped in plastic uniform garments

00:00:54.700 that suck the soul dry of aspiration and any connection to tradition and meaning?

00:01:00.260 Should luxury be defended?

00:01:02.320 The panel discusses.

00:01:03.900 All right, Brooks Brothers.

00:01:09.280 They've been around since 1818.

00:01:11.780 They clothed Civil War soldiers.

00:01:14.780 I imagine they worked for the Union.

00:01:18.020 They claim to have invented the ready-made suit, although that's in dispute.

00:01:22.120 They also claim to have invented the seersucker suit, although that also is in dispute.

00:01:28.820 I think Haspel might be the first on that one.

00:01:34.260 I wanted to talk about this.

00:01:37.880 It's a lighter subject, but I think it's actually a telling one,

00:01:44.180 and it kind of allows us to expand in terms of what's happening with culture.

00:01:48.240 So around the year 2000, they were bought out by an Italian billionaire, Delvecchio, I believe is his name,

00:01:57.800 who's actually one of the top 50 wealthiest men alive.

00:02:04.300 And really, since the 90s, and then now they're apparently going bankrupt.

00:02:10.540 They are furloughing hundreds of employees.

00:02:12.960 They are going to close factories.

00:02:14.680 They were engaged in a bit of a Made in America campaign, which I noticed as someone who buys men's wear.

00:02:24.040 I do have some Brooks Brothers clothes, not wearing any right now, in which they –

00:02:30.360 not all of their garments, but some of their higher-end stuff was actually made in America,

00:02:38.240 and they certainly advertise that.

00:02:39.960 And that seems to be coming to an end.

00:02:44.560 And so I actually do think it's rather sad.

00:02:49.760 I have a number of Brooks Brothers staples.

00:02:52.900 I have some Brooks Brothers dress shirts, some corduroy pants, a sweater or two.

00:02:57.880 I'm not a huge Brooks Brothers fan, but I do think that they have some good stuff.

00:03:06.040 But I think Brooks Brothers, along with, you know, you could say Jay Press, you know, went a different path.

00:03:13.100 They maintained a kind of higher-end, actual haberdashery type of company.

00:03:20.620 But it is a unique American company, and it is a bastion of the prep or Ivy style, some nautical elements, some Ivy League elements, maybe some English gentleman elements as well.

00:03:36.420 If you could buy an ascot somewhere in America, you would probably find one at Brooks Brothers.

00:03:43.500 So I think it's kind of a sad state of the decline of culture, but I think it's also kind of a sad state in terms of the decline of just the concept of menswear and clothing in general,

00:03:57.460 in the sense that a lot of these companies, the bigger ones, including Ralph Lauren, who got his Leibovitz, got his start in Brooks Brothers as a Brooks Brothers salesman before he became a fashion designer, by the way. 0.84

00:04:11.940 But a lot of them kind of went down this path that was kind of like a penny wise, a pound foolish.

00:04:20.540 It led to higher profits and higher brand awareness, but it ultimately led to dissolution of their brand and, in the case of Brooks Brothers, at least bankruptcy.

00:04:34.120 And that is the whole outlet mall culture.

00:04:37.500 So about 10 years ago, when we had the 2008 crisis, people were in a very bad mood.

00:04:48.380 The stock market had crashed, companies were going under, and they started to see all these kind of 40% off sales, and they got used to this concept.

00:04:59.960 And the outlet mall was also something that was arising in the 90s.

00:05:05.680 I can remember when I was a young person, the original outlet malls were kind of true to themselves outlet malls.

00:05:14.960 I remember when we would go to Jackson Hole, Wyoming to go skiing as a family, there was actually a Ralph Lauren outlet mall.

00:05:21.880 And there you could find, say, last season's clothes or clothes that had a minor defect in them and were half off or something like that.

00:05:29.540 But they actually were the high-quality Ralph Lauren material and clothes.

00:05:35.380 They were the thing that you could buy in New York City, but now you could buy in Wyoming at 50% off, you know, nine months later.

00:05:41.520 And it was great.

00:05:42.740 But the outlet malls became a kind of Frankenstein's monster where people were so used to getting 20% or 40% off that that's all that they would do. 0.96

00:05:54.220 And it's kind of like only a fool pays retail.

00:05:58.220 And so they started buying more and more at the outlet malls. 0.96

00:06:00.680 And then these companies, again, they created this Frankenstein monster that had a life of its own.

00:06:05.600 They started making items for the outlet mall.

00:06:09.120 So they would have some high-end retail in their New York City branch or whatever.

