For many men in their later twenties and early thirties, shopping for clothes is not a habit. They’ve got other things to do. While a lot of these guys care about their appearance (they’ll work out obsessively), dressing themselves well can be overlooked. A few recent experiences highlighted this fact:1. I complimented a friend on his shoes, a nice looking...

Last week, a frustrated retailer sent me an e-mail expressing disgust about our reporting on Wal-Mart. “They shouldn’t even be on my radar,” he wrote. While the world’s largest retailer is not by any stretch a competitor for your typical men’s specialty store, many of them reflexively resent what they think Wal-Mart stands for: cut-throat business tactics...

As I was reading about how the hickey brand is officially gone today, I remembered a conversation some editors here relayed to me between a couple of tailored clothing executives during the Hartmarx sale a while back. “Hickey is the crown jewel of that company,” one executive said.

This provided me with about a year of confusion. Hickey was the more...

I’ll often tell people how ironic it is that shopping is better (both in terms of price and selection) in my home towns of Minneapolis and St. Paul than it is in New York City. Minnesota has no tax on apparel, and for someone with my modest budget, the vintage stores have a wider selection at lower prices.

But there’s one huge exception: Uniqlo.

For...

This morning’s Emanuel Weintraub Seminar, titled “You’ve cut costs! Now grow the top line,” was intended to build on the more hysterical themes of the New Jersey-based consultant’s previous seminars. After all, March sales at retail looked great, continuing a couple of months of much-needed (although modest) growth. Perhaps it’s time for the surviving...