Not every men's retail clothing store comes with a pedigree, with personal histories as varied and colorful as some of the meticulously matched furnishings on display.
Fairfield Men's Store's Naresh Mansukhani owned a haberdashery in Bridgeport called In Style for eight years before deciding to move to a more upscale location and a more sophisticated clientele. He chose his present location in Fairfield on the Post Road in 1995 and by his own admission sold clothes "that were average, nothing special."

That was before he met designer cum stylist cum manufacturer Eugene Venanzi whose 35 years of men's clothing experience included time with Christian Dior and Leo Cerruti. Ammanicato by Venanzi, as the Italians say, taken by the hand of, Mansukhani embarked on what amounted to a post-graduate study and experience in fine fashion.

Venanzi had been exposed to fashion aesthetics early on as a child through an aunt who ran a dress shop in Princeton, New Jersey. "I would sit there and look through the magazines like Vogue and Harpers Bazaar and try and select the most beautiful picture," Venanzi said. "So I was interested in color, fabric and beauty in general at a young age."

As a teenager he fell under the spell of Alan Langrock, an innovative retailer of traditional American clothing. An architect by profession, Langrock's philosophy was to build beautiful, Gothic-style retail stores and place them in towns with Ivy League schools. In the 1920s he had amassed 35 stores, including those in towns that housed the traditional Ivy prep schools like Andover and Lawrenceville - all supplied by a clothing factory in New Haven, CT.

"I was so taken with the place as a teenager that I apprenticed there for no salary," Venanzi recalled. "It was at the store that I met people like Sinclair Lewis and T. S. Eliot."

It was there that he also learned to fit and measure and to select clothing for customers that accommodated their lifestyles simply by talking to them and finding out about their professions. He continued to work at the store through college when he came home for weekends and vacations from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

When he graduated in 1965 he applied for a job at Genesco, the leading retail and manufacturing company in the U.S. at the time, owners of Henry Bendel and Bonwit Tellers among others. He eventually landed a job as an executive trainee at Frank Bros. Whitehouse and Hardy, easily the most prestigious men's store of the time with four stores in New York, one each in Chicago, Detroit and New Haven, Cherry Hill, N.J. and two in Florida.

"They sent me around the country and I wrote a report that was on the whole critical of the way we were doing business and my boss was responsible for most of what I was criticizing," Venanzi said. "Carnaby Street fashion in London was starting to happen about then and I just sensed we should be positioning ourselves better with more of an European influence. After all, we had prime real estate locations and were a men's retail leader."

In time, management gave him the opportunity to buy in small quantities. One day his boss called Venanzi in and told him they were low in knit shirts and since the regular buyer was traveling would he go into the market (i.e. the manufacturers) and see what was available. When he asked what the budget was, his boss shrugged and estimated a couple of hundred pieces.

The young buyer scoured the city, but didn't see anything that interested him. One of the first importers of Italian merchandise in the early 1950s was a shop just off Park Avenue called Battaglia's.

"Kirk Douglas used to shop there, Gregory Peck, guys like that. I knew he had a little wholesale operation, so I went over there and asked to see him."

Signor Battaglia showed him a few items and the young buyer was impressed with a line of cotton turtlenecks and asked what the minimum order was and how fast they could be delivered. The elder Neapolitan didn't know exactly and called Italy.

"I didn't speak much Italian at the time, but knew enough to know that he was a little suspicious of who I was and if I had any authority." Battaglia told him the minimum order was 300 per color and Venanzi said he'd like 16 colors, an order of 4,800, a few more than the couple hundred his boss suggested. At this point Battaglia asked for a business card and made a phone call to verify the young buyer's identity. The two finally settled on an exclusive national deal.

Venanzi went back to the office and called a meeting with the store's window designer, the ad copywriter and his boss. His boss was a little reluctant, but the designer came up with the idea of showing a Plexiglas pool with live turtles in the street window surrounded by all the colorful turtleneck shirts. His boss, who still didn't know about the quantity, finally said something to the effect of "was it all worth such a big splash for only a couple hundred shirts."

"I had to tell him I bought more than the couple hundred he asked for," Venanzi said.

"Okay," the boss responded. "I know what you did. Sixteen colors, you bought 50 each, so you bought 800 instead of a couple hundred." "I bought 4,800. I'll never forget his eyes widened and he said, 'I know $65 a week isn't much, but it's more than you'll have if this doesn't sell.'"

The 4,800 turtlenecks sold out in 10 days and even Johnny Carson, who still broadcast from New York at that time, kept calling and couldn't get one.

After his success with the turtlenecks, the company sent Venanzi to Europe and he began to develop lifelong relationships with manufacturers in Milan and Monza. He was also one of the first to recognize and take on Ralph Lauren's initial line of neckties.