00:06:15.780 Then they would basically create Malaysian or China-made material that was just the kind of stuff that you would get at Target or Walmart that they were selling at their outlet malls under the Brooks Brothers brand.

00:06:31.120 I remember Ed and I, actually, we stopped by an outlet mall when we were visiting the sand dunes of Illinois.

00:06:39.600 Was that a Brooks Brothers?

00:06:41.020 It was a Brooks Brothers, yes.

00:06:43.160 Oh, I love that place.

00:06:44.980 Yeah, well, you saw it for the last time.

00:06:48.560 It's kind of like visiting Hagia Sophia before it fell to the Ottomans.

00:06:52.120 It's, you know, the Brooks Brothers outlet mall in Illinois.

00:06:57.120 Yeah, it's sad.

00:06:58.020 As you can see, I'm modeling the Canadian tuxedo by Brooks Brothers right now.

00:07:02.840 Oh, right, yeah.

00:07:04.420 Yes, definitely.

00:07:05.420 Canadian tuxedo, that's denim on denim, right?

00:07:07.720 Denim shirt, denim pants, cowboy hat.

00:07:10.820 Yeah, it was a meme of me going around in this.

00:07:13.880 And it's labeled Canadian tuxedo by Brooks Brothers.

00:07:16.680 Oh, okay.

00:07:19.300 But, yeah, I mean, and so, anyway, I don't want to make this too much, like, you know, avuncular advice, but I did a podcast a couple years ago where we just talked about menswear.

00:07:32.940 I think we did that for under the paywall, but I'll just put it up for free now.

00:07:37.180 It's a couple years on.

00:07:38.080 But we were, you know, strongly suggesting that you kind of change your mindset in terms of menswear, where you purchase, you know, shoes that cost, not cost $80, but cost $400 or more.

00:07:54.280 And you know that this is going to last a decade, maybe even two, and you're going to get them resold and so on.

00:08:00.500 And it ultimately is kind of, it's ultimately cheaper, because those $80 ones are not meant to last.

00:08:06.700 You're going to buy those same pair of shoes eight or ten times.

00:08:10.140 And as opposed to buying one pair of shoes, it's better, you're more proud of it, and you can get it resold.

00:08:16.420 Similar with a suit.

00:08:17.520 A suit, you know, made in Italy, made in America, it's just a symbol that it's a real thing.

00:08:24.320 It has a full body construction.

00:08:26.440 You can get it tailored.

00:08:27.600 You can wear this for 20 years.

00:08:30.500 And it ultimately saves money, but it's more, I don't know, it's just about having a different mindset.

00:08:37.140 And I think there is this kind of moment where most of America got in this mindset of, you know, I want to buy it at the outlet mall, I want to get 20% off.

00:08:46.240 And it ultimately destroyed these companies that are kind of institutions.

00:08:50.800 Because part of the Brooks Brothers aura is, it's better.

00:08:54.960 This is aspirational.

00:08:57.600 You are wearing the same thing that literally a president would wear.

00:09:02.040 Presidents often wear Brooks Brothers or inaugurations.

00:09:05.980 And they just kind of diluted it to the point where it's like, now it's just a brand.

00:09:10.800 They're selling stuff you could literally buy at the same quality at Walmart, but it now has Brooks Brothers slapped on it.

00:09:17.040 And I don't know.

00:09:18.160 I mean, again, I for one am sad.

00:09:22.080 Well, the interesting thing, though, is one of the things I noticed is that menswear promoters themselves, like you can watch channels or read books or buy people who promote menswear, who actually contribute to this whole situation.

00:09:35.740 Because a large portion of their writing is about how you can get it at the outlet on sale, right?

00:09:42.960 Almost universally, I noticed that.

00:09:45.180 And so it's in a weird way from the people who promote good menswear themselves.

00:09:49.120 It's actually contributed to this situation where you're getting more and more products just made specifically for the outlet.

00:09:54.480 And so the actual prestige around buying like a $500 suit to $1,000 suit, right?

00:10:03.480 So about $1,000.

00:10:04.740 And then that's kind of that mystique is going away because it's like, well, you could go on eBay, you could go on Etsy, you could wait for it to go on the outlet, right?

00:10:10.640 And it's like this process where they've actually contributed to the situation we're in now.

00:10:16.620 And I mean, in some ways, it's not, I mean, I could be sad about it, but there is some good like smaller designers of good quality made menswear that you could find like online and locally who are, I guess, benefiting from the situation.

00:10:30.820 And the symbolic aspect of wearing a nice suit, in a way, is becoming stronger now because it's not as common anymore.

