Brooks Brothers wants to be my editor.
And a rather strict editor at that. The clothier isn’t overly concerned with run-on sentences or philosophical, philological questions such as whether to employ the serial comma. No, good old Brooks wants to control the content of what I write. How did that happen?
It all started about a month ago.
Well-trained to wait for discounts, I can’t remember the last time I paid full freight for any piece of clothing. The algorithm at BrooksBrothers.com has that figured out and feeds me a steady stream of bargains. Which is how I recently came to purchase a $548 jacket for $164.
I know to be dubious about deep discounts. In college, I earned my beer and pretzel money working at a small, preppy men’s shop. Each year, the day after Christmas, the staff would gather at the store early in the morning. Ours was a large task that had to be accomplished before the store opened at noon for the annual after-Christmas sale: We had to replace most of the shop’s merchandise with similar but inferior goods — clothes the shop owner had picked up in wholesale lots at distressed prices throughout the year. The impostor products were priced just as high as the store’s usual khakis, flannel suits, tweeds, and silk ties. Those price tags were then slashed. By means of this simple ruse, the shop succeeded in making a more robust margin on sale items than it did on its full-priced products. The spirit of this scam lives on in the many retailers who fill their “outlets” with goods that never see the inside of the regular retail venue.
But my recent cause for consternation had nothing to do with the jacket I had bought. The trouble started a few weeks later, when Brooks Brothers’s internet marketing team sent an email encouraging me to post an online review of my purchase. “We value your feedback,” the email read. Or at least, they value feedback that conforms to rules set out by the webmasters: “Keep your review focused on the product,” I was instructed. “Avoid writing about customer service,” and “refrain from mentioning competitors or the specific price you paid for the product.”
Not only was it off-putting to be told what to write and what not to write, but I found in the invitation an odious echo of the old pricing game I allowed myself to be roped into in my college job. There was an obvious reason Brooks doesn’t want any discussion of price — its prices are always shifting. In my case, the blazer I had bought was no longer as deeply discounted. But that’s no excuse for making your customers conspirators.
Both annoyed and amused at the presumption, I submitted a review that breezily broke, in a handful of sentences, as many of Brooks’s rules as possible: “I’m not sure what to say about a $219 price for this jacket, as I paid $164 for it several weeks ago. It’s a bargain either way, but $219 isn’t quite the bargain that $164 is, is it?” I wrote. “J. Crew had a blue herringbone jacket on sale for $228 the other day. At $164 the old Double-B is the clear choice. But with the Brooks jacket at $219 well it’s six of one and a half dozen of another.” I submitted my opinion.
Days went by with no word and no sight of the review. I finally tried submitting another review a few nights later a little after midnight. This time, I laid it on thick — preposterously so.
“Fabulous!” was the headline I put on my five-star review. I explained, “This blazer isn’t navy blue but rather a muted royal blue, which is fitting as this jacket is fit for royalty. The cloth is light but supple. The needlework is worthy of a bespoke garment.”
About 10:20 the next morning came an email from Brooks Brothers: “It is our pleasure to inform you that your review has been published.” And there it was on the website in all its ludicrous hyperbole.
Say what you will, but don’t accuse Brooks of skimping on the curation of its website. And whatever you do, don’t mention J. Crew.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
