The Hudson’s at the center of Southland was about 272,000 square feet across three levels, which by any measure is an enormous shop. It carried an extraordinary breadth of goods, and breadth is the correct strategy for a department store. It is not the same thing as depth, and one category needs the second.
Breadth against depth
Breadth means many kinds of thing, each in a few variants. Depth means one kind of thing in every variant. A department store is broad by design, and its suit department is therefore a rack, not a floor.
Why suits specifically need depth
Because the useful question isn’t whether the shop has suits, it’s whether it has yours: your chest, in your length, in more than one cut. For anyone at either end of the size range, a broad store almost always fails that test.
What depth is, concretely
32,000 suits under one roof, 34 short to 70 long with portly included, so a hard-to-fit man chooses between several that fit rather than accepting the one that nearly does.
Also for Taylor: The Sportsplex, and the Banquet at the End of a Season. More on style consulting, or plan your visit to our Oak Park showroom.
