Alumni Profiles

A Suitable Man Watching the evolution of a city, and an industry By Clare Kittredge

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Above all, says Stuart Shaines '50, a good suit should be comfortable. "That's the key word. It's called the Big C." Shaines should know. Once dubbed the "wizard of wardrobe," he founded and ran Stuart Shaines Clothiers, a Dover, N.H., menswear store that blossomed into a chain of nine stores before he closed up shop early last year after 56 years.

Shaines sits on a hot day in a cavernous office in the bowels of the Worth building, where his Portsmouth store's fixtures were once stored. Looking relaxed in a green flowered Tommy Bahama shirt, he has just finished his morning activity—playing golf. In this office space crammed with cabinets and memorabilia, he is about to launch into an afternoon as vice president of Worth Development, answering phones and selling downtown Portsmouth office condos.

The only suit anecdote he is willing to tell involves a man who brought a frivilous suit against Shaines' store. "He actually took us to court, and the judge had a great sense of humor—when he wrote his decision, it was entitled: 'A suit about a suit that didn't suit.'"

Born in Newburyport, Mass., Shaines grew up in Portsmouth "before it became the wonderful city it's finally maturing into." He worked in his father's shoe store. During World War II, he recalls, the Navy Yard in nearby Kittery, Maine, "had more than 20,000 employees working 24-7. I recall the launch of three submarines in one day. Portsmouth was hopping."

At UNH in the late 1940s, Shaines studied business administration on a campus vastly different from what it is today. "It was a time when most veterans of World War II matriculated, and what we referred to as 'Little Durham' was overloaded. All these people came en masse; my graduating class was the largest in years. And the veterans educated under the GI Bill had one interest. They'd come from war to college. They wanted to complete their education and go to work. They were serious and motivated."

During the following years, Shaines founded his menswear chain. He got an M.B.A. from the Air Force Institute of Technology while serving in the Air Force at the end of the Korean War. He says he spent some of the best years of his life as a trustee of the University System of New Hampshire, then served as a director of the New Hampshire State Port Authority, mayor of Dover and president of the Dover Chamber of Commerce. As his stores went through three generations of consumers, he watched trends buffet the business. Menswear became more casual, and much of the manufacturing of clothing moved outside the United States. "We wound up being a survivor in business."

A widower with two children, he has remarried, and he and his wife, Zoe, now divide their time between Exeter and St. Augustine, Fla. They love being "grandparents extraordinaire" to 10 grandchildren--it's what suits them best.