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They’re opening a haber-what-ery?
“We knew we wanted to go into the fashion world somehow,” Zach Graham explained of the new store he and Eric Kuhn unveiled in Forty Fort. The duo fulfilled that dream by making it possible for area shoppers to sate their male fashion plates at “The Haberdashery.”
Which means the Tweeting, texting, WhatsApp-ening generation has a reason to ask “what’s a haberdashery?” Mind you, they are not asking old fogies who might actually know without looking the word up, nor are they typing it into a search engine — that’s almost as quaint as a haberdashery itself. They are literally asking Siri, Cortana, Google or Alexa.
For the record, “haberdasher” is a 15th century term that generally meant a person selling small articles for sewing (i.e., threads and buttons and such), but came to mean a person selling men’s clothing.
The two new haberdashers, who met as grad students at Marywood University, promise more than just trendy togs: they intend to offer dry cleaning and tailor services.
Whether The Haberdashery succeeds financially is, of course, an open question. One suspects it is more clear cut to ask if dubbing it a haberdashery was a success. The initial answer is probably yes, for two reasons:
1) There is free publicity, including this editorial, in going 500 years retro, and 2) odds seem pretty good that men young and old in the area will want to visit at least once, just to be able to say “Sorry I’m a bit late, I decided to stop by the haberdashery.”
Which raises the question: Is there an untapped market for antiquated marketeers?
Would other crop growers see business drop at Wilkes-Barre’s Farmers Market if someone put up a tent as a “crofter” (a person working a small, rented farm, typically in Scotland, complete with house and access to a pasture)? Would you buy your bacon fresh from the swineherd? For that matter, would other merchants leave their canopies behind to visit the pavyler who erects tents?
Could a shoe-seller succeed next to the haberdashery by setting up as a souter?
Perhaps a chandler could interest you in oils and soaps. The bowyer and fletcher would team to offer bows and arrows, the brightsmith’s tools and utensils could be displayed next to the redsmith’s copper creations. The furrier and ferrier could have fun confusing those who don’t wear furs while riding horses.
The bodger would go town to town lathing wooden dining room furniture legs, and the broderer would embroider the table linens, all while the jongleur entertained with song and lyric poetry.
Would it feel easier to pay taxes to an exchequer than to the IRS? Wouldn’t you love to hand off running your home to a seneschal? Maybe have your property patrolled by a pursuivant?
Wyoming Valley could win renown by opening an arcade of arcane entrepreneurs, an agora of antiquated artisans.
Sure, we must look to new tech for success in the emerging economy. But we just might find “back to the future” also works — as long as you go back far enough.