What do you consider the single greatest piece of style advice you have ever received? What made it memorable to you? Personally, mine happened years ago when I was on the hunt for an inexpensive suit and I happened to stop at an unusual local store called the Men’s Exchange. It is a hybrid of sorts, combining the service and detail of a high-end menswear shop and the options and pricing of a curated secondhand store. The owner is a former clothier who loves helping men learn about style and shows them how to take inexpensive options and make them look fantastic. He walked me through how to pair colors, what styles work best for which seasons, the types of fabric and textures, and then took all my measurements and wrote them down for me. He then made several different recommendations that were excellent. I barely spent $75 that day but I walked out of there looking and feeling like a million bucks. Needless to say but I recommend that store to everyone in the area that is needing an upgrade in their fashion.

I spent the evening at my parents with my original boss Gary Hulse. Gary recently lost his wife which triggered me to call and offer my condolences. So when he was coming to visit with my parents 3 minutes away I was elated to catch up. At 14 I started working for him. He was only 23 but was buying the store. That was 1975 and he has been in The business this whole time having owned three different menswear stores . Since the 1990s he has operated as a custom clothier who meets clients in their office and in their home. A concept he pitched to me back in 1977 when I was still 16. His typical wardrobe ensemble he builds for a client is in 5k-10k range and it’s not unusual to do 3-5 times that with certain individual clients. He is probably the single best salesman I’ve ever met and because of his mentorship at an early age when I was a still doing transactional business, I made a very good living adopting some of his techniques. Even today as a fiduciary advisor I continually use his philosophy of “is there a good fit” for deciding to work with a potential client. Another guy that I worked with is Steve Giles at a different store called Harold’s (see YouTube video below). While he certainly was a senior associate, except for Christmas I only worked in the same store as he on Saturday's. ( the women’s side of the store was the second highest grossing women’s store per sq ft in the country-the first was Harold’s women’s store at Highland Park Village Dallas). As the firms top salesman however, just watching Steve in action was a great learning experience. Harold’s became this corporate behemoth when it went public and that was its undoing (this $150 million in annual sales industry leader filed bankruptcy in 2008). Steve Giles opened his own store and has been in three different locations and is still thriving in OKC. Below is a recent video of his background. Just thought I might share. Bit of memory lane for those bored and still awake. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nZSUghCKBXM