A selection of vintage Bass Weejun ads comprised one of Ivy-Style’s earliest posts. Here we present an encore, this time with a selection of images Bass provided from its archives. Check out this next one from the pivotal year of 1967: Weejuns and wingtips juxtaposed to sandals and flower-power graphics. — CC
In celebration of powerHouse Books’ publication of “Take Ivy” on August 31, Ivy-Style examines the life and career of Kensuke Ishizu, founder of Japanese clothing company VAN JACKET and the man who commissioned “Take Ivy.”
The article is by W. David Marx, who previously wrote on the Japanese youth cult the Miyuki-zoku. Marx himself has also brought Ivy to Japan: The Harvard grad currently resides in Tokyo.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of Ishizu in English.
* * *
Since the 1960s, Japan has been an important part of the story of the Ivy League Look, and during a few dark periods the island nation has played an important role in preventing the style from possible extinction.
Anyone interested in the Ivy-Japan connection will eventually encounter the name Kensuke Ishizu — perhaps on the inside cover of the newly released “Take Ivy.” Ishizu (1911-2005) was the founder of Japanese Ivy league-inspired clothing brand VAN (officially VAN JACKET), and easily the most important figure in post-war Japanese fashion before the rise of the international avant-garde designers Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto.
Background
Kensuke Ishizu was born into a prominent family in Okayama, a large city in Western Honshu. His father ran a paper wholesaler, which he was expected to eventually take over. At a young age, Ishizu developed a slightly unhealthy obsession with Western clothing. As a teenager, he requested his mother to send him to a specific school because he liked the cut of their uniforms. Biographer Takanori Hanafusa notes that this was highly unusual for the era. Until the 1950s, interest in fashion among Japanese men was generally taboo — a taboo Ishizu was central in breaking.
After relocating to Tokyo for university in the early 1930s, Ishizu used the full extent of his family’s wealth to pull a Gatsby. He drove around the city in his own car, bought expensive British-style bespoke suits, spent his nights at dance halls, and fooled around with girlfriends in the empty second-floors of noodle shops. Ishizu started living with his girlfriend in Tokyo, a younger girl he had known from Okayama, and once they got caught, they came home at 22 and were properly married.
After Japan’s imperialist expansion into China, Ishizu got away from his family for a while to move to Tianjin. Here Ishizu helped run a traditional Western gentleman’s store called Ogawa Yoko in the Japanese concession. In 1943, however, as the war started to turn against Japan, Ogawa Yoko’s Japanese employees decided to close the store and properly enlist. Ishizu joined the navy and took charge of a munitions factory. When the Chinese army eventually showed up to liberate the city, Ishizu was thrown into jail.
He was eventually released, and Ishizu befriended the American soldiers who later controlled the city. He became particularly chummy with a first lieutenant named O’Brien who had gone to Princeton. This would be Ishizu’s first time to hear about the Ivy League, but certainly not his last.
Ishizu Launches His Career
After repatriating, Ishizu went into Japan’s burgeoning fashion industry. Thanks to his experience running Tianjin’s premier men’s store, he became a cutting-edge producer for gentleman’s shops in western Japan. He eventually started his own store called Ishizu Shoten in Osaka, and as a leading expert on contemporary foreign style, Ishizu became an advisor to the post-war’s first serious men’s fashion magazine, Men’s Club.
He eventually founded his own brand VAN JACKET in 1951, with the name lifted from a left-wing tabloid of the time called Vanguard. At first the brand sold British suits and other traditional gentleman’s apparel, but in this era of nearly universal made-to-measure, VAN suffered from a lack of interest in off-the-rack suiting.
Ishizu needed a market for his ready-to-wear, and it was in this need that he made a crucial realization: Nobody made clothing for Japan’s enormous youth population. There had been a baby boom after the war, but companies had not yet tapped into the economic potential of this giant consumer segment. At the time, kids just wore their school uniforms or somewhat garish versions of their parents’ wardrobes. Moreover, there remained a delinquent stigma to the idea that youth would spend their money on clothing (Japan in the 1950s was still rebuilding its shattered economy, mind you). Ishizu became excited about this idea of outfitting the young, but the question was: What was the right style of clothing for them?
