“smarter conversations” explained

March 5, 2005

“smarter conversations” explained

“Open surgery on a jacket shoulder. Notice the soft wadding, which I and a few other top tailors use, as opposed to the far more common ready-made shoulder pad.”
The charming little photograph and caption above first appeared on a recent English Cut post, as part of a much longer article.
When I first saw it, my reaction was probably no different than anyone else’s; that it was a friendly, informative, tasty little morsel. Which it is.
Then earlier today the following thought hit me like a freight train:
Let’s say you’re a very successful New York gentleman. Let’s say business has been very good to you in the last few years.
Let’s say one way of enjoying your success been wearing nice clothes. Let’s say in the last couple of years you’ve been buying yourself lots of them from your favorite Manhattan store e.g. Barney’s, Sak’s, Bloomingdale’s etc, it doesn’t matter which one.
Let’s say the amount you have spent since 2001 would actually be say, forty to fifty thousand dollars– not a lot by Savile Row standards, and maybe not quite as much as some of the guys you share an office with, but certainly a princely sum by most people’s reckoning.
And let’s say your Cousin Suzie, an avid sewing enthusiast, sends you a link to English Cut, knowing you have a wee thing for suits.
So you check it out. And you see the tasty morsel. The Real McCoy uses wadding, not shoulderpads, huh? How about that? And so you read on…
What’s the first thing you do after you’re done reading? The first thing is you rush over to your closet, and check out to see if your suits also have the wadding, instead of the far inferior shoulderpads.
And you find out right away. They don’t. They all have shoulderpads. Every last one of them.
And then you realize, the store that sold you all these suits, that you gave $40K of your hard-earned money to, somehow forgot to mention the shoulderpads. They spent a lot of time convincing you how top-rung they were, how totally superior their suits are, but failed to mention the shoulderpads. Just somehow slipped their tiny little minds.
And suddenly, you feel you’ve been treated like an absolute schmuck. Suddenly you feel yourself resenting the hell out of the department store, the one with the famous name on the door. The one all the journalists kill themselves to get access to. The one that has been basically taking you for a little ride these last four years.
And maybe, just maybe, you drop Thomas over at English Cut an e-mail.
When I mention “Smarter Conversations” in The Hughtrain, this is precisely what I’m talking about. This is why I keep on harping on about it. This is why if the business you’re in can’t handle the “Smarter Conversations” angle, you should be extremely concerned.
This is why I chose to work with a Savile Row tailor.
[Speaking of New York:] Tom’s actually coming to Manhattan in early April, if anyone fancies a new suit.