Tuesday, I received the Thanksgiving edition of the Brooks Brothers catalogue in the mail. I can’t remember when I transitioned from wearing a Gant button down to a Brooks one, but it must have been in the early 70′s when I worked for a brokerage firm and was in New York from time to time. At that time, there was a Brooks store at Wall and Broadway just a block from the New York Stock Exchange.

     I know my loyalty to Brooks had been cemented by the mid 70′s, because I remember going to Brooks Brothers trunk shows at the John Marshall Hotel, when I worked there. Before the internet, mall stores, outlet stores, and airport shops, when Brooks Brothers wanted to introduce their new lines, they did so with a trunk show. It was the Big Apple comes to the provinces. The Brooks representative would arrive with numerous trunks; and samples of the new line would be displayed in one of the parlor suites at the Marshall for the Brooks faithful. You get measured, place your order, and in a few weeks your new treads would arrive by mail in that wonderful Brooks box with the golden fleece logo on it.

     My love affair with Brooks Brothers has waned over the years. When you couldn’t get their causal button downs in anything but their generic sizes was probably one of my first disappointments. Boy, I use to have some great looking “weekend” shirts to wear with a blazer. Then when they dropped standard “yellow” from their traditional line of button downs was another killer. How many white and blue shirts can you have? And what is ecru? And more significantly, what other colored shirt should you wear with a tan camelhair jacket? Yet, there are certain things I will always buy from Brooks -shirts, underwear and socks.

     The catalogue I got Tuesday from Brooks was filled with some great looking dress shirts. Besides the solid colors, there were tattersalls, bengal stripes, mini pinstripe, houndstooth, and even end on end shadow grid whatever that is. Surely, with all this choices, there must be something for me. Nope, while I liked many things, all the shirts came in a “non iron” fabric. Oh no, has J Crew replaced Brooks as the only purveyor of “non treated” cotton? And since I can’t afford Ben Silver, what’s a guy to do?

     I am not so sure it’s causal Friday that has been the demise of “non treated” fabrics. When it cost $2 to get a shirt laundered and starched, one starts to question his wardrobe choices. Ever tried to iron a shirt? How about properly starch one? If you have, then you know $2 is really a bargain for this service, even though after a year’s worth of laundering, you spent more on the cleaning than you originally spent for the shirt.

     Anyway, I guess l’ll continue to sacrifice elsewhere in order to wear my ”non treated”, other than starch, shirt. For me, there’s nothing like having that stiff collar, crisp cuffs, and ironing board flat front you get with a starched shirt. Oh, by the way, I just found a new cleaner to do my shirts for $1.45. Well, that’s what he quoted me before I took my shirts to him to launder. Once he found out I wanted starch, he added a nickel. As Rick says to Captain Renault at the end of Casablanca “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”