News

Joseph Laughter marks 30 years of staying in style

Joseph Laughter fits a jacket for Max Morgan.

By Bill Moss, Published: November 18, 2016

LAUREL PARK — Joseph Laughter traces his early exposure to fashion to his mother’s knee in the women’s wear aisle at Ivy’s.

“My mother (Elva) was very much into fashion,” Laughter says of the right-brain side of his DNA. “I give her all the credit as far as my sense of color and putting clothes together. She would stand there and talk to me about colors. She would talk to me about fashion and accessorizing.”
His dad was a crucial help early on, too.
“None of this would have been possible without my dad,” he says.
His father, Frank, a contractor, built the fixtures, display tables and shelves out of wood salvaged from the general store Joseph’s aunt operated in Etowah near the brick plant, Laughter Mercantile.
Outfitted as always in a colorful bowtie, Laughter has a reason for looking back. His men’s shop, Joseph Laughter Clothier, celebrates its 30th anniversary on Saturday.
Naturally, his work life as a teenager involved fashion. He got a sales job in the downtown shop owned by Jack and Evelyn Schulman.
“She started teaching me how to fit, not only men’s clothes but ladies’,” he says.
At Hendersonville High School, theater teacher Tom Orr nurtured his interest in the stage. Laughter went on to major in speech and theater arts at Western Carolina University.
“I directed plays,” he says. “I taught dance.”
When he enrolled in graduate school at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he made the mistake of starting school in January.
“I couldn’t handle the climate,” he says.

‘Graduate training in retail’
He came home to Hendersonville and returned to Schulman’s.
“A friend of mine said, ‘Joseph, you really need to go to New York.’”
He sent applications to Saks Fifth Avenue and other well-known stores. A New York-area chain called Roots offered him a job managing a store in Short Hills, N.J., outside of New York City.
“I always say my graduate training in retail was being in New York and managing that store in New Jersey,” he says. “I was working with suppliers and designers and that groomed me for coming home to open this store.”
When a customer walks in, Laughter breaks away from a visitor and goes into sales mode, which comes as natural as breathing.
The customer, Max Morgan, is accompanied by his father, Malcolm Morgan, a building contractor who has known Laughter for years. The dad turns the project over to the professional. Laughter fits Max with a sports jacket and a dress shirt for his upcoming 18th birthday party.
“He can wear this with khakis,” Laughter says, half to the father and half to the son. “He can wear it with jeans.”
The next customer that Laughter meets is Pagan Gilman, who sells insurance to ranches, horse farms and vineyards. She and her husband split their time between Atlanta and Lake Toxaway and are thinking of buying property in Hendersonville. Before long, Laughter has given her a sort of verbal cook’s tour of Hendersonville, its restaurants and cultural amenities. And, oh by the way, he manages to sell her two bottles of bloody Mary mix and a scented candle —products that might seem out of place in a men’s clothing store but somehow fit into the tableaux. On her way out the door, Gilman says what fun it was getting acquainted and promises to drag her husband in for new dress shirts and a blazer. Cha-ching. Friend made. Sale made.

‘Small but homey’
Laughter himself was surprised at the volume of his inventory when he first opened the shop, on Nov. 19, 1986.
“I thought, ‘My gosh, I think most people have more than this in their closet,” he says. Somehow he manages to squeeze just enough clothing and accessories onto 700 square feet of floor space.
“I’m happy in this store,” he says, revealing that he once turned down an offer to move to a larger space on Hendersonville’s Main Street. “It’s small but it’s homey.”
He credits store manager Chepe Cardona for taking care of business matters, and his partner, architect Scott Keels, for building his famously attractive window displays.
But, really, they’re just supporting actors. The whole town knows that Joseph is the straw that stirs the drink at Joseph Laughter Clothiers. In a small Southern town 700 miles from New York City and Palm Beach, $25 dress socks and $160 tuxedo shirts don’t sell themselves.
“I think it’s a natural talent,” he says when asked how he came by his engaging brand of salesmanship. “My training in theater helped immensely. When you’re staging a store it’s like blocking a play. There’s a reason things are where they are. It’s almost like the whole store in here is choreographed from the moment we open at 10 in the morning until we close at 5:30.”
Laughter says maybe he’s talked long enough about his life in “the rag business” but has a question for his questioner.
“Aren’t you going to ask me about the next 30 years?” he says before quickly volunteering the answer. “I don’t have any plans of retiring.”
He breaks into a broad smile and spreads his arms wide.
“This is my stage,” he says. “This is where I direct.”

Joseph Laughter Clothier is hosting a 30th anniversary party with light refreshments from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. It’s in Laurel Park Village.