Old Line, New Look

Kurt Hocker is a typical 30-something guy. He’s down with hip-hop’s Dru Hill. He’s “gotta see” the coming “Wild Wild West” flick with “my man Will Smith.” And he thinks Jennifer Lopez “is the bomb.”

But when it comes to his wardrobe, Hocker draws the line.

Go figure, he’s a Brooks Brothers man--driven by work, play and a very modern lifestyle.

For a recent East Coast business trip, the Los Angeles resident packed nothing but Brooks: two wrinkle-free suits, four colorful dress shirts, vivid silk ties, plain-front khaki trousers and a cool cotton polo. Even his leather briefcase, natch, is from the brothers.

“Brooks fits my lifestyle,” says the 33-year-old vice president at Union Bank of California who river rafts, whacks golf balls, takes in Lakers games, chows on pasta and goes to the opera.

Hocker says he’s “not that conservative” in his tastes, but during the last couple of years he has noticed something cool--as in fresh--about Brooks, the 180-year-old company that is blowing dust off its geezer image for a modern identity.

Hocker is part of a new, younger posse of professionals that is discovering a reborn Brooks, which actually was born when James Monroe was the fifth president of the United States.

Who knew?

Apparently, the new team of honchos at the New York-based firm, which realized that Brooks had been too set in its ways--relying on the same styles, rarely creating something new since the mid- to late 1970s when designers began offering more stylish looks. By the 1990s, sales fell because of the new competition and the more casual looks.

In the last four years, Brooks has reinvented itself to attract the lucrative young men’s market, and sales are beginning to perk up. In the fiscal year ended March 27, Brooks rang up sales of $573.6 million worldwide, up 5.6% from the year before.

But the struggle and balance, Brooks officials contend, is in keeping a firm stronghold on long-standing customers who are wondering: “What have you done to my store?”

For those clients, the beloved brand still has custom suits, button-down shirts and standard rep ties--the Wall Street uniform of lawyers, bankers, stockbrokers, wheelers and dealers.

But for the more adventuresome, Brooks is banking on vivid colors, shirts--dare we say it?--without button-down collars and sleeker-cut suits.

By all accounts, Brooks had to change, had to rid itself of a stodgy image to keep up with the evolving tastes in menswear as dictated by the 1980s imprints of Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Hugo Boss and others. These houses of style have become magnets for younger, power-suit-wearing guys who also like to pepper their wardrobes with some pizazz.

And, because many workplace dress codes in the 1990s don’t require suits and ties, men have taken to casual business attire: a sport coat with a tie-less shirt, a suit with a fancy T-shirt, or plain-front pants with a V-neck sweater--innovative looks popularized by artists, celebs, athletes and others. Just the kind of guy Brooks is aiming for.

But Brooks is no stranger to innovation.

Founded in New York by Henry Sands Brooks in 1818, it was taken over by his sons Daniel, John, Elisha and Edward in 1850, the original Brooks brothers.

Brooks was the first store to sell seersucker suits and silk foulard neckties, the first to introduce America to ready-made suits and sack suits, a single-breasted design that fits all body types and continues to be a popular selling style.

Other innovations: the button-down shirt, the diagonal rep tie, the polo coat and argyle socks.

From innovation to reinvention, Brooks is changing its near 2-century-old pinstripes, following the lead of other high-profile chains such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic and Hush Puppies. Tom Ford is credited with bringing Gucci back from the grave and Marc Jacobs with revitalizing Louis Vuitton. Even Burberry is being primed for a make-over with designer Roberto Menichetti. His age? 33.

“A lot of retailers are much more comfortable today with change after they have seen the success of A&F; [Abercrombie & Fitch] with its lifestyle-driven merchandise, which often equates to a younger market,” says Tom Julian, noted menswear trend analyst for New York’s Fallon McElligott, a creative brand advertising agency.

Brooks Brothers, he says, “clearly wants to appeal to a younger client. They want to make that mark in the market. Now can that alienate some people? Possibly. But if the product offering is still in that store, then that customer is not going to abandon Brooks because of an image.”

In fact, says Julian, longtime customers who may be bewildered by the changes at Brooks eventually may like what they see because if it’s in Brooks then, psychologically, it’s legitimate.

Joe Gromek was hired as president and and chief executive officer in 1995 by British retailer Marks & Spencer to refashion its Brooks Brothers chain. He says the average age of the Brooks shopper has gone from 55 to younger than 40 since he took over. And that’s not only a good sign, “it’s a sign of the times,” he says.

After assembling his senior management team--Michael Scandiffio, who heads retail; Derek Ungless, advertising; and Jarlath Mellett, design director--Gromek pushed forward with his comeback strategy for Brooks.

Many on his staff met with an image-consulting firm to discuss the Brooks brand. Architects and interior designers were consulted for the company’s new flagship store. And Gromek even subjected himself to a computerized body-scanning process that measures physique for custom-fitted clothes as a test for some new technology that might be added as a new service for customers. While he’s not completely sold on the technology, he is sure about how he plans to move Brooks into the future.

Last month on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, Brooks opened its flagship store--a futuristic two-level, glass-walled, stainless steel architectural wonder, bearing little resemblance to the dark wood fixtures at its Madison Avenue store.

Several Hollywood celebs attended the bash. Even Manhattan’s notorious drag queen Lady Bunny was there to introduce the very hip club singer Ultra Nate. It’s no wonder the new store has become a magnet for a new generation of Brooks men.

