(BALTIMORE – July 17, 2026) – The first people to introduce me to fashion were my parents, Doc and Lillie Glover.
They kept me sharp as a tack.
After all, I was the son of a funeral director. My father conducted funerals from the funeral chapel, and our family lived upstairs. I am talking about 1968, 1969, and 1970. Patterson Park and Lanvale, Easter Sunday, and regular trips to church.
My father was deeply involved in the church at Perkins Square Baptist Church at 2500 Edmondson Avenue, where he served as treasurer. Church was not an occasional activity in our household. It was part of the rhythm of our lives. I attended Sunday school and Sunday service, and going to church meant having church clothes.
I always had a suit.
Some of the boys I knew in elementary school used to tease me, saying I arrived at school in a limousine carrying a briefcase.
For the record, it was not a limousine. It was a Cadillac Fleetwood.
But I did have a briefcase.
Their running joke – even today – is to ask what I had inside it.
The point is that my parents introduced me to presentation before I was old enough to call it fashion. They taught me that how a man carried himself mattered and that clothing could communicate dignity, discipline, and respect before he ever opened his mouth.
Sharp as a Tack
When we moved to West Baltimore, that education continued. I was nine or 10 years old, still attending church every Sunday and still wearing suits.
My best friend, the late Marty Williams, also had to go to church, so suits were a regular part of his life, too. Marty lived at 1530 Moreland Avenue. I lived at 1526.
Marty stayed sharp. Sharp as a tack. God rest his soul. He had one of the tightest shoe collections ever. And Nordstrom’s in Towson was his go-to.
There were men around us – my father, Marty’s older brothers, Levy and James – who knew how to put on a suit. If church was part of your household, you probably owned one. In other families, Easter might mean a fresh pair of jeans instead. That is not a judgment. It is simply a distinction of the Baltimore we grew up in.
By the time I reached junior high school at Lemmel, I was paying closer attention. First came Lee, then Levi’s. I remember the six-pocket pants because I never got a pair. Later came Jordache, Calvin Klein, Pierre Cardin, and Gloria Vanderbilt. Clothes were becoming more than something my parents selected for me. Mind you, Moms raised me in Sear’s Toughskins – sometimes the plaid joints (talkin’ ’bout ugly). I was “stretching out” – as we used to say. Clothes were becoming part of how I selected and expressed myself.
I traveled throughout Baltimore and never wanted my appearance confined to the uniform of one neighborhood. Folks in my part of town headed to Mondawmin. If everybody in one section of the city was going to the same store and buying the same thing, I wanted to find something different.
That freedom introduced me to stores such as Goldbloom’s at North and Charles – the same store that would leave an impression on Kevin Scott, although he got there a few years ahead of me. Goldbloom’s was where I purchased some of my first “big boy” pieces. I never had the opportunity to shop at Bernard Hill, but I did shop at Gage’s downtown and bought some beautiful pieces there over the years.
All of that became part of my fashion education.
Then came Kevin Scott.
Enter Kevin Scott
I have known Kevin since I was approximately 18 or 19 years old. I sold T-shirts for him out at Oregon Ridge during a music festival and made a good day’s pay. He has always been an entrepreneur. He has always been a salesman. Whatever field he entered, he aimed for the top. That ambition is not a performance Kevin turns on inside Benedetto Haberdashery.
It is in his DNA.
Kevin was only 13 when he first tried to enter Goldbloom’s. When he was not allowed inside, he returned with his mother. She, too, was an entrepreneur, operating a store at 27th and Mathews. Kevin grew up understanding that business was not an abstract concept. It was something people around him practiced.
My father gave me my foundation in men’s fashion, presentation, and personal pride. What I am learning from Kevin today builds upon that foundation.
Fashion is not merely clothing, and it is certainly not merely business. It is history, craftsmanship, culture, identity, geography, and time. It involves what we see, what we touch, what we feel, and what we communicate about ourselves without speaking.
What makes Kevin extraordinary is not simply his understanding of fashion. It is what he does with that understanding.
He travels to Italy and sees ideas that may not reach the broader American market for another year, two years, or even three. He studies fabrics, silhouettes, collars, waistbands, colors, and cycles, but he does not merely copy what he sees and bring it back to Baltimore.
He puts his own hand on it.
Kevin knows when Baltimore is ready for a particular look – and when being too far ahead of his customers could leave beautiful merchandise sitting on the shelf. He understands the difference between recognizing a trend and translating that trend for the people he serves.