And here is where Ishizu remembered the Ivy League. Since the mid-’50s, Japanese men’s magazines had sometimes reported on American collegiate style and a few wealthy fashion leaders had adopted its tenets, but no one had ever attempted to actually manufacture Ivy items in Japan. And at this point, where the yen/dollar exchange rate was something like 360 ¥ to the dollar (it is currently around 89), importing from actual American outfitters was totally impossible.
So VAN began to produce a full line of East Coast college style in the late 1950s, meant to be worn together in total coordination. This alone was innovative, as the industry was before divided into tie-makers, shirt-makers, pants-makers, jacket-makers and socks-makers. No one had ever attempted to make all items under a single brand. After studying Gant, Brooks Brothers and other classic brands, Ishizu was able to create extremely faithful recreations: oxford button-downs, high-water khakis, duffel coats, navy blazers with emblems, high-buttoning tweed hunting jackets, striped university scarves, and tons of madras.
VAN had a slow start with its relatively expensive Ivy gear, but in 1963, Men’s Club decided to retool the magazine to reach a younger audience. Ishizu came on board to make a big push for Ivy style to the youth — which he conveniently was also selling through VAN. The combination worked wonderfully, taking the specialist tailoring-focused title into mass market territory. And by 1964, Ivy League clothing became the cutting-edge fashion for Japanese middle-class kids. Paper shopping bags with the VAN logo became the coolest possible accessory for kids, to the point where some youth who could not afford to actually buy anything in the shop would just put VAN stickers on old rice bags to fake their patronage.
When epoch-making youth culture magazine Heibon Punch came on the scene in 1964, the editors also adopted Ivy league style as their signature look. This, of course, lead also to the “social problem” of the Miyuki-zoku. Despite that PR debacle, Ivy style was now the look for young Japanese men.
Success and Failure
VAN went on to become Japan’s leading brand in the 1960s, moving from Osaka to Tokyo’s upscale Aoyama in 1964. VAN not only advertised in the leading magazines of the day, but even sponsored a music show on TV called “VAN Music Break.” In 1965, Ishizu brought his team together with Men’s Club publisher Fujingahosha to create a photo book of actual Ivy League students. Eventually entitled “Take Ivy” after the Dave Brubeck song “Take Five,” the book served as a template that would inspire years and years of Men’s Club photo spreads of East Coast collegiate style.
Ishizu essentially acted as the godfather of men’s fashion during this decade, but interestingly, he was already a graying veteran during VAN’s peak. He was more like an accomplished bishop advising recent converts to his religion than the sexy style icons hyped in glossies today. And although he had a loyal following of young ambitious men, he was generally disliked amongst his contemporaries in the media and fashion industries. The apparel industry did not like him for changing the set rules on merchandising and avoiding planned obsolescence by going for a classic style like Ivy. The newspapers constantly trashed him for encouraging “juvenile delinquency.”
In the late 1970s, these critics were pleased to see VAN run into financial troubles. After the emergence of the counterculture, Japanese fashion inspiration moved towards laid-back West Coast American and “heavy duty” functional clothing. Ivy League style fell out of fashion among kids, and the diehard fans refused to bend it to match contemporary tastes. In 1978, VAN declared bankruptcy, and Ishizu faded into obscurity. Friends of Ishizu were concerned that Ishizu would take his own life in disgrace.
These fears were unfounded, however, and Ishizu’s almost immediately staged an impressive comeback. Thanks to the early ’80s preppy trend in the US, and the Japanese publication of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” there grew a new interest in East Coast clothing among Japanese youth. To the chagrin of the courts and prior vendors, VAN returned to business in 1981, and in 1982 fashion magazine Hot Dog Press dedicated an entire issue to Ishizu as the grandfather of American style in Japan, an issue that outsold rival magazine Popeye for the first time. And even in this era of a strong yen and therefore affordable imports from Brooks Brothers, Ralph Lauren and Jeffrey Banks, VAN was the standard-bearer for the Japanese Ivy look.
