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What’s This About
Brooks Brothers is special because it is one of the oldest American clothiers and popularised the button-down shirt and much of the Ivy wardrobe.
This guide explains the documented history behind the name and how to judge the clothes today, such as:
How a New York shop opened in 1818 became a national name
The company’s own account of the button-down collar shirt
The sack suit, repp tie and madras story
Who has owned the brand since 1946, including the 2020 bankruptcy
Three outfits built on its best-known garments
and many more!
Use the history as context, then judge each garment on its own fit, fabric and construction.
Key Points
01Henry Sands Brooks opened the business in New York in 1818.
02The company dates its button-down collar shirt to around 1900, after John E. Brooks saw polo players’ fastened collars in 1896.
03Brooks Brothers filed for bankruptcy in July 2020 and was sold for $325 million to SPARC Group that August.
04A label or price does not prove quality, so check fit, fibre content and construction before you buy.
Brooks Brothers is special for three documented reasons: it is one of the oldest clothiers in the United States, it popularised the button-down collar shirt, and it supplied many of the garments that became the American Ivy and preppy wardrobe.
This guide sets out where that reputation comes from, which garments the brand is best known for, how its ownership has changed, and how to judge its clothes before you buy.
Where a date or figure comes from the company’s own publications rather than an independent record, we say so.
A New York clothier since 1818
Henry Sands Brooks opened H. & D.H. Brooks & Co. in New York in 1818, at the corner of Cherry and Catharine Streets in Manhattan.
The brand’s own timeline gives the opening date as 7 April 1818.
The business took the name Brooks Brothers after the founder’s sons inherited it in the mid nineteenth century, and the Golden Fleece emblem, a sheep suspended from a ribbon, dates from around the same time (the Vintage Fashion Guild gives 1850 and the brand’s own history gives 1851).
The company describes the Golden Fleece as a European symbol of fine wool, a fitting emblem for a clothier selling woollen cloth.
Brooks Brothers was among the first American stores to sell ready-made clothing for men, at a time when most men’s clothes were made to order.
Abraham Lincoln wore a Brooks Brothers greatcoat, its lining embroidered with “One Country, One Destiny”, to his second inauguration in 1865, and the company continued to dress later presidents.
The company has said it dressed around 40 US presidents; its own publications give different totals, so treat the number as a brand claim rather than an independent count.
That long record is why the name appears so often in histories of American menswear, and why you will find it at the centre of our guide to the Ivy League style.
The button-down collar shirt
The garment most closely linked to Brooks Brothers is the button-down collar shirt.
According to the company, John E. Brooks, a grandson of the founder, saw polo players in England in 1896 whose collar points were fastened down so they would not flap during play.
The company dates its own button-down collar shirt to around 1900, and marked the shirt’s 125th anniversary in 2025.
The collar points button to the shirt front, which gives the collar a soft roll rather than a flat, pressed line.
In Oxford cloth, a basket-weave cotton, this shirt became the Oxford cloth button-down shirt that sits at the centre of Ivy and preppy style.
The reason it lasted is practical: the same shirt works under a navy blazer with a tie, or open at the neck with chinos and the sleeves rolled.
Other garments associated with the brand
Several more garments in the traditional American wardrobe are closely tied to the Brooks Brothers name.
The sack suit
The sack suit, which the company called its “Number One” model, has a soft natural shoulder, little shaping at the waist and a straight-hanging jacket.
That relaxed cut became the basis of the Ivy look, and many traditional American suits and blazers still follow it.
The repp tie
Repp ties have diagonal stripes, and in Britain the stripe colours of regimental, school and club ties identify a particular institution.
British regimental stripes traditionally run from the wearer’s left shoulder down to the right hip, while American repp ties have traditionally run the opposite way, from the right shoulder to the left hip.
Brooks Brothers is one of the best-known American sellers of repp ties, and choosing a stripe you simply like, rather than one that copies a membership you do not hold, avoids any confusion.
The polo coat, seersucker and madras
Company histories list the camel polo coat and seersucker suits among the garments Brooks Brothers helped make familiar in the United States.
