Probable Maximum Loss: Cole Haan

Esquire Gentleman Magazine, Spring / Summer 1993

Probable Maximum Loss or PML is an insurance term I always called the "Ka-Boom" factor. PML is a basic underwriting strategy where an insurance company figures it's total maximum loss in a building, location, region or... shoe maker.

Cole Haan started in Chicago in 1928 and were, by the time I knew them in the '80s, the classic shoe choice. Whether a simple calf tassel loafer (my first post college shoe) or their perfect correspondent in buck and tan calf -- Cole Haan was classic. You didn't wear tassel loafers -- you wore Cole Haan tassel loafers.

In 1993, Cole Haan introduced the venetian loafer you see in the advertisement above. It was a clean looking shoe made in their Maine factory. In 1988, Cole Haan was bought by Nike and shortly afterwards closed their Maine plant and moved all manufacture off shore. How odd that Cole Haan became, if not the first, one of the earliest shoe companies to embrace off shore while leaving pricing the same.

Today, pricing remains high for what you get but design has really suffered as seen here. The plastic injected shoe so commonly associated with Donald Pliner is seen across the Cole Haan line. This may have more to do with the small world of shoe design talent but I think it stems more from what Asian factories are comfortable making. Who knows. I don't pretend to know a lot about making shoes. I do understand Probable Maximum Loss. You know? Ka-Boom!

Mail Order Monday: Burton By Post

Mail order was my birthright as a kid. Sears and JC Penny? Mere amateurs. Sometime in the late '60s, just after the Whole Earth Catalog made its splash, an understated book came out called, The International Catalog of Catalogs. It was nothing more than the world's best catalogs in one book.

Segmented by product type, like cooking or camping or apparel, it might have included the UK's version of Sears, Burton By Post as seen above. The magic of international mail order was not so much in the ordering but in the dreaming. That, and it was an insight into a country. The difference in clothes, cameras, slippers and underwear. It was an amazing trip to take.

I miss that. I know I have the world at my finger tips via the Web but it isn't the same. In a catalog, there was a story. I don't care if it was intended or not. It was there and I was a part of it. I was shopping in Manchester or Rome or Mexico City.

It was a pain. International money orders at Deak-Perera, shipping charges, stamps...But something beyond magical happened when the package arrived. Foreign stamps everywhere, with sevens crossed and custom forms stuck to brown paper. I saved it all. I still save it all.