Cecil & Sons Haberdashers are Stitching Tradition with New Vision
MONCTON–The brainchild of two young entrepreneurs, Zach Dallaire and Andrew MacDonald, and seasoned fine clothing veteran Cecil Long, Cecil & Sons Haberdashers harkens back to a time when fine clothes weren’t mass-produced and were specially tailored to fit each individual perfectly.
Cecil Long has been in the clothing business since he was 14. At 70 now, he says that he’s been in the business basically his entire life. While Long has Acadian roots in Moncton, he spent much of his adult life working in and travelling to fashion hot spots, gathering the experience that makes him so knowledgeable about fine clothing today.
Long built experience working in merchandising and setting up store windows on Fifth Avenue in New York before partnering up to establish shops in southern California. He then became a couture buyer at the age of 25 and travelled to London, Paris, Milan and New York to hunt down designs to bring back to California.
In 1980, Long returned to New Brunswick to be near his mother who was dealing with health issues. He says that he decided to bring his experience to Moncton and set up a shop he says the area badly needed.
“I love the people,” he said. “Same old Moncton, same old politics but I love the people … After doing store windows for various shops in town, I bought this little building in downtown … I opened up a little shop and I realized there was a market need for men’s upper level, better fine menswear.”
After an original shop on Main Street, Cecil d’s Design Studio was born on the corner of Austin Street and Church Street. The shop was one that Dallaire and MacDonald grew to love and wanted to be a part of. When Long was no longer able to carry on with the business, Dallaire and MacDonald convinced him to start something new.
“One day I had a massive coronary so I closed my business called Cecil d’s so these young fellas wanted to get involved with a little shop,” Long said. “They didn’t want the culture to leave because it’s a very artistic area so they bugged me until I was silly and realized that it was my first love. So I got involved and took a chance with good, honest young fellas.”
Cecil & Sons is in the business of building men’s wardrobes from the finest materials. Unlike popular retail today, the shop is open by appointment only and each garment is meticulously crafted after an initial consultation and refitting. Cecil & Sons specializes mostly in suits and dress shirts made in Italy and Montreal with English and Italian fabrics.
Zach Dallaire says they wanted to be a part of what Long had been doing for the 50 years he’d been involved with fashion and made Cecil & Sons reflect the ideals they learned to appreciate.
“[Andrew] and I used to shop at Cecil’s shop when he was on Church Street and we absolutely loved what he was doing because we couldn’t get the things he was selling elsewhere and he offered something that was just completely unique and merchandised beautifully,” Dallaire said. “The whole vibe is what sold the product to us. [Andrew] and I were spending a lot of money buying pieces that we couldn’t afford at the time but we had to get them because they were so unique.”
Dallaire says that two-month-old Cecil & Sons, a name that represents the mentor/mentee relationship the younger men have with Long, took about a year to hash out before they were actually able to move forward with opening the shop. He says that they recreated what Long had started but with a younger edge and that it was like injecting the business side into the artistic side of high-end fashion quality.
“Cecil & Sons came from the Cecil mentality … it’s the experience mentality and then two young guys that have the passion and are learning his way,” Dallaire said. “We thought it was a shame that a man with that much knowledge and vision and history and experience in the world of fashion and art wasn’t doing his trade that he’d been doing for 50 years. We wanted to take that on. It’s kind of like he’s mentoring us and we create this team with experience and two young runners.”
Dallaire says their shop is unique to Atlantic Canada and that while other clothing retailers are built on brands, Cecil & Sons is built on quality and personalization.
“We just hope people know that when they come into our shop, they’re leaving with something that fits them, that’s to their taste, because there are styles and fabrics and patterns to choose from and that it’s unique to them. The experience they get is what it all kind of hinges on,” Dallaire said.
Andrew MacDonald says that this focus on quality and personalization is a solution to what he calls the fundamental flaws in traditional retail.
“With the traditional retail model, essentially you’ve just got a store full of stuff and it might not be the right thing for the right guy and you can never guess. So we’ve eliminated that completely,” MacDonald said.
“We’ve got 2000 shirt fabrics, we’ve got 1500 suit fabrics. You come in and we’re going to make the right thing for the right guy and it’s going to fit right. We’ve eliminated one of the major flaws of retail, which is being forced to sell the wrong thing to the wrong person.”
MacDonald says they’ve completely rejected the retail model that depends on customers buying based on brand or what they think is cool because the marketing dollars behind a brand tell them so. He says that similarly to their suppliers, they’re spending their money on quality rather than getting their brand out to the masses.
The combination of Long’s expertise along with Dallaire and MacDonald’s conscious plan to reject the traditional retail model is the heart and soul of Cecil & Sons. They’re melding experience with young vision and building personal relationships with their clients and their community.
“I may have the knowledge but I don’t have that get-up and go anymore,” Long said. “I do keep up but I fall behind sometimes too … I trust them. They’re two honest boys. They work hard and do the best they can. What normally happens if you’re true to yourself is they’ll end up being better than the mentor or the teacher and that’s what I want. They’ll tweak it, they’ll twist it. They’ll make it better. And hurray for Moncton, hurray for the province.”