Since then, Mr. Zimmer, now 67, has started two digital businesses: zTailors, which matches tailors to customers, and Generation Tux, a tuxedo rental business. On New Year’s Eve, he’ll be in Times Square officiating at the first two marriages of 2016 — winners of a Generation Tux contest. One will be a male couple, so three of the four newlyweds (plus Mr. Zimmer) will be outfitted in Generation Tux tuxedos.

While Mr. Zimmer has moved on, Men’s Wearhouse stock has been plunging, the victim of a costly acquisition of the rival men’s wear chain Joseph A. Bank and rising competition from e-commerce businesses. (Several start-ups now offer custom-tailored men’s suits, jackets and shirts online.) Its shares have dropped by more than 60 percent over the last three months.

Mr. Zimmer acknowledges some amount of schadenfreude. He told me he now felt more sweet than bitter. “Getting fired was a blessing in disguise,” he said. “I’m so happy not to be working in the retail store business.”

A year after Mr. Zimmer’s ouster, Men’s Wearhouse acquired Joseph A. Bank for about $1.8 billion — a merger Mr. Zimmer had vociferously opposed. “I competed with them my entire career,” he said. “A deal never made sense. Why do you want to add hundreds of retail stores when there’s more competition than ever from the Internet? And that price was so far from where I thought it should be that I didn’t even bother to look at the details.”

The deal was a rare recent example of the notorious corporate finance maneuver called the “Pac-Man” defense, in which a company that is a target of a takeover fends off an unwanted bid by making a bid for its suitor. Joseph A. Bank had started the battle months earlier when it offered $2.3 billion for Men’s Wearhouse.