Charlie Davidson, co-founder and longtime proprietor of the Andover Shop, a tiny Cambridge, Massachusetts, men’s-wear store—roughly a thousand square feet of selling-and-sewing space in a freestanding midcentury building just a chip shot from Harvard Yard—was talking about bow ties: “When people ask me if I’m married, I always say yes, but I’m not a fanatic about it. So here’s Rule Number One: Do not wear bow ties all the time. Keep the viewer off balance. Wear them once in a while, the way you might eat liver.”
Hardly a fanatic, Charlie was a high-stepping haberdasher who lived to mix it up, from the clothes he sold—a collision of the traditional and the far from it—to the people he attracted. My Harvard classmate Rob, old Boston down to his shoelaces, got a part-time job at the shop during sophomore year and still remembers rushing from lunch at the Porcellian Club to help fit a new white suit on a renowned jazz musician. He and Charlie became friends for life.