Or maybe not. VAN went bankrupt again in 1984. In 2000, trading company Itochu licensed the brand for a series of cheap GMS merchandise. The current VAN line — a mid-priced nostalgia line for baby boomer dads who couldn’t afford it back in the day — is based on a completely different license with no connection to the Ishizu family. Ishizu’s son Shosuke, who worked with his father throughout the brand’s history, now runs a site called the Button Down Club. Tellingly, there is no link to the current VAN brand on the site.
Legacy of Ishizu
The most striking detail about Ishizu is that his individual actions alone brought Ivy league style to Japan. Almost every famous Japanese Ivy-related project — “Take Ivy,” Men’s Club, etc. — has his fingerprints on it. Perhaps Ivy fashion would have come to Japan on its own in the deep Japanese dedication to American fashions, but it was he who had the resources to actually put affordable versions in the Japanese market right in the nascent years of the consumer market. And Ishizu also had the leadership in the industry to show youth how the style was a legitimate one worth buying into, something that remains a prerequisite for success in Japan.
Although he played up his chance meeting of First Lieutenant O’Brien in Tianjin as the initial spark, Ishizu clearly had a natural sympathy to Ivy style’s central Old Money tenets. Like Haruki Murakami, Shintaro Ishihara and Haruomi Hosono, most of Japan’s post-war cultural pioneers came from elite backgrounds, and their upbringing let them arbitrage their heightened understanding of Western values in a culture obsessed with the latest in foreign products. Kensuke Ishizu was one of the few people who could have “translated” Ivy League fashion to the Japanese, as he had lived as close of an existence to upper-crust New England families as was possible in 1930s Japan.
VAN’s success also made the fashion business a serious destination for Japan’s elite youth. Once shunned as unserious, this growing field was then able to recruit top talent from the best universities. Former Seibu Department Stores president Seiichi Mizuno, an elite Keio University graduate, told me in a 2008 interview that he originally joined Seibu solely because they had a VAN store before any of the other department stores.
When Ishizu died in 2005 at the age of 94, he had no funeral and donated his body to science. With the large number of biographies and anthologies of his lifestyle philosophy, however, Ishizu needed no public memorial. His legacy lives on with every Japanese person who wears an oxford cloth button-down. — W. DAVID MARX
W. David Marx is a writer living in Tokyo whose work has appeared in GQ, Brutus, Nylon, and Best Music Writing 2009, among other publications. He is currently Chief Editor of web journal Néojaponisme and formerly an editor of Tokion and the Harvard Lampoon.
Thanks to katon of Andy’s Trad Forum for the VAN images.
Our latest video from the Princeton Campus Life channel on YouTube is just the thing to get you in the mood for the release of “Take Ivy” next week. It’s another long one, but worth watching in full. Students in jackets and ties make their first appearance at 4:26, and return repeatedly, so be patient during the long science-lab scene. — CC
Princeton, NJ resident Bill Stephenson graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1954 and lived in the Delta Upsilon fraternity house. Herein he shares his thoughts on haircuts and grooming products during the heyday of the Ivy League Look.
Back in the day, undergraduates throughout the US looked pretty similar when it came to hairstyles, just as they did with standard campus apparel. Haircuts looked the same in Berkeley, Columbus or Hanover — take a look at ’50s yearbooks and you’ll see.
The cut was usually referred to as a Princeton and was short on the back and sides and neat on top. We had no idea what clipper size was used and never asked. Fine clippers were used on the sides, and scissors on top. The back was always tapered. To have a haircut that was boxed in the back would be like walking around with your fly unzipped.
The guy with the Ivy look considered it very important to get a haircut religiously every two weeks. Haircuts didn’t cost much in those days, and frequent haircuts were sine qua non for being well groomed.