That is the home run. The grand slam. The crème de la crème of what Kevin Scott has built.
Much like BMORENews, Kevin has created his own ecosystem. Benedetto Haberdashery is not simply a store that sells clothing. It is where global fashion, Baltimore culture, entrepreneurship, education, and personal transformation meet.
To understand that ecosystem, however, you have to experience it.
On my most recent visit, the experience began around a table.
The Working Table
Kevin calls it his working table.
But that table is not regular furniture.
He found it at Second Chance, where somebody had either donated it or sold it. I cannot tell you what kind of wood it is, and I refuse to diminish it by guessing. I can tell you that it is massive and commanding. It looks as if it weighs a ton.
It is a masterpiece.
That working table is the physical center of Kevin’s creative process. It is where he lays out shirts, trousers, jackets, shoes, ties, and possibilities. It is where colors meet textures and separate pieces of clothing become a complete thought.
It is Kevin’s stage, canvas, and laboratory.
On this particular day, the shoes on Kevin’s table were mine.
I had first seen them at his grand opening. Anyone who knows Kevin knows that when you attend one of his events, he will be dressed to the nines. Dressed to a T. Sharp from head to toe.
That day, however, Kevin was on his conservative business tip. His suit was not loud. Nothing about it demanded attention – until I looked down at his feet.
At first glance, the shoes appeared black.
But they were not black.
They were forest green.
They were Calzoleria Toscana lace-up wingtips, richly colored and detailed with broguing – the decorative perforations that give a wingtip its distinctive character. The green was so deep that it revealed itself only upon closer inspection. The shoes did not shout across the room.
They rewarded attention.
Mean! Savage! Vicious! Relentlessly immaculate and made for distinction.
I told Kevin I had to have a pair.
He said he would get them for me.
And he did.
Even the Calzoleria Toscana shoe box is an experience. I know shoe boxes. Ferragamo makes one of the firmest in the business. Puma has several varieties – some ordinary, others substantial enough to complement a well-crafted sneaker.
But Calzoleria Toscana took the shoe box somewhere else.
Its colors, design, and language make it more than packaging. Even the bottom carries a message. They put thought where most companies leave blank cardboard. They put beauty in a place many customers may never bother to examine.
Somebody loved those shoes before I ever put them on.
The box does not simply hold the shoes. It prepares you for them.
I was at Kevin’s working table for another edition of what I call the Cold-Blooded Sneakerhead Challenge. I bring him a pair of sneakers, quite often Pumas, and challenge him to build a sophisticated look around them.
Kevin invariably reminds me that this is not something he does for everybody.
“Doni! Doni! You know I don’t do this for nobody else.”
And he is right. This is something Kevin does especially for BMORENews.com.
The challenge has developed its own rhythm. I arrive with the shoes. Kevin studies their colors and character. Then he begins pulling shirts, trousers, jackets, and accessories from throughout Benedetto Haberdashery. What starts as a pair of sneakers on his working table gradually becomes a complete and often unexpected statement.
Sometimes Kevin even jumps in to close the video himself:
“The news before the news.”
On this visit, however, my new shoes were about to become only part of the story.
Then Mike Brown walked in.
Mike is a former Dunbar Poet, a member of the Class of 1983, and a basketball national champion. Standing somewhere around 6-foot-4 or 6-foot-5, he has the imposing frame to carry a serious coat.
He entered Benedetto with his wife. Kevin had a gray mink in the store that he had designed for another client.
The coat cost “ten-five.”
Before long, Kevin was placing it across Mike’s shoulders.
When I first saw the coat, I did not know what kind of fur it was. I am not ashamed to say that. I asked Kevin, and he told me it was mink.
The fur reminded me of a magnificent gray cat my brother once had. It looked so soft and pleasant that the eyes seemed to issue instructions to the hand:
I have to touch that.
I instinctively turned my hand over and felt the fur with the back of my hand. The eye had already registered softness. The hand wanted confirmation.
Then the mind completed the thought:
I want to feel that warmth. I want to wear that warmth.
Fine clothing often speaks to our senses before we possess the vocabulary to explain what it is saying. The body understands before language arrives.
Kevin settled the mink onto Mike’s towering frame and directed him toward a mirror that must stand 10 feet high. Calling it a full-length mirror hardly does it justice. It is enormous. Ginormous. Almost architectural.
Mike stood before the glass and responded to what he saw. His smile was its own affirmation, like a kid at Christmas.
