Bergdorf Goodman Men, opposite the main store in New York (Philip Greenberg for The New York Times )
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI, The New York Times
SOME men are shoppers; others are not. Before I married, I dated a Shopper. His cufflinks matched his watch. Which matched his pen. Which matched his lighter. He had a cashmere sweater for every day of the month. The Shopper made me feel inadequate.
Cut to: several years later. I am married to a man who pretended to be wildly in touch with his feminine side during our courtship, even asking once if he could take me shopping. (I turned him down, thinking it would make me look shallow and greedy. Had I known it would be the one offer, I would have greedily, shallowly accepted.)
After the honeymoon his true self came slithering out of that metrosexual skin: He does watch Sunday afternoon football in his underpants. He does e-mail stupid jokes about golf to his buddies. And he does not set foot in places where money is exchanged for goods that can be worn or even draped on the body.
Still, a man does at some point need new underwear. Considering that the man in question shops for clothing so rarely, we would have to go somewhere where we could find the entire masculine sartorial spectrum under one roof. Bearing in mind that this odyssey would not be repeated soon, I thought we could spend a little money.
And so we set off for Bergdorf Goodman Men, 20,000 square feet of dinner jackets, tweed blazers, splashy silk ties, lush cashmere and leather weekender bags. Men's wear was relegated to a corner of the original Bergdorf until 1990, when the company turned the former F. A. O. Schwarz flagship across Fifth Avenue into a three-story emporium.
At 12:01 p.m. on a weekday, watches synchronized, we walked in the front door. Husband grimaced at the batik-paisley print Hickey blazer at the entrance and almost bolted.
Instead, he veered left into safer conservative territory: the Charvet boutique. Unsure of his size, he tried on two samples. The salesman made some notations on a pad and recommended tailoring. At $345 a pop, Charvet shirts are top-of-the-line expensive, but they do last. The salesman said the shirts would be ready by Friday, and that since we live right by the stop where he caught his bus, he would deliver them himself.
"You watch," I said to Husband. "They show up in three weeks in a brown box from UPS."
"Blazer," he grunted, touching the Charvet navy blue blazer with silk handkerchief lining. I looked at the price tag: $3,500 for a simple blue blazer with fancy lining?
"No," I said firmly. "We're going upstairs."
Second floor: 12:19. In one of the three central galleries, we found classic but still modern-looking suits and jackets: what the man in the Brooks Brothers suit would be wearing, except today he happens to be wearing an Ermenegildo Zegna suit. Husband refused to try on Zegna suits, but I insisted and piled several (about $1,800 each) into the arms of the attendant. In the third gallery, we found Brioni and Kiton, the ultrafabulous Italian designers. Husband seemed curiously intrigued. I caught my breath: Brioni, the stuff of legend, worn by 007. Continental, soft-cut and streamlined, Brioni suits are made by hand. The wool is provided by sheep that live in controlled indoor environments. And the suits are expensive: about $3,200 each. With an armload of Brioni and Zegna, he disappeared into the dressing room.
To a woman who even during a high-end shopping trip is crammed into an airless cubicle to wait shivering and nude while attendants may or may not return, the dressing area at Bergdorf Goodman Men is a miraculous place. The changing rooms are neat and well ventilated, the doors a burnished wood. The fitting platforms were so beautifully lighted, so theatrical, that I could barely suppress the urge to leap up onto one of them and start singing a few bars from "Everything's Coming Up Roses." Thirsty? There's bottled water. On ice. With napkins.
"Why isn't women's shopping like this?" I asked one of the men measuring my husband's inseam.
"I don't know," he said. "Women's retail has gone just crazy."
Shopping with a shopaphobe is like taking a child to the natural history museum. He might behave for a short while, but after the Imax movie is over, your time is limited. Once Husband had chosen a Zegna suit and Brioni pants, the light began to fade in his eyes. It was 1:10. We still needed a blazer and underwear. Against my advice he tried on a double-breasted navy blue Brioni blazer with black-enamel and gold buttons. I thought it would make him look like a Carnival Cruise captain, but instead he looked like Cary Grant. As for underwear, Bergdorf Men is famous for its Borrelli boxers, complete with mother-of-pearl buttons ("embroidered by hand," the package says, in five languages), but Husband could shop no more.
Later I ventured to the third floor alone and was relieved he had not made it so far. This is where George Michael's throaty ballads pump in over the sound system, and R.E.D. Valentino white jeans sell for $250. In the shoe department, shoppers can choose rainbow-striped sneakers by Dsquared. A Martin Margiela shirt modeled after a striped French nautical shirt bore a photographic image of Metallica on the front; at $525, this was the kind of thing that would have driven Husband bananas. I ate lunch in Café 745, a serene space with marble counters, fantastic pasta and not a single male customer. A row of vintage cameras were lined up on a countertop, to confer the aura of the gentleman hobbyist.
The headwaiter was wearing a multicolored striped shirt.
"Etro?" I asked.
"Gap," he said.
As for the Charvet shirts, the man at the counter had been true to his word. They arrived five days later, perfectly tailored, delivered not by messenger, but by a salesman on the way to his bus.
745 Fifth Avenue (58th Street); (212) 753-7300
Atmosphere First two floors: quiet and clubby. Third floor: nightclubby.
Service Beyond the call of duty.
Key Looks Classic Italian cashmere and cottons. The best men's pajama department in the city.
Prices Expensive. Private label Bergdorf Goodman button-down shirts are $175. A vintage Rolex is $3,300. Etro seersucker jacket is $855. And what man really needs a Brioni for Bergdorf Goodman bathrobe for $375?
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