Houndstooth: The Fabric That Bites Deep

I paid twenty bucks for my first houndstooth jacket. It was 1990. I had moved to New York City the year before with only one suitcase, after being forced to take the train from Chicago when my car broke down by the side of the road in Indiana, and now, in the Fall of ’90, I found myself in need of a coat in order to attend the anniversary party of SPY, the magazine I was working at as a writer.

It would be my first party in New York. But since I was making next to nothing at the time—ten thousand dollars a year—Brooks Brothers or anything respectable was now out of the question. The office, however, was on Union Square, and just across 14th Street, on Broadway, was a place I want to believe was called Cheap Jack’s, though I might be wrong. Memory fails me a bit on that point. 

What memory does not fail me on, however, is the way Cheap Jack’s, or whatever it was called, smelled: like a cross between your grandmother’s living room and a fraternity house basement that hadn’t been hosed-out since the moon landing. It was a cavernous place, with buzzing fluorescent lights overhead, and a concrete floor that was a maze of rickety, circular metal racks, each of them packed so tight with jackets, sport coats, shirts, pants, suits, top coats and more that you had to wedge your fingers in between the hangars, and try to pry loose the piece that you hoped to get a better look at.

I still remember the moment I found the coat: it was hidden between a run of crappy 1970s era cast offs – shiny suit jackets or big-lapel monsters. Not this one, however: it was a small-pattern houndstooth in brown, with a thin lapel. I had never owned a houndstooth jacket before, but now, standing underneath that buzzing fluorescent light, it all seemed so…preordained. Like this jacket had been waiting for me. Or so it seems to me, now, looking back at that moment, because in that moment I see that it wasn’t just about houndstooth, it was about me knowing in my bones that I was now in New York fucking City and I do not want to look like I’m from Chicago. I held the jacket and all of a sudden it all made sense. It said writer — in my mind I saw images of John O’Hara and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It said Hollywood royalty, with memories of titans like Billy Wilder and William Holden wearing it while sitting in their offices on the back lot. It said athleticism and stoicism – how could I forget all those Saturday afternoons in autumn watching college football games and seeing Bear Bryant, the legendary Alabama coach . And it said rock and roll, as in those early photos of Mick and Keith and the Stones. Houndstooth. To a kid still navigating his way in Manhattan, it was perfect. Because it said, here’s a way to fit in, and to stand out.  

The old lady at the counter – and I mean old lady as in older, in her sixties; not ‘old lady’ as in the squeeze of a hippie dude who might’ve owned the place – looked at the coat and told me she wanted thirty dollars for it. I told her I only had twenty bucks, which was true. She shrugged and said Take it. 

I wore it to the party. Which is where I got my second lesson in New York style. Everyone of my chums from the office was wearing a jacket in some shade of black, navy, or gray. For a moment when I walked in, ‘Fail’ flashed across my mind. But then, something else quickly happened: the guys all said, “That is cool…Where did you get that? … I should’ve worn something like that…” And, later, too, the thing that truly validated my instinct: the reactions of the girls.  

I wore that coat everywhere forever. At least a good ten years. Because for at least five of those years it was the only coat I could afford. And I also knew it not only was this coat my sure thing, it also gave me an identity. It was, as I said, a way to stand out, while still fitting in at whatever event you had to attend. But it set you apart from the mass of grey-black-blue. Houndstooth, I learned, was the clothing version of a writer’s voice. Except here you were not catching the ear through subtle shifts, but the eye. I’ve loved houndstooth ever since. For me, it’s the most beautiful and distinguished of fabrics. 

Maybe twenty years after I bought the coat, my soon-to-be wife walked into the living room. We were boxing up, preparing to move into a new apartment. Our first as a married couple. 

What is this? she said. 

She held the coat.  

I found it tucked in the back of your closet, she said. 

I told her the story of the coat.  

Don’t you think it’s time to get rid of it? 

For more than an hour I resisted. I said it was impossible. She asked when have you last worn it? I said that doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that I know it’s there. It’s a part of me.  

Then she said, Maybe it’s time to let someone else discover it. Let it change someone else’s life. 

Later that day I walked it over to Housing Works, the resale shop in the West Village. And to this day I think about it – and also believe it is still changing the life of anyone who comes across it.