John Clark Wood (1901-1969) served as the president of Brooks Brothers from 1946 to 1967, and after retirement continued as honorary chairman of Brooks Brothers' board of directors until his death in 1969. The image above shows Mr. Wood in 1967 at the end of his tenure as president of the clothier and at a time when men's wear was changing rapidly.
Forty-five years ago, in 1967, Brooks Brothers had only eight stores nationwide, two in New York City (346 Madison Avenue and 111 Broadway), as well as stores in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Atlanta. As the Men's Wear article below points out, Brooks Brothers didn't as yet have a store in Washington, D.C., and of course, there were also as yet, no international retail locations (the first international store in Tokyo, Japan would come about twelve years later in 1979, under the leadership of then CEO, Frank Reilly). In 1946, when Wood became president of Brooks Brothers, there were only four stores and the annual sales volume was $4.75 million. However, at the time of his retirement in 1967, the annual sales volume had grown to $35 million. Further, Brooks Brothers had a mail order catalog, a mail-order business on many college campuses, and a team of "road men" whose trunk shows brought Brooks Brothers to cities where there as yet were no stores.
John Clark Wood was born in New Jersey in 1901 and graduated from Dartmouth College in 1922. His first job was with the advertising firm A. W. Erickson Company (later McCann-Erickson), and from there Wood went on to work for the retailer B. Altman & Co., becoming a vice president and director. During the Second World War, Wood served in the Specialist Corps and was a consultant to Secretary of War, Robert B. Patterson. In March, 1946, Julius Garfinckel & Co. purchased Brooks Brothers from the Brooks family heirs, and Wood became president, succeeding Winthrop Holley Brooks, the last Brooks family member to serve as president. In addition to his duties at Brooks Brothers, Wood also served as charman of the Retail Dry Good Association of New York, as chairman of the Fifth Avenue Association, and as an executive of the Better Business Bureau. He also served as president of the Union League Club of New York, and was a member of Burning Tree in Washington, D.C., Rolling Rock in Pittsburgh, PA and the Creek Club in Locust Valley, NY.
In summing up his long tenure at Brooks Brothers, Wood confided, "If anything, I made Brooks more Brooksy than before." Wood, however, was not afraid of innovation and Brookscloth, Brooksweave and Brooks-Ease were developed during his tenure as president. It was often asserted that Wood was old-fashioned in his approach to the clothing business, and in reply to such criticism, Wood responded that the public that he wished to reach would respect quietly stated announcements that were confined to bare-bone information on items offered for sale. Wood further exlained, "Underwriting and understatement make the [advertising] copy much more believable and, as a matter of fact, more accurate." Responding to critics who saw Brooks Brothers as stodgy and conservative, Wood quipped, "They call us conservative, but we think that our styles are simply lacking in the bizarre. We deal in what a man should wear, not what some women think he should wear." In 1967, when asked about the impact of the "NOW Generation," Wood replied, "None. We're stable and conservative. Our younger customers are stable. We've felt no impact for the low-rise trousers fad."
Though resistant to developing a full line of clothing for women, Wood was instrumental in the development of the pink oxford cloth button down shirt for women in 1949. The shirt, designed at the magazine, Vogue, was a huge hit with women, who had for years, been purchasing men's shirts for their own use. After the war, Wood also oversaw the redevelopment of the much-loved pink oxford cloth for which Brooks Brothers was famous, and explained the redevelopment stating, "When the war came, we had to discontinue the shirt, and afterward it took a long time to work our way back to the proper shade. For a year or so after the war our pink shirt was just a trifle too pink. We were very much concerned."
John Clark Woods served at the helm of Brooks Brothers for 21 years, longer than any other Brooks Brothers' president. His time in charge is a study in how Brooks Brothers grew during the postwar years, while maintaining a conservative and traditional approach to men's clothing, as well as actively developing new products that enhanced and helped to make Brooks Brothers the well-known clothier that it is today.
Sources:
A Chronicle Recording One Hundred Twenty-Five Years, 1818-1943. Brooks Brothers, 1943.
Coronet. September, 1950.
Men's Wear. June 9, 1967.
The New Yorker. September 17, 1949.
The New York Times. December 16, 1969.
