Double-breasted suits? Paisley ties? Why not?

Joseph Abboud caters to his customers, not the high-profile fashion plates.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- Designer Joseph Abboud has more clothes than he should.
He knows -- and more or less agrees with -- the oft-written "rule" that if a garment hasn't been worn in two years, it should give up its precious spot in the closet.
His excuse for keeping a 20-year-old leather bomber jacket that he bought in Paris? He keeps it for reference. "My closet is my laboratory," he says with a laugh.
Abboud is breaking rules these days.
His book "Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion" (HarperCollins) doesn't gloss over the industry's imperfections in favor of the glossy pictures that fill so many other fashion books.
He writes, with Ellen Stern, about designer names and how they can be overvalued:
What's in a name
"My ties are made in Italy. So are Armani's. One season a few years ago, we both used the same fabric (an honest mistake; not every coincidence is 'tie-jacking'), and both ties were manufactured in the same factory at Massimo, in Italy.
"Armani's linings and knots were thin," Abboud continues. "Mine had more body, better bar-tacking, and details like a self-loop in the back to pull the tail through. His ties retailed for $105, and mine were $75. Why? We all know why. His name was bigger, his awareness was greater and his presence as a designer had existed for 20 years before I got there. I understand that. Americans are besotted by marquee names."
Abboud also writes that Donna Karan "is not the only designer who's lost customers because her prices seemed out of whack with the quality." (He does compliment Karan's artistic skills, though.)
In an interview at his Fifth Avenue office, Abboud says the book is "my view of the world I live in. Fashion and style don't live in a vacuum, and products are developed on experiences."
His signature "look," mostly relaxed versions of classic menswear silhouettes, wouldn't be what it is today, he says, had he not grown up as a Lebanese child with an artsy family in Boston, had he not taken a job with Ralph Lauren, or had he not won an award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America early in his solo career.
Burning bridges
The ups and downs of working with celebrities and the influence of teenage daughters are all incorporated into his current designs.
His failures are there, too. He still thinks about his women's line, which was last produced in 1997. It was a victim of its own success.
Abboud jumped at the chance to become an "exclusive" collection at Saks Fifth Avenue, but doing that burned bridges that could have saved him when a handful of finicky fashion plates moved on to the next thing.
Rather than cater to customers, he and many of his peers have a tendency to focus too closely on "insiders," he says, but it's those customers who make a fashion decision every day -- with their wallets. "I believe this is the age of the consumer," he adds.
So what would he want to buy?
Top of the list is a double-breasted suit. "Why we took it out of a man's vocabulary is beyond me. We took away one of the few options that men had."
He'd also like to see more paisley ties, along with glen-plaid and herringbone patterns -- all things you're likely to see in future Joseph Abboud collections.
"I am my customer," he says. "The reason I became a designer is that I'd create clothes that I'd wear. The softly structured suit was created because I didn't like the feeling of being in a suit of armor."