His wife watched from a chair several feet away. Kevin stood off to the side, visible in the reflection, admiring the composition he had created. His expression seemed to say:
Yeah, boy. Buy that coat. Buy that coat.
Mike’s wife gave her approval. Yes, Mike. That is you.
Bam.
That was the experience.
It was not merely touching a “ten-five” mink. It was watching Kevin explain it, present it, and place it properly on Mike’s shoulders. It was seeing Mike encounter himself in that towering mirror, his smile shining like a kid’s at Christmas. It was his wife affirming the transformation, and Kevin admiring his work from inside the reflection.
Nobody had to purchase the coat at the moment to have value.
A transaction asks, “Are you going to buy it?”
An experience asks, “How did you feel when you saw yourself in it?”
The Knowledge Behind the Clothes
Kevin entered the fur business in 2005. Friends from Greece began teaching him about the industry. He later developed relationships with eight furriers in Montreal, traveling back and forth to Canada to learn about skins, pelts, and construction.
The gray mink required approximately 40 pelts. Kevin explained how the pelts are opened, laid out in a pattern, secured, flattened, and sewn together to form the coat.
But Kevin’s role went beyond selecting the fur. He helped design the garment. A coat that might otherwise have been single-breasted became double-breasted. He specified peaked lapels rather than notched lapels and called for an exaggerated collar – four or five inches instead of the more conventional three and a half.
Design often lives in proportion: the width of a collar, the height of a waistband, the opening of a lapel, or the distance between two collar points. A fraction of an inch can alter the entire attitude of a garment.
Kevin currently favors an Italian spread collar measuring approximately 3.5 inches. The wider distance between the collar points creates room around the tie knot and frames the face differently than a traditional point collar.
Then there are the trousers. Kevin has been showing high-waisted trousers with two- to two-and-a-half-inch waistbands, adjustable side tabs, and buckles. That construction allows a man to wear trousers without a belt, creating a cleaner silhouette.
Kevin, however, has long been the kind of man who wants his belt to match his shoes. When he has certain shoes produced, he may order six or a dozen matching belts because he knows that a customer may want the belt with the shoe – or return looking for it later.
That is fashion knowledge meeting inventory strategy.
He also knows that fashion is cyclical. Bell-bottoms and flared legs return. Tapered legs recede. Wide collars disappear and reemerge. Nothing is entirely reinvented. The gift lies in knowing what to revisit, what to change, and when to bring it back.
Kevin is also the quintessential salesman.
He studies people. He notices which jacket makes a customer pause, which shoe draws the eye for a second look, and which fabric makes a hand reach out almost involuntarily. He finds the point where curiosity becomes desire and knows how to speak to it.
Selling is an art. Anybody can point to a price tag. A gifted salesperson helps you understand why the product matters to you. Kevin can place a garment on your shoulders and lead you toward a mirror. By the time you see your reflection, he has moved the conversation from What does this cost? to Is this who I am?
I study that gift. Being a couple of years younger than Kevin, I can comfortably say that I look up to him. I have applied some of his sales lessons to my own craft because journalism may be my calling, but BMORENews is also a business. If you believe in what you have built, you must learn how to communicate its value.
Kevin may not hold an MBA from a university, but he has earned something experience alone can confer: a doctorate in entrepreneurship.
His classroom was the sales floor. His curriculum included customers, inventory, relationships, international travel, risk, presentation, real estate, and survival. After more than 25 years in the game, his dissertation is Benedetto Haberdashery itself.
And he has defended it well.
Relationships Make the Work Possible
The Cold-Blooded Sneakerhead Challenge does not end when Kevin finishes arranging the clothes. I record these encounters – usually in clips lasting a minute or a minute and a half – and share them across social media.
I pay particular attention to TikTok, where the videos tend to generate the strongest response. Among a thousand comments, someone will inevitably say, “I wouldn’t wear that,” or question whether two colors go together. That comes with social media.
Overwhelmingly, however, viewers are drawn to Kevin’s love for clothing, footwear, and presentation. They watch the way he handles a jacket, moves a shirt against a pair of trousers, or places a handkerchief into a breast pocket with the precision of a magician completing a trick.
Kevin is not regular.
There is nothing regular about the way he touches clothes, presents them, or sells them. I once heard that during a blizzard in the 1990s, Kevin appeared in an all-white ensemble, complete with a white fur coat. I did not witness it, but anybody who knows Kevin understands why the story is believable.
