Search Results for deluca

Window Shopping At Langrock

Window shopping is a lot like web surfing: you browse, you gander, you move on. I surfed by The Suit Room the other day; that’s the site maintained by former Ivy Style contributor and Newton Street Vintage proprietor Zach DeLuca. He had some nice vintage shots of Langrock, the legendary campus shop at Princeton, which


Chens On HuffPo: Of X-Rays And Jacket Linings

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


Plaid Scientist: Dissecting Vintage Madras

One of the advantages to collecting vintage madras is that it provides the opportunity to compare the idiosyncrasies of this unique fabric. Just as no two bolts of madras are completely alike, no two madras jackets are alike. As a counterpoint to the in-depth historical analysis of Christopher Sharp and the poignant madras-heyday memoirs of


A Tale Of Two Suits: Brooks in the ’50s & ’60s

One of the best things about my job is that every so often I come across a piece so good that I have to take a moment to admire the finer points of hand-tailoring that went into it.  In this instance, I found not one but two such pieces, both from Brooks Brothers, both with


Ground Control To Major Thom

Ivy Style revisits this piece we did on Thom Browne in 2008. * * * Lately it seemed like Browne had receded into the confines of his tailor-shop-cum-laboratory, content to make his line in peace. But now, thanks to the December issue of GQ, in which Browne is named Designer of the Year, the hullabaloo


Disgrace Under Pressure: Alger Hiss at Princeton

In 1954, after serving 44 months of a 10-year sentence, convicted perjurer and alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss set out to exonerate himself. Accusations against Hiss first surfaced in 1948, when Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had acted as a courier for an underground Communist network operating in Washington


Poetic Injustice

Before his untimely death, few men of letters embodied the jazz-fueled cool of midcentury New York better than poet Frank O’Hara. The Whitman of the modern urban landscape, O’Hara captured the essence of the city, its multitudes, and its motions of constant speed punctuated with moments of stillness. Heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism and jazz, his


Somewhere in Time: Back to the Button-Down

The currents of change move slowly in menswear; there is always time, as TS Eliot put it, “to murder and create.” Adherence to this adage may result in innovation, but more often than not the target of “murder” and the object of creation are one and the same. In short, menswear does away with certain


The Hook Vent, Trademark of the Ivy League Look

One of the most salient characteristics of the Ivy League Look is the hook vent on suits and sportcoats. Though primarily associated with J. Press — where it became a brand signature along with the combed Shetland sweater and the button-flap oxford shirt — the hook vent was also a common feature on jackets from


Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. on Preppies

Mentioned recently in the post “Searching For The P In WASP,” this 1979 cover story on preppies is one of the most important historical documents on Ivy Style. It’s situated between the end of the heyday of the Ivy League Look and the preppy trend of the 1980s. It was first posted here in 2009


Raccoon Season

Historically, Ivy style has always championed durability and functionality. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of outerwear, where such weathered classics as the toggle coat and balmacaan remain viable and timeless. However, at certain vivacious moments in the style’s history, discerning collegiate sartorialists have exchanged the reliable for the resplendent, the austere for


Gentrified Campus: The J. Press 4/3

Our confrere Matthew Jacobsen of OldMagazineArticles.com recently supplied us with a vintage article from the pages of Gentry Magazine (see “The Gentrified Campus.”) Now he follows up with another one, this time from Gentry’s Autumn 1952 issue, that provides an eye-opening glimpse into how collegiate attire was presented to young men at the time. As


A Matter of Taste

De gustibus non disputatum est. In English we know this apothegm as “There’s no accounting for taste.” Much of what is discussed on menswear forums and blogs comes down to personal taste. To illustrate the point, we asked a number of style writers, bloggers and forum posters to name their sartorial pet peeve. One man


From The Corners Of The Empire

In our last post we announced the annexing of a new Manhattan restaurant into the Ralph Lauren empire. Here are a few more happenings from other corners of the RL world.


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Money In The Bank: Men’s Wearhouse To Buy JAB For $1.8 Billion

Yesterday a deal between Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A Bank was reached. No doubt JAB sealed it with a “buy one company, get three free!” kind of deal. There was a time when Jos. A Bank, which was often called a poor-man’s Brooks Brothers, sold American-made traditional staples such as dark herringbone suits, flannel blazers,


Meet The Number Two Guy

Zachary DeLuca was one of Ivy Style’s first contributors, and he recently rejoined us in the more formal role of assistant editor, where he’ll be writing regularly, helping plan content, and fixing typos (though how good he’ll be at that, when he can’t even remember to button his own collar, remains to be seen). Zach


A Very Good Year: Hillflint’s Ivy League Class Sweaters

Ed Heald (Dartmouth ’68) may have had to sweat through soccer tryouts to earn the famous sweater that bore the date of his graduation and appears twice in the pages of “Take Ivy,” but now, thanks to a team of entrepreneurial young Ivy Leaguers, a vintage-inspired collegiate sweater can be had with only the exertion


Brooks & Hooks: The Cambridge Model Updated Sack Jacket

Update: I’ve just returned from Brooks, where I was able to try on and measure a Cambridge jacket. A 40 long measures 30.5 inches from the bottom of collar; industry standard is 32, so a Cambridge long is actually shorter than a regular in other models. I liked the shoulders. The lapels are very narrow:


The Old Money Look: Vintage Ivy Market Heats Up

For those who like your Ivy kosher and don’t mind the smell of moth balls, check out vintage dealer HabuchiHuckaby on eBay. According to his seller profile: I am very fortunate to have an in with some of the Midwest’s best dressed, and sadly fleeting, old-timers. These were the guys who used to grace the