Still, Madewell will not let you forget the date 1937. The store could originally be found online at madewell1937.com, and the year is prominent on the site and on some of the clothing. The company’s Instagram and Twitter handles are both still @Madewell1937, and its LinkedIn page says, “Madewell was started in 1937 as a workwear company, and we’re always looking to the brand’s roots for inspiration.”

This is, to put it mildly, baloney. Madewell as it stands today has almost nothing at all to do with the company founded by my great-grandfather almost 80 years ago. How many vintage labels out there have similar stories? How many corporations are out there rifling through the defunct brands of America’s past like a bin of used records, looking for something, anything, that will give them that soft Edison-bulb glow of authenticity?

Madewell’s story — my story — leading up to that moment in SoHo began over a century ago, half a world away. It traces the evolution of how Americans shop, and how Americans shop heavily informs how Americans see themselves; we, as a country, are what we buy. Mickey Drexler, in creating J.Crew’s new womenswear stores, shrewdly read the market and realized that stocking nice clothes wouldn’t be enough: He’d have to tell a story along with them. Drexler didn’t have any stories, so he bought ours.