00:10:38.360 Like casual clothing in the workplace, for example, is a big thing now.

00:10:42.700 But if you wear like a good tailored suit just on a normal day and go out to like a bar or a restaurant, you're going to get treated very differently.

00:10:50.580 Yeah.

00:10:51.160 And so it's just in a way, yeah, it's sad, but there is some benefits to it for, you know, men themselves who know how to wear good menswear and appreciate the symbolic value and the social value that comes with it.

00:11:08.040 It's sad.

00:11:09.260 I like that shop.

00:11:10.540 I had a lovely collection of privats.

00:11:13.640 There was a black gentleman who served me and he was extremely polite and he was, you know, made you feel at home and welcome and looked after you.

00:11:22.160 And it wasn't just some obnoxious teenage chewing gum saying, you know, what do you want?

00:11:26.620 It was properly done, like a proper department store.

00:11:29.840 And I thought it was I thought it was very nice.

00:11:32.700 And it's a bit of a shame.

00:11:33.580 We had a thing in England called Dun & Co many years ago.

00:11:36.580 It's quite similar, focused on men's wear suits, tweed jackets, things like this.

00:11:41.400 And of course, the problem is that that kind of clothing, which used to be just normal, you'd go to work.

00:11:47.220 Of course, you needed a suit.

00:11:48.300 You would go on a date even.

00:11:50.080 And of course, you would wear a suit in the 80s or 90s has now gone and everything's casual.

00:11:56.020 Even among the three of us, I'm the only person that's remotely smartly dressed.

00:12:00.260 And this is this is cotton cashmere, by the way.

00:12:04.500 These things are smart.

00:12:05.940 Casual was this.

00:12:06.900 You've got to keep these things going or they or they die out.

00:12:09.960 You know, eventually it becomes a state.

00:12:12.140 It becomes a statement to not have an open neck shirt.

00:12:15.120 So that's how much we sort of reverse things.

00:12:17.960 And I think you make a very good point about this issue of quality over over cheapness or whatever, mass production.

00:12:25.400 The idea that what must it do to the psyche to be surrounded by expensive, nice, but nice, nice, well-made things, which which which have been handmade, but have a great deal of love, but a great deal of effort and planning.

00:12:44.180 And yeah, perfectionism put into them compared to being surrounded by things which have been cheaply made by foreign people at low prices will break easily and be chucked away. 1.00

00:12:57.740 Yeah.

00:12:57.860 And I wonder if that's what does it like to wear clothes and to be surrounded by people wearing clothes, which, again, have been well-made and, you know, family tradition and all this and sort of back into history and all this and as against clothes which have just been mass produced in in Vietnam and will be thrown away within a few years.

00:13:16.960 And I think it's a similar effect to what does it do to the psyche to be surrounded by beautiful, well, they didn't have to be old, but they normally will be old buildings with ornate decoration and whatever of the kind.

00:13:29.720 When I was in Chicago that you saw these 1920s big skyscrapers with little details and all this, you know, all these little details carefully done to look kind of beautiful in their own way compared to what is done now, just brutalist, unpleasant architecture.

00:13:44.060 It's bad for the psyche.

00:13:45.440 It's bad for the soul.

00:13:47.440 And I think that's the that's it's another means of repression.

00:13:50.720 It's another means of putting people down and making them depressed, of making them the kind of consumerist automata to have them wearing these just cheap, horrible Chinese Communist Party overalls, really, as opposed to things that have been that have been well-made. 0.92

00:14:07.380 And it's like the difference between having a nice, you know, lovely food in that whatever that club was you took me to as as as as as compared to having a McDonald's.

00:14:16.280 It's that kind of difference.

00:14:17.480 So I think this is therefore it's for that reason in terms of just what it's doing to the culture.

00:14:21.680 I think it's very sad.

00:14:23.220 Yeah, I mean, we can't ignore all the research around in clothed cognition.

00:14:27.720 Right. It's the idea there that the actual clothing you're choosing to wear is that this symbolic representation actually does play a causal role in how you behave when it comes to your

00:14:37.180 alertness or the way you deal with problems.

00:14:39.520 Right. Like if you put up if you if you assign someone a task and give them a lab coat versus a painter's coat when they've done these studies is that they tend to miss more details when they're wearing the painter's coat.

00:14:49.800 And that's just like an easy example.

00:14:51.020 Right. But you also have a situation where the whole culture, as I was saying, is moving towards this more bland, casual style, like sweatpants everywhere or yoga pants or whatever have you.

00:15:03.180 We all know where you all see it when you go outside is it's the fact that consciousness and how we view ourselves is not just for our own bodies and for our own mental state, our own alertness.

