True Prep by Lisa Birnbach

Author:Lisa Birnbach [Birnbach, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59421-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2000-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

Tom Davis, at Your Service.

When Tom Davis was a teenager, he was a member of the Merchandise Club at the High School of Commerce on the West Side of Manhattan. Drafted after graduation, he got out of his Georgia MASH unit in 1967. Upon discovering that the president of the Merchandise Club had become an assistant buyer at Brooks Brothers, Tom called him, and he got an appointment with the head of personnel on a Thursday.

“She said, ‘Would you like to start today?’ but I didn’t think I was so well dressed, so I asked her if I could start on Monday.” He pauses. “I came to Brooks Brothers on November 27, 1967, a Monday.” By 1976 Davis had been promoted to the main floor, where he stayed until 2009, when the made-to-measure shirts—his area of specialty since the ’90s—moved back up to five. He still works there full-time.

In those years, Tom sold shirts to David Rockefeller, Richard Widmark, William F. Buckley Jr., and his brother Senator James Buckley. As a child, John-John Kennedy would come in with his Aunt Lee Radziwill. It is well known that Gianni Agnelli bought his shirts from Brooks Brothers in New York, but it was said that he wore his shirts once and then disposed of them. Davis set the record straight. “Mr. Agnelli was a practical man. He didn’t wear them once, but he didn’t like to travel with luggage, so he’d order many shirts at a time to send to his various houses. He’d buy two dozen or more at a time, only in white, beige, and blue.” How did he customize them? “He didn’t. He bought them right off the table. Pima oxford cloth button-down shirts. No monograms. Never.”

Davis is particular about what he wears, but he denies being a clotheshorse. “I don’t have closets full of clothes. I buy out of need, and the clothes last. The last suit I bought was in 1993. The store would lose money on me,” he says, grinning.

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