Take Stock, Please!

To refresh your memory, Private Stock, the fabulous neckwear collection, is also the name of a person, an individual who was born full-blown out of Gary Cahn’s colorful imagination. Gary Cahn and the neckwear collection are even more real. You can see and hear Gary, and you can see and sell the neckwear.

Private Stock has fought in every war since the American Revolution, when he first defended the freedom of U.S. citizens to wear ties. To this day the dress uniform of the U.S. Army requires a necktie. And he was honored by having the colonial fortresses renamed “stockades.” (Before that they were called log cabins with rifle holes.)


From the beginning, Private Stock’s neckwear was guided by four principles:

1. It was made from the finest silk, obtained by capturing Chinese ships laden with bolts of Asia’s best. (This type of ship was called junk, not the fabric.) Today, Gary Cahn allows the silk ships to reach Italy, where they are woven according to his demanding and tasteful standards.
   
   
2. In the old days, skilled and dedicated craftsmen turned the silks into the most finely constructed neckwear in the world. Today, very little has changed, although the original craftsmen have been replaced by their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren, and the ties are just as great.
   
   
3. Colonial haberdashers made a pretty shilling from Private Stock’s first collection (his 1776 fall line), buying for sixpence and selling for a pound. The only thing that’s changed is that today we use U.S. currency.
   
   
4. Fast delivery was important from the very start. Orders were delivered by the Paul Revere shipping service, whose motto was, “One dozen by land, two dozen by sea.” That company was bought out by UPS, and is still used by Private Stock.

So, if you want fine silk, great construction, big profit margins and fast delivery, we can’t imagine a better source than Private Stock. We had enough trouble imagining him in the first place.