00:15:15.420 It's actually intersubjective.

00:15:16.880 It's how we interact with each other and the symbolic meetings that we confer on it.

00:15:20.520 Right. And so then you have this situation where that kind of casualness is taking part in what I would say is a part of this.

00:15:28.320 Like, as we're saying, with brutalist architecture, this degration of the human spirit, right?

00:15:32.560 You don't see yourself as anything like higher than what you are because it's and it sounds weird to say this.

00:15:38.720 Right. It does. People like to say you talk about clothes, but it's also true.

00:15:42.920 Right. It does matter.

00:15:45.040 It's like social epistasis.

00:15:47.200 It's like we humans are like bees.

00:15:50.000 We're better compared to bees in a lot of ways than chimpanzees.

00:15:52.600 We are you social.

00:15:53.680 We are strongly involved, these strongly bonded social groups in which we are deeply affected by everybody around us and in which our genes can only be optimally expressed if we are surrounded by other people who are genetically healthy.

00:16:06.760 If we're surrounded by people that are unfit, then it will affect our genes and our lives and our fitness.

00:16:11.780 An example of that is depression.

00:16:13.060 There was a very interesting paper on this many years ago which found that depression is literally, literally contagious.

00:16:18.060 If you are with somebody who is depressed for genetic reasons, then you can become depressed for environmental reasons just because you're with that person.

00:16:25.360 And in much the same way, in a minor way, but if you're with someone that just couldn't give a toss, who's just scruffy, who's just whatever, just lives for the now, couldn't care less.

00:16:35.420 And that will that will that will trickle throughout society that will spread throughout society and make the society in a sense less optimal, less focused towards the transcendent, less focused towards the it's very interesting thing in the UK called chapism.

00:16:52.740 It's a light hearted thing with the chap manifesto and the chap magazine and the idea is to kind of recreate the styles and mores of the fifties or whatever.

00:17:02.400 Now, the chap manifesto, it's very, very funny.

00:17:05.160 I wrote an article for them once on how Finland's president Manaheim was chap.

00:17:09.240 And it's this kind of thing.

00:17:11.200 That's what I try and do with the cravat and whatever is a spread, a little bit of positivity throughout society.

00:17:18.260 That's what you're doing. If you're if you're wearing these degraded kind of clothes, then it's just spreading this negativity.

00:17:23.640 This couldn't care less. Nothing matters.

00:17:25.800 And if you go, interestingly, to countries that are still religious societies or even just to Eastern Europe, one of the things that's very interesting is the way in which they dress.

00:17:34.600 They've got no money. They've got much less money than Western people have. 0.98

00:17:38.260 But what they put money into and one of the things that is very important to them is looking good, is dressing well,

00:17:44.860 is kind of expressing a desire for something better and something eternal.

00:17:52.580 It matters. I matter and how we look matter.

00:17:57.040 And you get this difference in Finland. You see they just wear awful clothes, tracksuits and things like this.

00:18:02.700 Whereas if you go to Southern Europe, it's very different.

00:18:05.900 Even India, how they dress is really it matters and it sort of spreads a certain positivity, I think.

00:18:10.700 Yeah, and I think it's it's also a bit ambiguous.

00:18:14.420 I was I was thinking about the famous slogan of Patek Philippe, which is a Swiss watch manufacturer that it's it was something to the effect.

00:18:27.660 You don't own a Patek Philippe. You're simply it's custodian for the next generation.

00:18:33.220 And that that, you know, look, a lot of that is is like middle class aspiration of they want to think of themselves as aristocratic.

00:18:42.760 I think that's actually a good thing. So I don't really want to criticize it too hard.

00:18:47.860 But it's also a true thing. You know, you can buy a a a Calatrava or a Nautilus and this should last 80 to 100 years at minimum.

00:19:00.460 You should not you should service it. You should absolutely not replace it as opposed to an Apple watch or or or something that is built to last two years, three years at most.

00:19:11.100 And then it's you know, you can't even literally use the Apple watch after four years because they're not supporting its software.

00:19:16.720 And it's just a piece of junk in your in your drawer.

00:19:19.780 But yeah, I think that, you know, and that kind of mentality actually is something good that we should be promoting for the the middle class.

00:19:30.200 It was kind of like what I was saying by by a five hundred dollar pair of shoes that you're going to resole and own for 15 years.

00:19:38.080 That's that's reasonable. You'll wear them out at some point, but you'll actually have worn them out and not just toss them because they they're made out of faux leather and they look like crap after, you know, three months.

