Yes, yes, we have been told. Philosophers tell us that change is life's only constant. Poets tell us that the center cannot hold, and all that is beautiful drifts away like the waters.
Scientists say even the continents are adrift.
But Brooks Brothers, the clothier founded in Manhattan in 1818, was supposed to be the still point of the turning world. Selling, that's what those lavender and coral shirts are doing. So says Brooks Brothers' believable CEO, Joseph Gromek, who, it is heartening to note, is not wearing one of them this day. An informal poll of sales personnel in half a dozen Brooks Brothers stores found some insistence that the colorful shirts are a drug on the market. But a few years ago the average age of the clothier's customers was in the 50s, so the problem was to get other people into the store.