Many styles started at the Ivy League schools then spread to every campus. Magazines like Esquire spread the gospel so that the vernacular was well understood at every college. Esquire was a big deal. The fall issue was devoted entirely to back-to-school clothing. The photo recently posted here shows students at the University of North Carolina, but the guys there could walk into their local barbershop and say they wanted a “Princeton” and the barber would know exactly what they wanted. Also, if you got your hair cut every two weeks, the style was obvious.
This kind of vernacular spread just like the term “white shoe” law firm. Ivy League students wore white bucks, and today the term “white shoe” still means that most of the firm’s associates went to Ivy League schools. Vernacular was the same nationwide on campuses in the 1950s.
Men’s hair dressing was heavily advertised, and men bought in to the concept that you were not well groomed without it. When it came to grooming products, guys were generally split into two camps: Vitalis or Brylcreem.
The men in the UNC photo used Vitalis. I can tell by the look. It’s still on the market. Take a whiff sometime and you’ll see why the fragrance was overwhelming in the dining commons.
Those who used Brylcreem were generally referred to as using “greasy kids’ stuff.” This was the contingent that wore their hair longer, often with a pompadour, and long enough in back to achieve the ducktail look. It was the opposite of the Ivy look (think “Jersey Boys”). Brylcreem was usually the choice of high school boys, who felt that their long hair had to have the high grease content of Brylcreem. In the amounts that were used, it would hold up a pompadour in a high wind.
Vitalis ads referred to their product as being greaseless, as in the ad above where the word is even underlined. Vitalis has a high alcohol content, but doesn’t put a heavy hold on hair. The end result is exactly like the men in the UNC photo. I used Vitalis while in school, and the aroma of Vitalis, Mennan Skin Bracer or Old Spice still brings back campus memories.
Finally, if a guy showed up in the locker room with a hair dryer, it would have been impossible to live this down. He would have immediately been given an unflattering nickname, that would probably still be with him at reunions 50 years later.
As for myself, I still have hair, and have finally found a barber that can do a Caesar. My favorite sax player was Gerry Mulligan, who used to wear a “Ruthless Roman” haircut in the ’50s: short on the side and top, cut so that the hair falls straight forward with no part. No need to use anything on it. Just towel, Kent hair brush, and you don’t even need to own a comb. — BILL STEPHENSON
We’ve previously written on how the Ivy League Look was the perfect garb to gain approval from a girl’s father. Even though a boy had wolfish intentions, in white bucks and a crew cut he might convince her parents to let her stay out past 10.
Now here’s a tune that makes the same case: You’re not ready to go steady until you’re decked out in Ivy garb.
Of course, singer Bobby Pedrick, Jr. was only 12 years old at the time, so what would he know about snipping locker loops or getting a girl to wear your ring around her neck?
Pedrick’s 1958 dollop of bubble-gum pop extols the virtues of button-down shirts, crewneck sweaters, chinos and “Ivy League… in the north and the south and the east and the west.”
Although he got an early start, success came much later for Pedrick. After changing his name to Robert John, he had a hit in 1972 with a remake of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” But it wasn’t until 1979 that he finally reached the top of the charts with the soft-rock mega-hit “Sad Eyes.”
My aversion to saddle shoes is well known, and here’s further reasoning why they should be banished from the male wardrobe: In the lyrics, the boy wears the bucks, and the girl wears the saddles. — CC
White bucks and saddle shoes
That’s what the kids all choose
Chinos and slacks of course
Oh, yes, they sure look bossGetting ready to go steady
Are white bucks and saddle shoesButton-down shirt and a crewneck sweater
Lets all the kids look so much better
Crew cut and a ponytail
Do the crawl just like a snailGetting ready to go steady
Are white bucks and saddle shoesTwo straws and a bottle of pop
Winning first prize doing the bop
Ten kids piled into daddy’s car
Everybody’s chewing a candy barWell, their white bucks
And saddle shoes
That’s the style
That’s makin’ the newsIvy league at all our best
In the north and the south
And the east and the westGetting ready to go steady
Are Joe’s white bucks
And Mary’s saddle shoes
Several Ivy-Style readers have left interesting comments recently, mentioning how they’ve been wearing button-downs and Weejuns for 50 years, and stuff like that.