Seersucker suits were already sold in New Orleans by the 1860s, so Brooks Brothers was one of several clothiers that made the puckered cotton fabric a summer staple rather than its originator.
Madras is a documented example of the brand’s influence: in 1958 an importer sold Brooks Brothers madras cloth from India whose dyes ran in the wash, and a feature in Seventeen magazine then presented the bleeding colours as a selling point under the line “guaranteed to bleed”.
The non-iron shirt
In 1998 the company introduced a cotton shirt it describes as the first 100% cotton non-iron shirt, a claim made by the brand itself.
For a full list of the garments worth considering, see our guide to the Brooks Brothers garments most worth buying.
Who owns Brooks Brothers
The brand’s ownership has changed several times, which matters if you are comparing an older garment with a new one.
The Brooks family sold the business in 1946 to Julius Garfinckel & Co., and it later passed through Allied Stores and the Campeau Corporation.
The British retailer Marks & Spencer bought Brooks Brothers in 1988 for a reported $750 million.
In 2001 Marks & Spencer sold it to Retail Brand Alliance, owned by Claudio Del Vecchio, who remained its owner and chief executive until 2020.
On 8 July 2020 Brooks Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, having announced in May that it would close its factories in Massachusetts, North Carolina and New York.
In August 2020 a court approved the sale of the business for $325 million to SPARC Group, a venture formed by the mall owner Simon Property Group and the brand owner Authentic Brands Group.
In January 2025 SPARC Group merged with JCPenney to form Catalyst Brands, while Authentic Brands Group kept ownership of the Brooks Brothers brand and licenses it to the operating company.
Because owners, factories and specifications have changed over the decades, a vintage Brooks Brothers jacket and a current one may be made quite differently, so judge each garment on its own label and construction.
How to judge Brooks Brothers clothes today
A famous name is a starting point, and the clothes themselves are what you wear.
Read the care label for fibre content and country of manufacture before you buy.
Check the fit on your own frame: shoulders that sit where yours end, a collar you can close comfortably and sleeves that show a little shirt cuff.
Fit and the silhouette you prefer are separate choices, so a relaxed traditional cut and a slimmer modern cut can both fit well.
Look at the stitching, the buttons and how the fabric recovers when you crush it in your hand, rather than relying on price as a sign of quality.
Our articles on whether Brooks Brothers is still a high-end brand, whether its dress shirts are worth buying and the quality of Brooks Brothers blazers look at these questions in more detail.
The Brooks Brothers fit guide explains the brand’s different cuts.
Three ways to wear the classic Brooks Brothers look
These outfits use the brand’s best-known garments, and you can build any of them from similar clothes you already own.
For the office
Wear: a navy blazer, a white or light blue Oxford button-down shirt, a striped repp tie, mid-grey wool trousers and burgundy penny loafers.
Check your workplace dress code first, because some offices expect a full suit rather than a blazer and odd trousers.
For the weekend
Wear: a blue Oxford button-down shirt open at the neck, a navy crew-neck jumper, khaki chinos and brown leather boat shoes or white canvas plimsolls.
This is the relaxed side of the same wardrobe, the kind of outfit people associate with a country club weekend.
For a summer event
Wear: a blue and white seersucker jacket, a white Oxford shirt, stone cotton chinos and brown suede loafers, with a madras or plain linen pocket square.
Seersucker suits daytime events in hot weather best, so check the invitation before wearing it to a formal evening occasion.
What the brand does and does not tell you
Brooks Brothers has dressed American men for more than two centuries, and its button-down shirt, sack suit and repp ties shaped what many people now call the preppy wardrobe.
Today its clothes sit alongside many younger labels selling a similar look, which our guide to modern fashion aesthetics puts in wider context.
A label on a jacket says nothing certain about the wearer’s job, income or background, and our comparison of old money and new money style explains why appearance labels are not evidence of wealth.
Choose Brooks Brothers, or any similar maker, for the fit, fabric and construction of the garment in front of you.
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