Unearthing High Quality Threads

One of my father's early buying sprees: two sport coats for under $40, size 44L. Click image for a larger view.

Happy Father's Day! Wait, you didn't get the memo? I was out of town last weekend so here at Chez Gates we're celebrating Father's Day today. Last week I went "home" --back to Los Angeles for the opening of a photo show I'm in at the Huntington Library. And, as luck would have it, I had an unscheduled chance to reconnect with my father.

My sojourns back to L.A. are always frenetic and filled with mixed emotions. Too much family history. Arranging meetups with relatives and friends while driving the severely clogged freeways is exhausting. As always I'd pay a visit to my parents' graves (sadly, my family reunions are slowly moving from my relatives' homes to Mt. Sinai Memorial Park). But this time I had one day all to myself so I scheduled in some culture. Starting with a small show of George Hurrell photographs at the California Heritage Museum in Santa Monica, I then made a beeline down Wilshire Boulevard to the L.A. County Museum of Art to see their new Broad Contemporary Art Museum. The eight and a half miles from start to finish took an hour. There is no "immediately there" there in LA these days. But it didn't matter. I had no appointments to keep or so I thought.

As I drove through Beverly Hills I passed South Beverly Drive and without warning I thought of my father. South Beverly Drive: my father used to buy his suits at a men's shop on this street. What was its name? Malibu Clothes, that was it. As a youngster my father dragged me with him on his periodic trips to buy his suits (you can imagine how exciting it was to tag along with dad to a stuffy store to buy clothes). He bought me my first sport coat at Malibu for my cousin's bar mitzvah in the late 50s. But what was so intriguing back then was the gatekeeper at the store's entrance. They sold wholesale decades before outlets and you had to be referred in order to get in. There was always an old man sitting at a counter waiting to get your name. It was my first brush with exclusivity. To a seven year old it was like a secret club.

Now I was trying to unearth this flashback. I continued on my drive towards the museum but the memory gnawed at me. And when I noticed a free curbside-parking slot I pulled over to google the store. Could it still be there? If something lasts twenty years in L.A. it's ancient. Yes! According the Web page Malibu Clothes had been in existence for 65 years! I called to make sure this was it. "Is this the store where you have to be referred in order to get in?" I asked. "Yes" came the answer. "My father used to buy me suits there. Do you think you'd still have our names on file?" "Oh, we keep all records," came the reply. I turned around.

When I entered the second floor store my vision of the place returned with total clarity. This was definitely it. There was the small counter where you gave your name and as I looked up I had confidence they would be able to find records of our familial visits. Before me stood the largest rotating card file cabinet I'd ever seen. Thousands upon thousands of 3x5 cards with clients' names were filed away. I told them who I was but they couldn't find any record. Perhaps it was under my father's name. Suddenly I remembered the last time I was in there.