HTJ Archives: Brooks Brothers, Fall 1988

With the Fall season and its calendar of events fully underway, it seems like a good time to reach back into the Archive.  Twenty five years have elapsed since Brooks Brothers sent out its Fall catalog for 1988. The year was a turning point in Brooks Brothers' history, when the clothier was purchased by the British department store retailer, Marks & Spencer. The year is also significant because Brooks Brothers' catalog illustrator of over two decades, Tran Mawicke (1911-1988), passed away, and with him the illustration based catalogs. Though Brooks Brothers briefly continued the following year with illustrated covers drawn by another artist, the era of illustrated covers and interior pages had for all practical purposes come to an end. In the post-Mawicke era, Brooks proceeded to update their catalog layout with photographic images of models and sets. Though models had been used prior 1988, the catalogs of the following years never really returned to the illustrated format. Thus, the Fall and Christmas catalogs of 1988 may be seen as the end of an old-guard era. John Clark Wood, that Arthurian and old-guard president of Brooks Brothers from 1946-1967, responding to criticism that Brooks Brothers' minimalist advertising policy was old-fashioned once stated, "Underwriting and understatement make the [advertising] copy much more believable, and as a matter of fact, more accurate. He added that the company's advertising policy was indeed old-fashioned, "deliberately so - and it works." The years of quietly illustrated catalogs and advertisements in The New Yorker and newspapers followed this policy of restraint, and this catalog certainly followed this approach, as well.

I have three catalogs for the Fall of 1988 with three different covers by Tran Mawicke. The first cover in this post is on a catalog for the US market, while the cover above is for the Japan market. The interiors of these two catalogs are identical, although the back of the Japan marketed catalog has a directory of stores in Japan. The third catalog (the last image in this post) is titled "Fall & Winter 1988" and is a Japanese language catalog with a completely different layout from the catalog and covers pictured above and below in this post. Brooks Brothers established a retail presence in Japan in August, 1979 with the opening of its Aoyama flagship store in Tokyo. From that time onward, catalogs for the Japan market existed side by side with catalogs for the US market.

The first page of the Fall 1988 catalog (above) does an excellent job of representing the classic Brooks Brothers American style. It is a surprisingly durable style that continues to look perfectly natural a quarter of a century later. Understated tweed jackets, tan Calvary Twill trousers, button-down collar shirts and madder ties, along with traditional blue blazers, mid-grey trousers, button-down collar shirts and rep ties ground this style in quietly casual elegance. Regarding this style, John Clark Wood once remarked in 1950, "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." Looking back at the 1988 catalog, one realizes that Brooks Brothers still offered a very conservative style that was the complete opposite of fashion trends.

However, 1988 was not 1950. By 1988 Brooks Brothers had a long established women's department, something that did not exist in 1950. The University Shop had been replaced by the Brooksgate range for younger customers, and much more casual clothing was being offered than ever before. However, in 1988 much of the clothing shown in this catalog was still produced in Brooks Brothers' own New Jersey workrooms. Though Brooks Brothers still offers much that is similar today, there are many classics shown here that sadly are no longer offered because the location and means of production have changed.

The shirts, ties, odd jackets, and suits offered here show Brooks Brothers at its zenith. However, though there is no returning to the past, I continue to hold out hope that Brooks will once again offer oxford cloth button-down collar shirts with unlined collars. It is a small thing, but one that is a significant part of Brooks Brother's legacy to American menswear. It is a legacy that needs to be tended to as a living tradition. If that were to happen, I am sure that there would be many former customers who would return in a heartbeat. For you see, in 1988 the conservative approach to advertising was still followed by a trustworthy and conservative approach to clothing. Tradition needs to be conserved, lived and passed on, in order that it remain alive and relevant. No amount of advertising that asserts a tradition can long pass for the living tradition itself. The catalog in this post shows that tradition alive and well even if in the midst of change.