Brooks Brothers was steps from the World Trade Center on 9/11. Its creative director still can't look at the pictures.

Like galore people, Brooks Brothers imaginative head Michael Bastian remembers precisely wherever he was connected the greeting of September 11, 2001.

"9/11 is individual for me," he told Business Insider during New York Fashion Week connected Thursday arsenic Brooks Brothers presented its Spring/Summer 2027 collection. "I was successful the aerial connected 9/11. I was flying backmost from a waste and acquisition show successful Paris. I was moving astatine Bergdorf Goodman astatine the time. And I ended up successful Nova Scotia successful Halifax, Canada."

After hijacked planes deed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a afloat nationalist crushed stop, shutting US airspace for the first clip successful history.

It took Bastian 4 days to get backmost location to a New York City that was nary longer recognizable.

"It really changed everyone's life," Bastian, who joined Brooks Brothers arsenic imaginative head successful 2020, said.

Brooks Brothers, a 208-year-old menswear marque founded by Henry Sands Brooks successful New York City, is besides portion of the history of that unspeakable time and the betterment efforts that followed.

In the contiguous aftermath of the September 11 violent attacks, a Brooks Brothers store, located adjacent to the World Trade Center astatine One Liberty Plaza, served a different, tragic purpose: a makeshift morgue.

Once a spot wherever occupation candidates deliberated complete ties up of interviews successful the Twin Towers, the men's garment section astatine Brooks Brothers transformed into a holding area for bodies — and assemblage parts — pulled from the rubble of the World Trade Center. Victims' remains were held location until they could beryllium moved to New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for identification.

The Brooks Brothers location astatine One Liberty Plaza sustained dense harm erstwhile the Twin Towers collapsed, but reopened precisely 1 twelvemonth aft the attacks. While the shop is nary longer location — it closed successful 2018 amid planned renovations and relocated a fewer blocks distant — the memories enactment pinch Bastian 25 years later.

"I still can't look astatine the pictures," he said. "If you were here, it really affected you, arsenic a New Yorker, arsenic an American."