Here’s a comment on the Brooks Brothers novel post from a reader who worked at Brooks at the time:
I took a year off from college and worked at Brooks from fall to spring in 1959-60. There were only four stores then: two in NY, one in Boston, and one in Chicago. There were partial stores in SF and LA. Three salesman traveled the country by train, setting up showrooms in the best hotels. Old Mr. Brooks lived in the Yale Club; his daughter had married Julius Garfinkle, owner of Garfinkle’s in Washington DC. Garfinkle’s then owned Brooks Brothers.
The president of Brooks was an Irish-American named Reilly as I recall. He wore the exact same gray suit, solid navy tie, black cap toes and white button-down every day! Of course they were not the same, just identical.
If you were around during the heyday of the Ivy League Look, please send me an email. I’d love to hear your memories about clothes and colleges, offices and country clubs, legendary retailers and campus shops, and anything else that stands out in your mind as it relates to traditional American style and the social milieu that gave rise to it. — CHRISTIAN CHENSVOLD
Photo of UNC Frat Council, 1965, courtesy of The Trad Yearbook Archive.
Just how much was the Ancient Eight a part of pop culture during the heyday of the Ivy League Look? Enough to inspire a B movie like 1959’s “Ivy League Killers,” whose title, reeking of both murder and elitism, was sure to have kids across the nation flocking to drive-ins.
The film (which was made in Canada) is that rare hybrid — in fact, probably the only example — of Juvenile Delinquent film meets Prepsloitation flick. The story centers around three rich guys — who dress and act like caricatures from the oeuvre of Wodehouse (evidently Canada’s idea of what Ivy Leaguers must be like) — who decide to frame a motorcycle gang for murder. Don’t ask why. I think there was a girl involved. I wasn’t really paying attention.
“Ivy League Killers” is available from Amazon’s Video On Demand service for a mere $1.99.
Disclaimer: Ivy-Style.com has presented this film merely as a cultural curiosity. In no way should this be seen as an endorsement of the film, its quality or entertainment value. If you’ve never seen a ’50s B movie before, this could be the worst film you’ve ever seen. Do not email Ivy-Style.com asking us to PayPal you a two-dollar refund. Do not ask us to reimburse your hourly rate because you watched it at work. In fact, just don’t watch it, period. — CC
The rolls of shirt collars are as subtle as the taste of hops in beer and identify their maker just as quickly.
Shirtmakers and merchants distinguish their wares by the stitch along the front of a collar, how far from the placket the collar buttons are attached, the collar’s height and shape, and an arcane host of other quiddities, each less obvious than the previous.
Brooks Brothers’ famous oxford-cloth button-down — what Chipp founder Sid Winston called the single finest piece of merchandise in the world of menswear — has long been prized for the roll of its collar. Purists have widely considered it the most perfectly rolling collar on the market, its curves the most graceful. However, such praise might owe more to historical circumstance than any real analysis of the competition: Brooks Brothers was the first American company to make a button-down collar, in 1896. It’s had the most years of practice, and enough corporate change to lose itself along the way.
Certainly the Brooks button-down is the most iconic, but is it still the best? Mercer & Sons demurely disagrees.
Mercer & Sons began in 1982 in an 18th-century warehouse in Boston with the goal of making a 1950s-style oxford shirt in two-ply pima cotton, with a full cut and classic collar roll. The clothier, which makes what G. Bruce Boyer calls an “old-fashioned button-down, the way they used to be,” promises a full collar roll of nearly 3.5 inches. “It must be the proper, soft, full roll,” explains David Mercer, who runs the firm. “The look is distinctive and obvious at first glance.” Each of the company’s shirt collars is unlined, unfused, and turned by hand. The rest of the shirt is generously cut — so generously, in fact, that it billows. The shirts are roomy the way boat sails are roomy. Perhaps coincidentally, Mercer & Sons shirts, which start at $95, are made in Yarmouth, an old Maine shipbuilding town near Portland.
