Fashion: Boyds Meets Girl
Curious as to how the third generation will sear its mark upon this love-it-or-hate-it Philadelphia institution — and whether or not it involves better shopping for the rest of us — we took a look at the master plan for this slightly unsettling proposition: adding the stiletto to the three-piece suit.
Kick out your dad.
Boyds’ resident elder, Gerald Gushner, claims he thought expanding the women’s section was a good idea if only because it got harder to sell more men’s clothes with every passing year. That part of the business had kind of reached the outer limits, you see, since most men just don’t buy suits like they used to, certainly not like they did when he was 40 and his father had him and his brother Mark start running the store. But get Gushner talking some more — in his gravelly scratch of a voice, his suit more Willy Loman than Louis Vuitton — and you see what his son and sons-in-law were up against when they first started thinking about major changes that hinged on the opposite sex. “You have to understand the brain of a 75-year-old guy who’s been in retail his whole life. I’m too cynical to watch women buy clothes. They prance in front of the mirror, and they bring something back. … They make-believe it’s a hobby.” And it continues. “A man can buy a tuxedo in four minutes. A woman wants to look at 12 stores, try on 50 gowns, until she makes her decision. It’s an actually black-and-white situation. North Pole and South Pole, without a doubt.” He’s just too old to watch it, he says, all those women in front of all those mirrors. Apparently, his son and two sons-in-law reached the same conclusion, and so they bought out Papa Gerry and Uncle Mark, who’s 69, in 2004. This is a family business, of course, so they don’t have to provide details. Although because one of the current owners says he wants to make sure that whatever appears in print doesn’t cause any hurt feelings, we assume there’s a little history there. “We couldn’t do the changes we wanted while the store was owned by my dad and uncle,” Kent Gushner will say. “They lacked the tolerance and taste for radical change. In their minds, Boyds is a men’s store. It was an emotional thing.”
Bring in your buddies.
When the heavy metal-and-glass doors swing open onto Boyds’ renovations this month, the biggest changes, visually speaking, will be front and center. In the grand lobby that was once the entrance hall of the circa-1907 Peale House, which for decades held the Oliver H. Bair Funeral Home, a glare will ricochet off a series of new lined cases wrapped round the Corinthian columns. Half a floor above this stand-alone jewelry boutique, and expanded across the entire mezzanine, “Brasserie Perrier Café at Boyds” will offer plush upholstery and chef Chris Scarduzio’s panini and grilled calamari salad. The goal in sacrificing precious square footage to two outside vendors, say the owners, was to create a “destination shopping experience” that caters to women. How it all came together? Pure boys’ club.
