"I must say that I find that reinvention of Brooks as a heritage-style design house is becoming increasingly irksome to me.
They should be able to come up with something that is more practical, after all, that is what Brooks was originally all about.
Best wishes, Mark"
Amen to that, Mark. Brooks turned the corner sometime ago into a poseur's paradise purveying pricey, pretentious and prissy products putting packaging and profits over practicality and purposefulness.
Even Proofhide has been turned into some lemon-scented pap that costs more per ounce than domestic caviar rather than the once familiar red/orange-scabbed tin ouzing underneath with greasy beeswaxiness.
My last new Brooks purchase was 25 years ago in a cycle shop in Oxford for a Brooks B-33 for my Raleigh DL-1 that weighed about half of my Raleigh time trial special back when the firm was British owned, fusty, fussy and frustrating and so unprofit-oriented that they sent me two saddle bags free after fiddling around with an overseas order for over a year. Those were the days...
Peter Kohler
Washington DC USA