The Replacements
The Stand-In Senator. "'I just went to the Men's Wearhouse. . . so at least I'll have two suits and a toothbrush when I get to Washington." By Interview by David Wallis.
Besides being a pretty cool interview, I found it kind of ammusing that the headline is a free ad for The Men's Wearhouse. Let me also say that it is a great place to buy a suit, and I can't say enough about their customer service. It's quite frankly, in a word, amazing.
Kat and I were headed to a wedding back east. It wasn't going to be a California hippy wedding, so I needed a good suit. Off we went to the mall in Sacramento. We checked all the usual places like Macy's and Structure. All of them were way too much for our budget at the time. So we hit The Men's Wearhouse. The staff knew that I had no idea what to get, so they laid out an entire spread of suits, shirts, and belts. All I had to do was say, "that one, that one, and that one," and we were all done, except that the suit needed to be altered and we were leaving for San Francisco. "No problem," they said. "You can have the suit altered at our store on Market Street."
In the end, I ended up going to four stores. One to buy the suit, one to have it altered, a store in King of Prussia to have it pressed after the flight, and one in San Rafael to have it cleaned when I got back.
Kat was very jealous because, apparently, women's clothing stores don't have anything that approaches this level of customer service.
Men, when given responsibility for their own shopping, would choose the cheapest pants and jacket and leave. Those guys are there to make sure you don't leave looking like Columbo, i.e spend a little cash.
Women, on the other hand, have traditionally been more discerning with their shopping (i.e. spend plenty of money) so they don't get any help.
I'm stuck between agreeing with you and being offended at your appalling sterotype of men's shopping habits. Oh wait, I forgot I don't get offended. I must be agreeing with you then. ;-)
Oh, and explain the concept of high heeled shoes without making any reference to men.
Men wore high-heeled shoes before women did. (Louis XIV)
Man's Warehouse does have great service. As to Kat's reference about men's shopping habits -- it clearly does not apply to men who shop regularly for suits. Nothing either good or bad about these men, it's just that when you wear a suite on a daily basis you get to know the better (more expensive) ones and shop accordingly (and according to your budget as well).
Helping the bewildered is a mitzva, and that is what Man's Warehouse does. Otherwise it could get confusing for some people. I remember rather clearly a time when I took a friend to a rather chic clothing store in Manhattan. The site of two young man shopping for clothes and exhibiting a modicum of taste convinced the guys at the store that my friend and I were a gay couple (which, just for clarification, we were not). The moral of the story -- shop alone. If you don't shop alone, shop with a woman.