According to Mercer, most of the big-name shirtmakers have wandered off-track when it comes to button-downs and their all-important collars. “Twenty five years ago, the good button-down shirt became compromised in quality and sizing,” Mercer says. Roomier fit gave way to less generous, laser-cut silhouettes. Mercer takes exception: “A tight European fit is not flattering to all. Many of us benefit from a little mystery. Form and style follow function, and our fit remains a timeless look that is always in good taste.”
And there’s the issue of collar roll. Most collars are made in ways that increase the ease and speed with which they can be manufactured, resulting in a collar that looks and feels hard and comes apart quickly when laundered. Fabric experts estimate the life of a commercially laundered shirt at between 30 and 50 washings. David Mercer guarantees at least 150 washings of his shirts. In addition to their fine construction, the generous cut puts less stress on fabric and seams.
One might suppose the Mercer & Sons client to be a fussy relic in a grey flannel suit, comfortable in corporate conformity. Closer inspection, however, reveals the exact opposite. Clients come to Mercer & Sons not for uniformity, but personal style. Mercer believes most other shirts stand out only in their inability to stand out. Every line is too clean, every stitch too crisp. “Button placement, in fact all steps of the cutting and sewing process,” he explains, “require an experienced human eye, not a laser beam. Character, a distinctive and comfortable look — that’s what makes for true style. Making the proper button down is an art, not a science. Button placement is by hand, not machine. That’s why experienced seamstresses and cutters are so important. Shirts made in quantity in the best factories often look too perfect.”
The Mercer & Sons shirt is the antithesis of laser-beam precision. Each seam and button is where it is because a human hand put it there with needle and thread. The result is a shirt with as much character as the man wearing it, not one made crisp and clean for a department store shelf. Mercer’s shirts stand in the face of progressive fashion, holding true to traditional style. “Maybe it is old school, even prehistoric,” Mercer says. “But this is the real deal, the quintessential American shirt.” — ANDREW EASTMAN
“Take Ivy” is full of students wearing shorts, untucked oxfords and Weejuns without socks. This begs the question: Did the look originate on Yankee campuses, or did the practice originate in the South, with Southern students taking the look North with them when they headed off to college?
Made in 1989 and set in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in 1963, “Shag” shows guys staying cool in the humid Southern summer dressed in such trad fare as short-sleeved madras shirts, t-shirts, canvas sneakers, chinos and oxfords. Not to mention Weejuns, the perfect shoe for shaggin’ with a waitress on roller skates, as the guy in the yellow button-down does in the screenshot above.
“Shag” stars Annabeth Gish, who’s previously appeared on Ivy-Style, and Phoebe Cates, dream girl of any boy who came of age in the ’80s. There’s also Bridget Fonda, whose figure will not escape your notice.
With its Southern setting, “Shag” is more conservative than the New York-set “Dirty Dancing,” which was made two years earlier and also set in 1963. But whereas “Dirty Dancing” features a post-’60s inversion of values in which the Yale-bound med student is the villain, while the leather-clad greaser is the hero, the leading man in “Shag” is a bit of a n’er-do-well, but still bound for Yale, making him bad boy and husband material all in one. What a catch.
The movie’s soundtrack draws on that carefully edited mixture of R&B and doo-wop known as Beach Music. — CC
New contributor Rebecca C. Tuite, an English Ph.D. candidate studying the sociology of American fashion, recently toured the Northeastern US interviewing ’50s-era Vassar alumnae. In this article, on how the Ivy League Look influenced Seven Sisters style, she shares some of her findings.
