The forgotten middle-aged male

An editorial / By Dale McFeatters
Friday, November 10, 2006
It's no secret that once you're past a certain age, clothing retailers start to lose interest, especially in men who, it is said, have little interest in clothes and indeed could not reliably identify the brands of the clothes they're wearing right now.

On the other hand, they have to wear something and Haggar Clothing figures, why not its slacks? And it's now targeting baby boomer males. In doing so writes Suzanne Vranica, a sniper-eyed trend watcher for The Wall Street Journal, the company "is acknowledging that Haggar is a brand for average, middle-aged men who don't read GQ and know nothing about the latest trends from Seventh Avenue." Don't sugar coat it or anything, Suzanne.

To do this, Haggar has brought in a marketing whiz from Versace, not a name you often hear back among the relaxed fit racks in the menswear section. He has commissioned a series of ads showing men ages 30 to 45 in what Ms. Vranica describes as "light-hearted situations." The first of which establishes that Haggar slacks don't bind or bunch up when a father is throwing his daughter's useless boyfriends out the window. To be sure, it is a low, first-floor window and we're sure that no boyfriends were injured in the making of the ad although many middle-aged fathers probably wouldn't care if they were.

The ads buck perceived retailing wisdom, Ms. Vranica says, driving the knife a little deeper into the aging male, because marketers "figure middle-aged people like to think of themselves as young and won't respond to ads that show people their own age."

Haggar isn't quite willing to push the ad envelope that far. While the light-hearted guys are 30 to 45, the youngest boomer is now 42, but having been ignored, scorned even, by the fashionistas, any attention is probably welcome.

And why is this attitude just now changing? Ms. Vranica is right there for us.

"Attitudes are beginning to change, though, as baby boomers . . . reach their peak earnings years."

Baby boomer males not only have money, apparently they're planning to hold onto it, which might be why Haggar is thinking of offering a lifetime guarantee on its clothes.