00:19:49.480 And there's this kind of like other aspect to it, which I think is also kind of mentioned.

00:19:54.600 There's this, you know, I mean, that's the kind of positive value that luxury items can bring to someone's life.

00:20:01.240 And I think it's actually very it's a good thing. It's it's it's deep superficiality.

00:20:06.800 It's it's a good kind of frivolous kind of thing.

00:20:10.380 But there's this other aspect to it of like almost the cargo cult of the the, you know, really wealthy Arab chic or, you know, you know, massively indebted, you know, new new money China where they buy, you know, gold Rolex with, you know, gummy bear jewel or jewels and encrusted diamonds. 0.59

00:20:32.560 And it's almost this like you're almost like taking it, you're you're you're ruining it because, you know, the idea is that you can pass something on or you can wear kind of your watch.

00:20:43.860 You can have a collection for, you know, 50 years and they're almost taking it the cargo culting it of like saying, you know, I own this.

00:20:51.600 Therefore, I am as opposed to saying, like, I'm going to treat this as a symbol of who I am.

00:20:58.060 And and, you know, there there is a kind of I don't know, you could say dark side or kind of side of it.

00:21:07.020 But but I think overall, like there's something that I would strongly say that there's there's there's a kind of like morality to the luxury sphere that is actually quite positive and that I would endorse for people.

00:21:23.240 And I think they should they should aspire to be a part of it in the right way.

00:21:28.060 Yeah, well, I was going to say, like, with the prudence to actually purchase a pair of shoes that's going to last you 15 years, spend a bit more does play into cultivating a certain kind of virtue that you do find in higher quality menswear that you don't find if you're just trying to be frugal and in the moment all the time.

00:21:48.240 Right. Is it does cultivate a certain attitude that you're not going to get if you don't try to pursue an end like that.

00:21:54.440 Right. And it's why you look at a lot of like menswear guides and magazines is there that in between talking about the clothes and the fittings, there's also a lot about, you know, gentleman manners and virtues and how to talk to each other.

00:22:08.300 Like these two things go hand in hand for a reason.

00:22:11.360 And I just quote from the chap manifesto, a call to charms.

00:22:15.460 For too long.

00:22:45.460 And the larving similarity to the way in which the cattle used to produce the burgers are herded into the slaughterhouse.

00:22:50.600 I'm going to order that book.

00:22:53.220 I think that's fun.

00:22:55.000 I think we might even need to write a little bit on the subject.

00:22:58.740 I think it's quite good.

00:22:59.360 The other thing that I've learned from this podcast is that I think we should have a dress code.

00:23:04.800 So for many of my Sunday shows, I hope you've noticed, Ed, I have worn a casual blazer just to wear it.

00:23:13.760 I don't need to.

00:23:14.680 We're going to go out, have fun with the kids later on this afternoon, dress down a bit, but still have a collar.

00:23:22.480 But yeah, I think we should have a dress code.

00:23:26.380 We take this seriously.

00:23:28.840 Take ourselves seriously.

00:23:29.800 Have you got one of those ties that cowboys have where it's a kind of jewel here with strings sticking out of them?

00:23:47.040 See, a bowler tie.

00:23:48.440 Yeah, I like that stuff.

00:23:50.680 I mean, Tyler is in Western Canada where there's really the same culture as in Montana.

00:23:59.940 I would say in Montana, the style is almost there is some remnants of the Western style, but then it's almost now more like the Patagonia style where you're wearing like it looks like you're about to go on like an Arctic hike or something, but you're not.

00:24:20.760 You're just going to store that's almost replaced like wearing the belt buckle or the bowler or the Western coat.

00:24:29.500 It's hard to even find those items now, even though, yeah, they're a bit kitschy, but I actually kind of like them.

00:24:36.320 Like when it's done well, it's done well.

00:24:40.060 What was chappish about Western Canada when I was there was the images of Her Majesty in public places.

00:24:45.320 You wouldn't get airports and things.

00:24:49.000 You wouldn't get that even in Britain, but in the airport in Port Hardy, big, big, big, big image of the Queen.

00:24:57.820 Oh, that was impressive.

00:24:58.800 Yeah, I like it.

00:25:00.360 It's depressing to hear that people in Montana don't dress like cowboys, though.

00:25:15.320 Yeah.

00:25:24.860 Yeah, I like it.

00:25:32.940 Yeah.

00:25:36.860 Yeah.

00:25:40.360 Yeah.

00:25:41.060 Yeah.

00:25:42.320 We'll be right back.

RadixJournal - July 31, 2020

The End of Mass-Market Prep

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