In the last year, Brooks launched a Web site (https://www.brooksbrothers.com) that is ranked among the top 10 retailers doing business electronically, Gromek says. On the average, Web customers are spending more than $150 a visit, slightly less than the catalog shopper.

Catalogs have taken on new looks featuring 30-something youthful hunks with that Joey-Chandler-Ross haircut thing going on--and casually dressed in suits and shorts , without socks or ties.

Ditto for the ad campaigns, the most recent featuring guys in laid-back clothes--chinos, crisp shirts, lightweight sweaters--from Brooks’ new San Francisco spring collection designed under Mellett’s direction. Posters have inundated the company’s 82 stores.

The company, which introduced its first women’s garment, a pink button-down shirt in 1949, also is expanding its clothing and accessories for women. Last year, it opened two free-standing women’s stores in Westport, Conn., and St. Louis. And the Fifth Avenue store devotes half of its main floor to women’s wear.

Brooks is planning three more women’s stores in the next year. Scandiffio says that, so far, sales of women’s apparel is exceeding expectations.

Gromek readily admits that Brooks had been struggling because of its unwillingness to change, to move forward as the chain went through a series of ownership changes.

“I was hired to reinvent the company,” he says.

“And that meant introducing Brooks to a new audience if Brooks was going to be a successful business,” says Gromek, former senior vice president for Ann Taylor, a chain of women’s clothing stores. “We are in the fashion business and that is about newness.”

It’s also about being current, modern and relevant to people’s lifestyles--Brooks’ mantra for the new millennium.

Says Gromek: “Brooks is about today, not last year, not yesterday.”

Ungless, who’s also in charge of brand marketing as well as advertising, says the company had to change because shoppers today don’t simply buy shirts only when they need them.

“Our loyal customer base essentially wanted the same clothes. That’s really no longer the case with the modern shopper,” says the former owner of a marketing firm that included retail clients such as Club Monaco, the Limited and American Eagle Outfitters.

“Men are learning to sort of browse a bit more, and you know, fashion has really entered menswear much more. So I think our trick is to sort of respond to that without losing touch with the kind of the core values that the brand has,” he says.

Today’s shopper, he adds, also tends to be a lot more active, and “that’s the kind of vital lifestyle we’re trying to reflect.”

Mellett, the first design director to be hired by Brooks, agrees.

“I’m designing a product that will appeal to a wide age span. That’s my mission,” says Mellett, a New York Fashion Institute of Technology graduate and former head designer of Tangiers, a junior sportswear company.

“What we’re finding is that our more senior customers--those men who have been loyal to us for decades--are rediscovering Brooks Brothers,” he says.

But Mellett adds: “I’m finding that even an older gentleman can also have that younger spirit inside him.”

His eight-member design team creates one collection every season for the 30- to 50-year-old on the go.

He also keeps in mind the differences between the needs and wants of the Los Angeles guy versus the Chicago man.

“I always give the L.A. stores a little more sportswear, lighter suits and a broader cotton assortment than say the Chicago stores, where the weather is colder. There are still some requirements for strict business suits, but we like to give the West Coast guy a little bit more ease in his clothes,” Mellett says.

For the last two years, the focus has been heavy in casual wear, he says. The relaxed look includes suits, sport coats, trousers, shirts and ties with the detail of traditional tailored clothing but the comfort of sportswear. Khakis, linen shorts, polos, short-sleeve button-down seersucker shirts, light knits and drawstring madras lounge pants are even attracting 20-year-olds to snatch them up.

The Brooksease suit, virtually wrinkle-free and first introduced 30 years ago, got a face-lift with new, lightweight stretch fabric. Mellett’s fall suit collection--leaner and more tapered--incorporates a “mechanical stretch” he describes as fabric with elasticity and retention.

And color--lots of it--has found its way onto shirts: indigo, peach, purple, watermelon, orange or candy-striped shirts paired with bright bar-striped ties.

There’s more.

The black suit, which had been discontinued generations ago because Abraham Lincoln was wearing a black Brooks coat when he was assassinated in 1865, is back in a fresh reincarnation.

There’s even a Brooks cologne spray, a Brooks backpack and Brooks slide sandals.

“You know, a 50-year-old guy today doesn’t think like a 50-year-old guy 20 years ago,” says Scandiffio, president of the retail division.

“He’s out there kayaking, playing tennis, bicycling, traveling. So it’s not about age anymore. It’s about a mind set, an attitude, a lifestyle.”

Al Hocker--Kurt’s father--concurs. At 68, Al is on the go as a director and co-owner of Superior Airline Service Inc., a company that supplies janitorial, sky cap and baggage handler services to several airlines.

He’s been a devout downtown Los Angeles Brooks store shopper for more than four decades, and can recall the time when he surprised Kurt--then in the fifth grade--with a Brooks navy blazer and short gray trousers. Kurt wore the outfit to an awards ceremony for a first-place essay.

“Over the last few years I’ve seen the changes,” Al says about Brooks. And he likes them, especially the vivid palette for shirts. “Used to be you couldn’t buy a purple shirt,” he says and then describes his sense of style as “conservative to a degree with a little flash.”

He even introduced his own dad, John Reid, to Brooks. John was in his early 40s back then. Today, at 88, he’s been retired for 28 years from his former job as a maintenance supervisor.

John too has purchased items from the new and improved Brooks. “I’ll try anything just as long as they don’t go back to bell-bottoms,” he says.

“You know, time goes on. Brooks needs the younger generation. After all, they’re the ones who are gonna keep them in business.”

Michael Quintanilla can be reached by e-mail at socalliving@latimes.com.

For more on men’s fashion, see Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Magazine.