Tim Leamy of Sebastian’s Closet in Dallas is positive. “At the end of the day, retailers just live on optimism and hope for the next sale,” he told me. “If we don’t, if we start singing the mantra of doom and gloom ... what alternative do we have than to be as positive as we can?”

I spoke to Leamy recently after I realized we had linked to the wrong Sebastian’s Closet in Karen’s Lee Shafkowitz profile—he had been talking about Leamy’s Dallas store, but the link went to the Atlanta store.

Leamy, whose store won one of our Uptown/Downtown awards in 2006 (read about it here), explained that he and his original partner spun off an Atlanta outpost of Sebastian’s Closet years ago, but that the partner had since sold the store. The two stores are no longer connected.

We talked about all the bad news in the apparel retail industry these days—both on the trade and consumer side—and I was impressed by how Leamy managed to sound optimistic through it all.

I think his stance is representative of a lot of independent retailers out there: “If the media in general would quit throwing gasoline on the fire from every level, there would be a marked percentage of positive results.”

Leamy brought up a recent story we’ve all been hearing a lot about: luxury shoppers asking for plain paper bags to disguise their expensive purchases (see the story in the Dallas Morning News). From a retailer’s perspective, Leamy says, “that’s messed up.” Agreed. Retailers are in trouble if the very act of shopping is seen as gauche.

But I countered that it’s out of touch for retailers to hype their most expensive items in a time like this. My example was Men.Style.com’s recent feature in which “13 top men’s buyers name their favorite pieces for spring 2009.” Ironically, the story calls out the “somber hues” of the styles, while many of the buyers chose very expensive pieces. Like an $800 cardigan. If he isn’t looking for 80 percent off sales, the American consumer is looking for value, I argued.

“Those are unhealthy blanket statements though,” Leamy responded. “Cool is still cool. This consumer is still chasing some level of cool—it’s not just ‘I need another suit and it doesn’t matter how many buttons it has, I just need to go to the office in it.’ That’s really not who we’re all talking to. If they’re going to part with their money, very much to Lee’s point, it’s got to be unique. Otherwise they’re not going to be motivated to part with their money.

“Do you have to call out the $800 really cool thing? Well, that’s probably pretty excessive,” he said. “But cool is still cool. We should all be talking about something that’s fresh and new that we’re jazzed by, and that we’re confident is going to get the consumer jazzed.”

When I talked about value, Leamy was adamant that the consumers’ definition of value today not be tied to money alone. “In our culture here at this store, it’s become a key phrase for ’09, that it’s a value-add kind of mentality that we’re seeking. Value, in this case, has absolutely nothing to do with dollar signs. It has to do with what Sebastian’s Closet brings to our consumers’ experience. We’ve always been far more focused on the consumers’ experience than buttons and threads and the next great piece—although we spend a lot of time hunting for that next brilliant new piece. It’s about what Lee referenced: we want you to leave here feeling like a rock star.”

Finally, we ended our conversation with an exchange about the future of department stores. I marveled at how boring it is for consumers to see men’s departments segmented by brand. Leamy noted that he sees little variety among the big luxury department stores, and adds that consumers are noticing. “They have not created an interesting mix, they have not created any cohesiveness, but just gone to the go-to names that are current in our industry and placed them before you. They’ve bought them the way the vendors say they ought to be purchased. They’ve all lost their identities. Consumers are kind of waking up out of that fog.”

The problem with segmenting by brand—and buying entire collections—is that, as Leamy says, “it helps relinquish the retailer of the responsibility of being a merchant.” Well said.

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