Te Atatū Menswear is closing down. I stormed in on Wednesday, and said to proprietor Mal Buscomb: " I'm not happy with you!" He said, "Why, what've I done?" I raised my voice to an actual shriek: "You know what you've done!" I was livid with rage but really I was stunned, and upset, and just not coping. I love his shop. The mere sight of it has been like a sign of goodness and permanence in an unstable world. It's always put a halt to whatever species of existential despair was whirling around inside my head, and made me think about better things, like needing a new pair of pants.
Te Atatū Menswear opened in 1962. Sixty years of pants, shirts, ties, hats as managed by one of the great names in New Zealand retail, the Buscombs; Reg Buscomb ran it by himself until his son Mal left school, when it became a father-and-son business, the two of them working together without ever a cross word. The power of two runs deep: Mal and his wife Wilma have two children, a son who now has two children, and a daughter who now has two children. After Reg retired, Wilma joined Mal in the shop, the two of them working together without ever a cross word. I said to Wilma: "I'm not happy with you, either!"
Te Atatū Menswear is one of the last of a proud breed: the New Zealand menswear store, once a fixture in every town, in every suburb. Mal remembered there used to be five menswear stores in Henderson. Five! Strange to think of such a concentration of pants, shirts, ties, hats, in that busy, hard-working suburb out west. But they've all closed over the years, just as menswear stores have closed in recent times in New Lynn and Blockhouse Bay – generations of Aucklanders regarded Leo O'Malley's menswear store on Karangahape Rd as a sign of goodness and permanence until it closed in 2019. I said to Mal, "Are there any menswear stores left?" He thought about it for a while, and said, "There's one in Pukekohe."
Te Atatū Menswear dresses the best-dressed man in Te Atatū: Mal, who wears store clothes every working day of the week. I moved to Te Atatū in 2011 and very quickly regarded him as a fashion icon to aspire to but even though I'm now routinely dressed head to foot in clothes from his store, I just don't have his style. We had a cup of tea on Wednesday down the road at Newsday Espresso and the whole time that we talked about old times and the decision he made to close the store, I was kind of hypnotised by the patterns on his short-sleeved shirt. He modelled another, equally striking shirt in a news clipping pinned to a board in the store, about a couple of robberies the store suffered in the early 2000s; he also wore a dramatic moustache. But he was always more than about appearance. I asked what values he learned from his father Reg. He thought about it for a while, and said, "Respect. Being nice to people."
Te Atatū Menswear has kept pace with Te Atatū ever since the peninsula dragged itself out of its mangrove creeks and got connected to the Auckland isthmus via the State Highway 16 causeway that was raised over the Whau River in 1958. Ronald Neil brick and tile homes were built for a wave of new families in the 1960s. The store's Facebook page features a long litany of sad farewells. Suzanne Kellett: "My mum used to shop there for dad and my brothers until she passed in 1975. Always friendly." Phil Hathaway: "I have great memories of this shop, especially in the 70s with the father-son combo. Shopped there a lot and never got turned away when I asked for stickers for my sticker collection. I always got the latest Levi's, AMCO, Wranglers, etc stickers. A young boy's dream." A shop is never just a shop and when it lasts the distance for 60 years it becomes a piece of history, a piece of a community's life.