When Marilyn Monroe steps onto the screen in “Some Like It Hot,” wearing elaborate furs and gowns, her soft blond curls swept into an elegant chignon, she spends much of her time pretending to be a wealthy, well-to-do Vassar student. She is a classic example of Hollywood’s vision of the Vassar Girl: the stereotypical rich, white, smart and attractive debutante.
However, the real trends in Vassar style were not being set by a Hollywood costumer. During the 1950s, Vassar students became fashion leaders of everyday campus style for women. Just as Princeton became recognized as the leading school for setting menswear trends, so Vassar quickly became known as the most fashionable college for women, popularizing a look for girls that was the equivalent of the Ivy League Look for boys.
Founded in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1861, Vassar College was established “to be to women what Harvard and Yale are to young men.” Vassar College went fully co-educational in 1969, but following World War II, a small number of young men were admitted on the GI Bill. The relaxed clothes of these “Vassar Vets” — khakis, jeans, Bermuda shorts, Brooks Brothers button-downs and loafers — had a marked impact on the attitudes of Vassar women towards a more casual way of dressing. Suddenly it was more acceptable for girls to wear stovepipe pants (although skirts remained required for dinner), oxford shirts, denim (in moderation), plaids, tartans and Bermuda shorts, which echoed the new male influence on campus. (Continue)
J. Press has given Ivy-Style a sneak peak at items from its Fall/Winter 2010 collection. The full collection will be posted on the Press website on August 19. (Continue)
Last week Allen Edmonds unveiled the Kenwood model to US consumers. Previously — and inexplicably — the classic American beefroll penny loafer, made in the company’s own “Gentry” leather, was only available in foreign markets. The lone penny option for US customers was the beefless Walden model. The Kenwood will be available in Allen Edmonds retail stores next spring, but is currently for sale on the company’s website.
Priced at $195, the Kenwood will take its own place in the beefroll penny loafer market. At $99, Bass currently offers the Larson model, whose leather, Mr. Boyer has quipped, “is as close to plastic as you can get without actually changing the molecular structure of the material.” Bass also offers the lined Goodwick for $129 and the US-made Jeffrey for $250. Priced somewhere in between is Johnston & Murphy’s Ski-Moc Penny at $165.
The Kenwood’s introduction to the US market is part of Allen Edmonds’ effort to consolidate its products into one catalog. The shoe has sold well in foreign markets.
For more on the Kenwood, Ivy-Style spoke with Allen Edmonds’ director of merchandising Mark McNeill:
IS: What can you tell us about the Kenwood?
MM: These handsewn loafers are made out of cowhide — what we call a corrected skin. A corrected skin is lightly sanded, then filled in wherever there are imperfections on the leather. It is then polished and lacquered many times to give the leather the high shine that you see. It is also a very stiff leather, which works very well for unlined shoes. They are stiff in the beginning, but once broken in the leather molds beautifully to the foot and continues to hold its shape.
Our Gentry leather is a higher quality than the standard cowhide leathers, with fewer fillers and less shine than most. Gentry is simply a house name someone picked to identify this kind of leather.
IS: Is the pinking (the saw-toothed edging on the tongue) from the archives or a contemporary twist?
MM: Pinking was used on the handsewn loafer going back to our 1994 international catalog. It is not a contemporary twist. The loafer was originally called the Kennedy. I don’t know why or when the name changed to Kenwood.
IS: What else can you tell us about the shoe?
MM: The shoe fits true to size. The sole is two millimeters thicker than the standard leather sole on our other loafers. The thicker sole creates a beautiful balance with the beefrolls on the sides of the loafer. The black and burgundy colors are very stiff leather. The brown grain is a much softer leather. The one color that is not yet photographed is the tan saddle, which will actually be in stores in October. That color is my favorite and it is new this season. It is beautifully burnished tan leather with some cream-colored lacing details. It is not as stiff as the Gentry leather, but it is much stiffer than the brown grain.
Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue have a new Gucci loafer for Fall on their website that looks exactly like our Kenwood, done in a very nice chocolate suede, for $535. Flattery at the highest level.
