Fond Memories, 'Made Especially for Erday’s Clothiers, Geneva, Ill.'

I don’t think I could call up my first memory of Erday’s clothing store, because I’m willing to bet my inaugural visit came before conscious memory kicked in. Everyone in Geneva bought men’s clothes at the corner of Third and State in those days, so I imagine I was smuggled into the Erday building like luggage, my mom buying a Christmas gift with a baby Rick Nagel tucked under the arm or my dad trying on a suit, a toddler doppelganger clinging to his freshly-tailored pants cuff. 

But my memories of shopping at Erday’s are many and pleasant. They mark more than a few highlights in my life, as well as the lives of a great number of Genevans and Geneva-area men and women through the years.

What’s the biblical quote? “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I started shopping at Erday's.” Growing up in Geneva in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it was almost a rite of passage when you made the transition from Junior Gentleman to the corner of State and Third.

Through the years, a purchase at Erday’s preceded every special occasion, from baptisms to bar mitzvahs, graduations to first-job interviews, weddings to funerals.

I bought my first suit coat there, a gray pure-wool number with a tag under the inside right pocket that reads, “Made Especially for Erday’s Clothiers, Geneva, Ill.” I use the present tense because I still own the coat, purchased in high school almost 40 years go.

I pulled it from my closet just now, a thing of beauty as well-made and classicly styled as the day we pulled it off the rack. I'd still wear it with pride if it weren’t so tight around the middle.

The last time I wore it was when I was editor-publisher of The Beacon-News taking part in a murder-mystery fundraiser for the Aurora Historical Society. I know this because I found evidence in the left inside pocket: a clue to solving the mystery, that reads, “Let your good character and fine moral values serve as a Beacon to those who have lost their way and seek guidance.”

Prophetic, I guess, because so many times in the past five decades, Erday’s was where I sought guidance when I lost my sartorial way.

Quick confession: I am not a good clothes shopper. I agonize over decisions, I’m overwhelmed by the seemingly infinite choices and, like many others of my gender, I have the attention span of a tsetse fly. What do men do when they have no experience in a field of endeavor? They seek expertise—advice or direction from a person they trust and who has proven ability in the field.

And that, my friend, was what I found at Erday’s.

When I had a job interview, or I needed to upgrade my wardrobe for a new position, I could enter Erday’s at 9 a.m. and leave by 9:30 with exactly what I wanted, feeling terrific, confident in the certain knowledge that the shirt actually matched the tie, the tie matched the suit coat, the suit coat matched the pants, and I could use each of them in combination with the articles already in my closet—because I had purchased those articles at Erday’s, and the Erday brothers remembered the clothes I had purchased at my last visits.

That is a level of personal service rarely reached, even in those days, and it is a relationship between business owner and customer that is even more rare, almost nonexistent, at a time when so much merchandise arrives by mail or wheels to your car from the shopping carts of big-box chains.

There is a part of me that recognizes the end of Erday’s as a natural stage of business evolution. As Victor Erday told the Daily Herald, "First it was Casual Friday. Then, pretty soon every day was a casual day. Men used to wear suits and ties to work five days a week and buy at least several suits a year, but that isn't happening any more." 

Erday’s begins its liquidation sale Thursday, and another part of me, the less-rational part, wants to say it ain’t so. I’d better get over to Erday’s, I tell myself, because where else will I find the right attire in which to mourn its passing? Garanimals, unfortunately, has no funeral collection.

Styles come and styles go, but for more than 87 years, Erday’s Clothiers in Geneva, Ill., has been synonymous with quality and personal service, holidays and haute couture, success and economic good times, friends and family.

And part of me is a little sad, because those things should never go out of style.