The social-media clips extend the Benedetto experience beyond the store. They also demonstrate what can happen when a Black business and an independent Black media company collaborate to tell a story.
One of the strongest encouragers of that collaboration is Jimmy Britton, founder of Class Act Catering and an elder brother from another mother to Kevin and me.
Jimmy began his hospitality journey in 1991 with a staffing agency. Within approximately a year, he founded Class Act Catering. He later opened Class Act Cafe in East Baltimore, expanded into West Baltimore, created the upscale restaurant Britton’s, and built an important relationship with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, where Class Act operated the museum cafe and became its official caterer.
Long before “reentry” became common in public policy, Jimmy was giving returning citizens opportunities to work, learn, and rebuild. His enterprise trained, employed, or placed hundreds of people. His daughter, Selena Britton, now serves as vice president of Class Act Catering, carrying that legacy into another generation.
When Jimmy Britton tells us that the work has value, we listen.
One of the most beautiful things about Jimmy is that he has never forgotten who helped him along the way – especially Wanda Draper.
Wanda inspired Jimmy early in his entrepreneurial journey. She also blessed my career by giving me access to WBAL-TV 11, where she spent 25 years and served as director of programming and public affairs. She later served as executive director of the Reginald F. Lewis Museum.
Interestingly, Wanda’s mother lived only a few doors away from my grandmother on Westwood Avenue.
Baltimore is like that.
A relationship that appears to begin in one place often has roots somewhere else. A connection in television leads back to Westwood Avenue. A woman who inspires one man’s entrepreneurial journey opens a door for another man’s media career. A caterer builds a relationship with a museum that the same woman later leads.
Wanda Draper blessed both of our careers, and she deserves her flowers while she is here to receive them.
Gratitude requires memory. It means remembering who encouraged you before the success became visible, who opened a door, made an introduction, or spoke your name in a room.
Jimmy remembers.
And so do I.
This story may involve fashion, but its deeper fabric is relationships. Those relationships are not incidental to the work.
They are what makes the work possible.
Your Word Is Everything
Kevin’s godfather, Mac, was my father Doc’s best friend.
Both men were master students of business – Black business, business in Baltimore, and, in their respective ways, Baltimore’s place in the wider world. They understood ownership, reputation, and the importance of doing what you said you would do.
Through their relationship, Kevin and I were privileged to witness what friendship looked like. We learned that if you have one person in this world with whom you can leave everything you own, return five or 10 years later and find it exactly as you left it, you are blessed.
You are rich.
People use the word friend loosely – almost as loosely as they use the word love. In my book, either a person is your friend or they are not.
A friend does not deliberately hurt you.
A friend helps you.
A friend is revealed through action, not talk.
Having lost my mother – my first and best friend – 41 years ago, I have come to understand the value of that word.
The woman who gave birth to me 61 years ago taught me another lesson I have never forgotten. My mother once corrected me when I was being ugly and ungrateful.
“God don’t like ugly and cares less for beauty,” she told me.
Then she made it plainer:
“You don’t appreciate shit.”
I have tried my best never to forget those words.
If you allow me to merge into traffic, I will give you the peace sign. If you hold a door for me, I will say thank you. If you give me a glass of water, I will express my gratitude.
Why?
Because you did not have to do it.
That brings me back to the shoes.
I told Kevin I had to have those forest-green Calzoleria Toscana wingtips. He said he would get them for me.
Then he did.
Maybe that should not be remarkable, but it is.
We have all been disappointed. We have all heard promises from people who later forgot, became busy, changed their minds, or acted as though the conversation never happened.
Kevin could easily have said, “Man, I forgot. I had other things to do.”
But he did not.
He said he would find the shoes, and he found them. He said he would get them for me, and he did.
That is integrity.
It is also where we come from. Doc and Mac came from a generation that taught us that a man was only as good as his word. Your word carried your name, your character, and your reputation.
Where I come from, that carries a lot of weight.
The forest-green Calzoleria Toscana wingtips are beautifully made. But every time I look at them, I will see more than Italian leather, intricate broguing, and a deep, hand-finished color.
I will remember that Kevin Scott did what he said he would do.
So thank you, Kevin, not only for the education, the collaboration, and the many moments around that masterpiece of a working table.
Thank you for keeping your word.
Thank you for getting me my new favorite pair of shoes.
Forest-green Calzoleria Toscana lace-up wingtips.
Mean. Savage. Vicious. Relentlessly immaculate and made for distinction.
And unapologetically.
They are me.
