On April 7, 1818, at the age of 45, Henry Sands Brooks (1772–1833) opened H. & D. H. Brooks & Co. on the northeast corner of Catherine and Cherry streets in Manhattan. He proclaimed that his guiding principle was, "To make and deal only in merchandise of the finest body, to sell it at a fair profit, and to deal with people who seek and appreciate such merchandise." In 1833, his four sons, Elisha, Daniel, Edward, and John, inherited the family business and in 1850 renamed the company "Brooks Brothers.
Brooks Brothers profited heavily from the slavery of Black people in the United States by manufacturing using cotton harvested by slaves and assembly by slaves. The company also designed an entire line of profitable clothing to be worn by slaves, both in the homes they were forced to serve, and at slave markets to make these individuals look like more valuable "property" at auction.The combination of free labor and manufacturing coupled with the slave auction marketing strategy allowed Brooks Brothers to rise to the prominence they still enjoy today as an American "heritage brand.
Brooks Brothers has outfitted 41 of the 45 American Presidents. United States President Ulysses S. Grant began his association with Brooks Brothers during the Civil War, when he ordered tailored uniforms for the Union officers in the American Civil War.President Theodore Roosevelt was fond of Brooks Brothers' clothes; he even ordered his dress uniform for the Spanish–American War at Brooks Brothers. Many more presidents, including Herbert Hoover, Chester Arthur, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama were known to wear Brooks Brothers clothing lines.Franklin Roosevelt wore a Brooks Brothers collared cape and fedora at the Yalta Conference in 1945.
In the late nineteenth century, Brooks Brothers tailored many distinctive uniforms for elite regiments of the New York National Guard, as well as uniforms for New York state troops and Union officers during the Civil War.[16] At that time, contracts for uniforms were notorious as an example of corruption in how they were obtained and the poor quality of the clothing delivered, the uniforms often having been made of pressed rag so that they fell apart in the first rains.
The Golden Fleece symbol was adopted as the company's trademark in 1850. A wooly sheep suspended in a ribbon had long been a symbol of British woolen merchants. Dating from the fifteenth century, the image had been the emblem of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, founded by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. In classical Greek mythology, a magical flying ram, or Golden Fleece, was sought by Jason and the Argonauts
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