“He might be apologizing with his words, but his tie says ‘no’,” image consultant Karen Brunger told me when I referred her to a photo of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. It was one day after he appeared in front of the press to apologize for his prostitution scandal. What’s the appropriate attire for a [...]

I found more evidence that men not only shop very differently than women, but also actually enjoy shopping (see my blog last week) from our friend Ray Smith at the Wall Street Journal. In his article today, “Fashion Online: Retailers Tackle the Gender Gap,” he found that men spend a lot online, they spend it [...]

“First rule of recession is you do not talk about recession.” wrote Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker recently. Shhhh. If no one says it out loud, the people won’t stop spending. Paumgarten continues: “The debate over whether we’re in (or slipping into) a recession is not purely semantic—a recession, capital “R,” is a term [...]

Even if the word metrosexual has mercifully disappeared from our common vocabulary, there are still signs that the average man cares more about his appearance than he’s given credit for. For example, each time I walk by one of Manhattan’s myriad nail salons, I’ll see at least one guy – often middle-aged – getting a [...]

“Fashion is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken.” –William Hazlitt (1788-1830) The very first suit I bought was a navy double-breasted number from Nordstrom at the Mall of America in about 1996. My father and the salesman, a family friend, both tried to talk me into single-breasted, but wouldn’t hear it. [...]

Who shows us how to dress? Where do we get our style? The subject came up when I was chatting yesterday with Tom Mastronardi, a marketing consultant to Robert Talbott. “We find the examples that speak to us in some way,” Mastronardi told me. “Whether it’s JFK, Gary Cooper – there are countless examples of [...]

How did a local news anchor in Minneapolis become the public face for the “first new knot for men in 50 years”? Pure accident. As the only living man a neck tie knot is named for, Minneapolis television news anchor Don Shelby should be happier. “This has been the bane of my life,” he told [...]

MRketplace.com web editor Harry Sheff’s roundup of regional and international menswear news and events. In this week’s installment: The pink craze in Thailand, Oscar de la Renta, new stores for Saks and Nordstrom and some emerging trends. Thai King Inspires Pink Shirt Craze The BBC reported last week that when the king of Thailand left [...]

Why is service so elusive to some retailers? When I started working for MR last July, I came from 18 months writing about customer service for a trade magazine covering the huge and nebulous call center industry. The mistake we kept seeing among call centers was that so many of them treated web- and phone-based [...]

The tie I put on this morning was a one-inch-wide horizontal striped number by the now defunct Rooster (though the name is now owned by the Aron group). It’s the second Rooster tie I’ve found at Manhattan thrift stores, and it’s one of my favorites. This one has a label on it from the store [...]