The other day, I got a beret from Amazon.  I’m partial to berets because they’re warm when weather’s cool.  They also fold enough to stuff in a pocket, so I don’t lose them or have to find a special place for them. 

I was a bit disappointed for $12.  It was supposed to be wool and navy blue.  The wool was cheap and thin, the “navy” blue two or three tones above that.

“You can return it,” you say.  I guess.  But I’ve been doing that with slacks recently.  And, frankly, I’m tired of the trips back to the UPS store.

I miss Rogers.

Rogers was a men’s clothing store in my boyhood hometown, Perth Amboy, New Jersey.  Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was one of three men’s clothing stores.  There was Robert Hall, a chain store that my mother would take me to buy clothes at as a kid.  Rogers and Alexander’s were the more professional men’s clothing stores.  When I got to college, that’s when I started going to Rogers.

And where I met Arnie.

Arnie was one of the employees who helped you pick out a suit.  I was never a small guy, so getting a suit that fit right — since I was more of straight line big than an inverted pear — could be challenging.  Arnie was built similarly.  He understood.

But he wasn’t just a salesman.  In a sense, he was a mentor.  He saw I was a young man and so began articulating things I’ve kept with me since.  Like “a proper length suit jacket reaches to where your fingers end on your side” or “you wear a blazer with the top button buttoned, the bottom not” or “your choice, but two vents in the back of a suit helps the jacket lie better on the butt.”

You don’t find that advice today in the “reviews” of Amazon.com.

And while no doubt there’s convenience in online buying, clothes are something of an ad hoc thing.  Not all size 48s are created equal.  This one pinches, that one sags, this fits just right.  In a real store, you can spend time, get it right, buy the pants, leave, and move on with your life.  Maybe an hour.  Not the three weeks I have been spending with back-and-forth mail of pants.

So, yes, I think there’s a problem in the “virtualization” of clothes buying, in no small part because one’s body is not virtual.  The modern world may think sex is a state of mind, but the dimensions of one’s waist are quite real.  And if you don’t reckon with that, you risk looking like Alice Kramden’s description of when Ralph got stuck between two pipes: “You were just doing an imitation of two pounds of bologna in a one pound bag.” 

Now, I understand changes in commerce, but the problem is, I can’t go back to Rogers.  See, Rogers is gone.  So is Alexander’s.  Roger Hall got replaced by a bakery which itself is now going out of business. 

A man cannot buy a professional suit in Perth Amboy.

I suspect that’s true of a lot of American towns that once had a men’s clothing store.  They’re gone.  Yes, to some degree they’ve been replaced by a few chains, most of which offer meh quality at not-meh prices.  (A 50-L suit in plaid?  What horse in Kentucky is sleeping without a blanket tonight?) 

The demise of the small-town men’s clothing store is also a telling commentary on today’s America. 

Perth Amboy was not a big business city.  We had some professionals: lawyers, accountants, insurance agents, teachers, etc.  But Perth Amboy was primarily a working-class city.  Most of the men worked in places like the copper or lead smelters, the cable makers, or the oil refineries.  Like my dad.

My dad went to work at the copper refinery in workpants.  But he had two suits.  And they were not just for weddings or funerals.  Monday to Friday, Dad went to work in workpants.  On Sunday, he went to Mass in a suit, as did his peers.

These were real working men — not guys who play working men on TV — who were proud to put on a suit.

That’s why Perth Amboy had three men’s clothing stores.

And even though those factories are all gone, the men who replaced my father’s generation don’t wear suits.  Almost never.

Not only did this teenager get good suits from Rogers, but he learned how to dress and look professional.  Where will a teenager growing up in Perth Amboy today learn that?  And if he doesn’t learn that, how does that affect how others see him and, therefore, his upper mobility?

And if there aren’t very many guys whose jobs require them to look professional, how does that change a town’s demographics?  That struck me back in the ’90s, when I used to take the train from Perth Amboy to work.  There were six of us that got on at 7:38. Six.  At a certain point, we’d joke, “Don’t wait for me tomorrow, I’ve got the day off!” 

But if you are on a main track line to New York and you’ve only got six people boarding at rush hour, “Houston, we have a problem.” 

One loses those things, too, with the disappearance of the local men’s clothing store.

It might be “convenient” to get a pair of pants in the mail.  But the Rust Belt is not just decaying factories.  It’s also commercial trades that are gone, hollowing out not just business, but American towns and social life.  What have we lost in the trade-off?

Image via Pickpik.