After a series of successes, he left the retail scene and went to work at Christian Dior as a designer.

"It was there that I realized that everything about men's fashion had been done and every modification was just a return or improvisation of something that had already been done before," he said. "And that's when I realized that the real creativity was with fabrication and at the mill level. Designing textiles is like playing jazz. It's all variations on a theme."

Silk, he pointed out for example, has over 200 varieties of weaves and textures.

But after three years (a year and a half in Paris), Venanzi tired of the big-company politics and went to work with his mentor, Leo Cerruti. Their offices and showroom were housed in a brownstone on 55th Street decorated with French Empire furniture with a constant fire burning in the hearth and classical music wafting over its workrooms.

It was during his tenure with Cerruti that Venanzi's philosophy about the creativity of men's wear at the mill level was reinforced. It is at the mills that one can experiment with fabrication, color, texture and weave to create lighter yet more durable clothing.

He spent four years with Cerruti before embarking on his own, then returned for a two-year stint before starting his own business again. Venanzi now sells his quality lines of shirts, ties and accessories to 100 to 110 men's specialty stores throughout the United States and Europe including such stalwarts as Louis of Boston and Giorgio of Beverly Hills. Along with Alan Flusser, he has served as wardrobe consultant on such films as "Wall Street," "Scent of a Woman" and "Barbarians at the Gate." About four years ago one of his salesmen took an order from Mansukhani at the Fairfield Men's Store for some neckwear. Then Venanzi received a second order that was smaller than the first and he decided to pay the store a visit.

"I tried to explain to Naresh that his presentation for selling ties was wrong," Venanzi explained "Neckwear has to fanned out on its own table, almost like a colorful antipasto."

"I think he felt sorry for me at first," Mansukhani said. "He knew from the minute he walked in the door that my merchandise was all wrong for this location and clientele."

Venanzi was indeed no stranger to the area having once lived in neighboring Southport.

"I knew he had the capability of selling much more refined, expensive merchandise to an audience here that was then going elsewhere." So under Venanzi's tutelage, Mansukhani went from selling generic clothing lines to more upscale lines like Hilton and Belvest. Hilton is a traditional domestic company with a 100-year-old reputation for quality. In fact, it was Norman Hilton who gave Ralph Lauren the seed money to start his own company. Venanzi was able to get Fairfield the Hilton line on an exclusive basis for the area.

For a more upscale line of goods, Venanzi suggested Belvest out of Vincenza, Italy, whom he considers the top-of-the-line suit maker in the world today. Hermes of Paris, for example, has all their garments made by Belvest.

"People know Brioni, Armani, Zegna and the rest, but there's a difference when you know the business," Venanzi pointed out. "You are either paying for advertising or for ingredient. Belvest is ingredient."

Belvest is indeed the choice of some of the quality clothiers on the Via Condotti in Rome's main fashion center.

"I was very surprised at first. I sold more Belvest than I sold Hilton," Mansukhani admitted of the line that begins at roughly $1,300 a suit as opposed to $2,000 and more for Armani's black label. "The fit is incredible. The best alteration is no alteration. Personally, I would never wear anything else again."

Both men agree that they want the Fairfield Men's Store to emulate an exquisite restaurant or a fine wine where it takes experience and comparison to understand quality. There are no pretensions involved; there is acceptability and then there is cultivation and dedication to the next level of quality and workmanship.

Further evidence of how committed both men are to the latest advances in technology is the fact that Mansukhani has had a website since 1993 even though they only began keeping records of website holders in 1995. "It still remains more of an informative site than a sales tool," he said. "But it gives us great satisfaction that at least we are able to share our philosophy with the rest of the world."

That vision and philosophy is simple, according to Venanzi. Any clothier can take a name-brand designer or manufacturer and sell it because the advertising and promotion sell itself. It's another matter, however, to take the time and dedication to understand the subtleties of craftsmanship and impart that broader knowledge and awareness to the consumer.

He gave the examples of a number of respected labels that are nearly 99 percent machine-made as opposed to a Belvest garment that is not totally handmade but has enough components of such to be considered handmade. "There is no right or wrong here," Venanzi insisted. "It's just a different point of view. Naresh will take 15 minutes and explain to a customer why one suit is better than another because it makes him feel good and he wants you to feel good about understanding why you are spending your money."

The bottom line is whether a customer wants the prestige of a brand-name label or appreciates the intrinsic value of the ingredients, according to Venanzi.

"I like to think of Naresh and myself as professors in a university. Where we are imparting our love and knowledge and creativity to others in order to keep beauty and a sense of aesthetics and its history alive. There are the art forms of too many generations at stake here. We feel compelled and responsible to pass it along."