The shirt off his back: Santa Monica fixture Mike Caruso Menswear will close doors.

It's the end of a 59-year run and it's breaking Jack Caruso's heart,

Mike Caruso Menswear On Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica is in the process of being liquidated and its doors will close by the end of the month, another casualty in a long line of local family-owned clothing retailers falling victim to shopping malls, department stores and discount prices.

"As much as I want to keep the family tradition going, I just can't do it by myself anymore," said Jack Caruso, grandson of the store's namesake who already has taken a sales position with Beverly Hills retailer Carroll & Co. that begins Sept. 1. "I have literally burned out working six days a week."

Two recent burglaries led to higher insurance rates for the store, he said, and that, combined with the rising cost of medical benefits and soaring workers compensation rates, made him unable to hire more employees. That made the lure of a nine to five job--where he wasn't the boss--all the more attractive.

The Santa Monica retailer had been run by the Caruso family for three generations--a heritage that extended to customers, many of whom note with affection that their fathers took them to Caruso's to buy their first suit.

"Caruso's has always been a tradition," said Harry Handler, superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District from 1981 to 1987 and a customer of Caruso's for 44 years. "What you found was that you got a feeling of family at Mike Caruso's."

The store's closing ends multi-generational relationships with suppliers as well. Robert Otenberg, a manufacturer's representative for Reyn Spooner and Byford, has supplied Caruso's with dress shirts and socks for 25 years, as his father did before him.

"It wasn't so much the quantity," he said. "It was the uninterrupted service of bringing these products to the community. It's a sad thing."

Over the years, the store has had its share of celebrity clients, including Alec Baldwin Anthony Hopkins, Richard Burton, Anthony Quinn, Rob Lowe, David Hasselhoff, Emilio Estevez, Rip Torn and Carson Daly.

"We've done some tailoring for Al Pacino but he never came into the store," Caruso said. "We had to go to his hotel room for that."

But neither longtime customers nor celebrity clients could save the store. These days few professions require men to wear suits at work and that trend has hurt the store's business more than anything else, Caruso said.

"It used to be guys would buy four or five suits, but today you're lucky if they buy one," he said. "It seems casual Friday has become casual everyday."