How The Other Half Gives Into The Shallow Vanity Of Extreme Wealth*

You should have just flown to Thailand and gotten a couple of suits made there; not only would it have been cheaper but you also could have enjoyed the company of, you know, some actual prostitutes:

The butler did it. Or — wait — maybe it was the maid. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the scowling doormen who looked me up and down disapprovingly and made me feel like Oprah trying to shop at Hermès.

Either way, my first visit to the new Tom Ford flagship last week — I had attended a party there a few days earlier — was a confounding affair.

In the 1990s, Mr. Ford’s brand of martini-drenched, pheromone-charged glamour resuscitated the once clinically dead house of Gucci. He left in 2004, after a well-documented rupture with the conglomerate that owns Gucci, and has curiously chosen to re-enter the fashion arena with an upscale men’s wear collection. Mr. Ford has spoken at length about wanting to redefine luxury, from suits to nuts, for today’s peacocks who want a more sumptuous environment than that offered by the old school tailors on Savile Row. If my walk-in is any indication, Mr. Ford has confused exclusionary with exclusive.

Once I had cleared passport control, the experience was no less forbidding. The off-the-rack suits (starting around $3,000), Shogun-looking dressing gowns ($3,900) and formal attire (from $3,200) in the loungelike room to the left were enclosed in museumworthy glass cabinets that screamed, “Don’t touch!” Not a problem when it came to a beaver top hat (price on request) that would make any man look like a Central Park coachman, but if I am going to pay $5,690 for a dinner jacket, I want to try it on and have someone fawn over me while I do so.

. . .

Unimpressed by the selection of mostly cashmere-silk-blend sweaters and overpriced shoes ($1,390 for a pair of Chelsea boots; add another zero for crocodile), I decided to venture upstairs, where a lot of the most interesting accessories — limited-edition sunglasses and slick tie bars — had been on display at the party.

“Sir, this area is for appointments only,” said the security guard at the base of the stairs. I told him that I wanted to arrange a time for a fitting; he told me he did not know to whom to direct me. When I suggested he try the store manager, he replied, “Let me see if he has the time for you.”

You have to laugh. An unintentionally hilarious parody of a pretentious Madison Avenue boutique, the store reeks of arriviste Anglophilic posturing dressed up as aristocratic gentlemanly refinement. For all the preopening ballyhoo about the it’s-all-about-you customization and details like buttons on trouser cuffs so that your butler can brush away the remains of the day — at last! — the reality is more akin to a luxury store in a second-tier market during the mid-’90s.

When I heard that Mr. Ford had appointed an in-store maid, I assumed that it was a marketing ploy and that a modelesque stunner would walk around in high heels and a feather duster, playfully spanking the hedge-fund guys who were prepared to drop a pretty penny on, say, silk pajamas ($1,900, monogram not included). Not to my taste, by any means, but it would have been a cheeky gesture in keeping with the winking sexual provocation for which he was known at Gucci.

The last thing I expected was a display of help-as-spectacle that reminded me of the Brazilian haute department store Daslu, which employs hundreds of maids for the benefit of traveling robber-baron princesses. The security guards and curtained windows brought to mind the closed-door policy of Bijan in the ’80s, a shop that is now confined to the annals of retail history.

Then again, it could have simply been an off day:

My visit the following day was markedly different. The service offered me, especially by the store manager, Edward Carbonell, who possesses a charming bedside manner and the best skin in high-end men’s retail, was exemplary. It was Champagne and smiles all around, but then the entire staff appeared to know I was a Times reporter since I had made the appointment in my name.

*It’s kind of pathetic that a Thursday Style article can do more to stimulate discussion about the rich paying their fair share of taxes than the Times’ op-ed page is able to do.