Once again the most elaborate booth inside New York’s Javits Center, where menswear market week is held, belonged to Duck Head and the two other brands in its dynasty, the high-tech outwear brand Gyde and Crittenden. Kentucky-based Critt Rawlings is a menswear veteran with deep Ivy roots, having worked at Norman Hilton and Polo in …
As a follow-up to our last post on jacket linings, which included quotes from industry veteran Crittenden Rawlings, I wanted to share more about his new Ivy sportcoat, which we first showed you back in January when I saw it at one of the trade shows. The jackets have finally gone through production and hit …
It’s market week here in New York, and yesterday I stopped by the small menswear trade show at the Park Lane Hotel, where Crittenden Rawlings was showing. I previously wrote about him in January; Rawlings is a menswear veteran who’s worked for Norman Hilton and Ralph Lauren, and who has brought out a new Ivy-styled …
Last weekend I met up with Ivy Style contributors Zachary DeLuca and Jason Marshall for two of the smaller menswear trade shows. The highlight was a long session with Crittenden Rawlings, a longtime business associate of my girlfriend’s. “Critt,” as he’s known by friends and colleagues, is a menswear industry veteran who came out of …
There was a period of Ivy marketing where you couldn’t determine much about how any product was different from any other product because the photography looked… the same. And then a decade passed and you couldn’t determine much about the product, or even what decade you were looking at because the photography looked… the same. …
Unless you wear high-end or vintage clothes, you might feel a bit insulted looking under the lining of your suit jackets and sportcoats. While jacket in the past typically featured half or quarter linings requiring inner seams to be finished cleanly, sometimes even decoratively, many mid-tier jackets today use a full lining to hide shoddy workmanship. I …
This post from 2013 sheds a different light on the made-in-China issue explored in our last post. * * * James here is holding out my latest sportcoat to wear today. It’s the same one I’m wearing in the previous post, which a reader inquired about. It’s actually this jacket from Brooks Brothers; I’d been …
We’ve got a handful of news items to get through. Where to start? How about with the 30th anniversary of “Dead Poets Society.” The Guardian has a tribute, writing: Like Weir’s other film based in and around an exclusive private school, the more enigmatic Picnic at Hanging Rock, education is viewed as a pivotal but …
This weekend is menswear market week here in New York, and so my biannual check-in with the friends and colleagues who help keep the Ivy Style ship sailing as we head into our second decade (if you’d like fresh content on a daily basis, please consider supporting the site). Randall Hanauer, Sr. of R. Hanauer/BowTies.com …
Whenever I make my annual pilgrimage to the Bluegrass state I play “My Old Kentucky Home” as I cross the bridge over the Ohio River from Indiana. The racialized original version, not the sanitized one played for the world to hear at Derby (locals never refer to it as “The Derby,” or even “The Kentucky …
It’s menswear market week here in New York, and yesterday I met with several brands at a small trade show held at the Park Lane Hotel. Among the regular attendees are two friends and colleagues of Ivy Style, Crittenden and R. Hanauer (otherwise known as bowties.com). Both are from the South — Hanauer hails from …
Millennial Fogey columnist Daniel Greenwood just returned from another epic tour with The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, during which he zigzagged across half the country. When he has down time, he likes to seek out traditional independent menswear shops that have managed to survive. Here are his favorties so far. * * * …
Last week was market week here in New York, and by far the highlight of the MR show at Javits Center was the booth of recently relaunched heritage brand Duck Head. The owners thought very highly of their presentation, which included a truck and trailer, and they had reason to be: no one else had …
The PITA tree — that’s preppy-Ivy-trad-Americana (haven’t used that in a while) — is a century old. Its roots are deep, and now matter how hard the fickle winds of fashion blow, the tree stands strong. Without belaboring the metaphor, the PITA tree’s branches bend and twist with each new generation, and future historians of …
For this Christmas, Ivy Style founder Christian Chensvold and contributor/comment leaver Daniel C. Greenwood (“DCG”) are pleased to present a little holiday merry-making. We’d planned to just give you one tune, but ended up with four good takes, so consider this Christmas megamix the equivalent of a Joseph A. Bank sweater sale. Now the disclaimers: …
In another example of the high cost of manufacturing in the US, Hardwick has filed for bankruptcy after a federal pension protection agencey ordered the Tennesee-based comapny to replenish its underfunded retirement plan. Founded in 1880, Hardwick is the oldest privately held clothing manufacturer in America. Ivy Style has discussed the company as the maker …