Resources

In keeping with our goal to provide our customers with the highest level of service, we offer several style- and clothing-related recommendations, as well as a few other business resources that we can confidently endorse. Our list includes local services in the Richmond area, suggested reading, and worthy websites. These are not paid advertisements but free guidance for you, our valued clients and friends. If ever your personal experience does not bear out your expectations based on the information we provide here, please let us know. Addresses and phone numbers appear at the bottom of the page.

Organic Cleaners has cared for the clothes of our founder for eight years with few incidents. When a shirt was lost, they paid for its replacement. When a pair of silk slacks came back suddenly shorter in length, they somehow stretched them out again. They performed the same treatment to a similar pant that a client brought us after his cleaners would not help him. Organic Cleaners has a location in the West End and another in Powhatan. Choose your cleaners as wisely as you do your wardrobe consultant.

Men’s Wearhouse is a well-run company that invests in its employees and cares for its customers. For presentable clothing, they offer great value. Realistically, not every member of a store’s staff will have the same commitment to customer service, but if you contact us first, we will gladly make an appointment for you with a top-notch wardrobe consultant at either Richmond Men’s Wearhouse location.

Bygones Vintage Clothing earns our vote for the best vintage store in Richmond. If the owner Maynee is in when you visit, please tell her Powell Harrison sent you. He has purchased most of his extensive hat collection there, as well as several other treasures. Bygones boasts the best window displays in Carytown if not the city, a clean, friendly, nostalgic atmosphere, and a delightful selection. It is simply a fun place to shop.

Stony Point Shoe Repair produces quality workmanship at quite reasonable prices. After disappointing work from a shop in Willow Lawn, we were quite happy to find this gentleman.

In regards to a tailor, we do not have an exclusive preference. We can suggest George’s, Patti P, the Plata sisters right next to Stony Point Shoe Repair, and John’s Custom Tailor. For quality mending and reweaving, we were most distraught when the Little Mending Shop on Grace Street closed a couple years ago, and currently have no recommendation. The Yellow Pages list only one establishment in this category, Custom Tailors on Patterson Avenue, and if you have used them or another reweaver, please let us know. Reweaving has truly become a lost art.

Loving Consulting has been invaluable in designing and launching this website and providing small business consulting services.

Tim Brown, CPA, is not only a friend and consultant to the company but also a knowledgeable, highly competent, fine individual.

Equity Concepts, LLC is an innovative, sophisticated, and caring financial services firm that I count myself privileged to know. Their people are lion-hearted and are without doubt a blessing to everyone who walks through their doors. David Saunders, Senior Relationship Manager, is also a reference for any of our clients considering our signature in-home Wardrobe Consultation.

Any book by Alan Flusser is quite worthwhile, especially Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion. Mr. Flusser’s work has its shortcomings, but his emphasis on investing in classic, enduring styles is most welcome in today’s age of disposable fashion, against which Harrison’s of Leesburg stands resolutely. The volume also merits praise for its wonderfully pictorialized assemblage of fashion icons of the 20th century.

Color for Men is based on the bestselling 1980’s classic for women, Color Me Beautiful. If you have heard mention of someone’s “season,” these books receive the credit. We find that some take Ms. Jackson’s principles to an unnecessarily legalistic extreme, but the concepts are extremely valuable nonetheless.

Gentleman: A Timeless Fashion by Bernhard Roetzel, translated from the original German, offers a rather comprehensive continental angle on men’s fine apparel and accessories. We only wish the editor had omitted inclusion of the model in his underwear from the line-up on the front cover.

Novels and short stories by P.G. Wodehouse featuring his most famous characters Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves are de rigueur and not to be overlooked under any circumstances. Combining outrageous comedy, relatively speaking, and a modicum of high-class wit, these volumes are good for the heart and for the mind. And to boot, Jeeves periodically hosts in his inimitable style a 1920’s Britain version of “What Not to Wear” at the expense of his employer.

On the subject of etiquette and gentlemanly conduct, as with style, no single individual has all the right answers. However, we have benefited, or at least received a good dose of amusement, from Jeff Bridges’ How to be a Gentleman series, and from the exhaustive volume of witty advice to the Gentle Reader, Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior. Superseding all else, we subscribe to the teachings of Jesus contained in the four New Testament gospels.