All the presidents’ suits
The tailoring might be classic, but dressing the president is a political business, says
‘They’re such beautiful shirts,” she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. “It makes me sad because I’ve never seen such beautiful shirts before.” Fscott Fitzgerald’s Daisy Buchanan might not have been the most stable of style commentators, but even she knew the beauty of Brooks Brothers shirts – which these no doubt were, since the author was a fan. For Baz Luhrmann’s
2013 reimagining, it made sense to enlist the New
York menswear outfitter to create costumes for the 1,500-strong male cast.
Last month,
Brooks Brothers celebrated its 200th anniversary with a blink-and-you’llmiss-it zip through of men’s dressing codes of the last two centuries, from great coats and sharp suits to relaxed sportswear, in Florence’s frescoed Salone dei Cinquecento. But despite the setting, the brand is as woven into the fabric of American culture as stars and stripes. Founded in
1818, classic tailoring mixed with preppy accents has turned
Brooks Brothers into a byword for everyday American style.
Ralph Lauren got his break
– and possibly his East Coast sartorial aspirations
– working in the label’s tie department on Madison Avenue.
It was a go-to for Patrick Bateman and Fred Astaire – who would buy ties in their dozen to wear as belts – and the first choice of statesmen and presidents; 41 of the 45 of whom they have dressed.
That association with presidential wardrobes has seen the brand present at almost every era-defining event in the country’s history. JFK was assassinated in a Brooks Brothers suit (as were Lincoln and Mckinley); when Barack Obama took to the stage for his inauguration, it was in the brand’s Lincoln coat. And for Trump’s own, rather less well-attended inauguration, he aped Obama’s exact Brooks Brothers look.
It’s been said that Brooks Brothers is the only bipartisan body in Washington DC. “We don’t take sides. Trump is traditionally a Brioni customer, he’s never been a Brooks Brothers customer before, but I explained to him that it would be very bad luck for the next president not to be in Brooks Brothers like the others before him,” says the label’s owner Claudio Del Vecchio, who bought the label from Marks & Spencer for £159 million in 2001.
“Trump wore the same coat as Obama, which is a classic style inspired by Lincoln. We fitted him in Trump Towers before the inauguration, so the traffic through his office was very hectic, but I found him personable.”
Certainly, Brooks Brothers prices are more sympathetic if you’re a billionaire who needs to pass as an everyman. While Brioni suits run to four – or even five – figures, Brooks Brothers tailoring has always been pioneering in its democratic nature.
“We introduced the idea of readyto-wear tailoring to America in the 1800s. New York was a big port – everyone was on the move and our customer needed to pick up a suit and go.” The bespoke process had been sacrosanct until the forward-thinking Henry Sands Brooks – who set up the company after working as a cloth salesman – took the stuffing out if it.
It’s a particularly pertinent point today. The traditional formula of dressing no longer applies – you might wear a blazer with chinos, or a sweater instead of a shirt. “We’ve seen a shift,” says Del Vecchio, “in fact the fastest growing part of our business is the sports jacket. Men want construction that’s more comfortable; a jacket has to have the ease of a sweater now.”
While the show in Florence spoke to that new relaxed sensibility – Harrington jackets, trainers with suits, fluid silk polo shirts – it also speaks volumes that the Lincoln coat – sharp, tailored – works as fluidly in today’s wardrobe, and on today’s presidents, as it did on old Abe.