April In Paris

For your Friday we offer this shot of one of your fellow Ivy enthusiasts from around the globe. Pictured here is Rene at the Eiffel Tower in the city he calls home. Along with his Ivy Style Club Tie, he’s wearing what I assume is a slack jacket from Paris-based J. Keydge.

Writes Rene:

I must be one of the few French Ivy-Style lovers. Even if the French trad style (BCBG, for “bon chic bon genre”) is still very much alive in Paris and in the rest of France. Please let me also express my pleasure to follow your great blog nearly every day. I reckon that only few French follow Ivy Style but my daily procedure to follow you has really become familiar to me. Great stuff, great stories, and often crazy discussions. Merci pour ca.

As for the Ivy Style Club Tie, we sold out two production runs but you’ll notice there’s still a banner in the right column. Click on it and send an email to get on a waiting list, and if the list gets long enough we can do another run. In the meantime, partner MKG and I are about to unveil our second Ivy Style project, so stay tuned.

And bon week-end, as they say in France. — CC

20 Comments on "April In Paris"

  1. Le jaquette is positively to mourire from. Vive la France Ivy.

  2. Vive la Ivy!

  3. Charlottesville | April 21, 2017 at 3:50 pm |

    Wonderful. Merci Rene. In the 1990s, my wife and I spent quite a bit of time in Paris, where we had friends at the time, and fell in love with French style. If Keydge was around then, I missed it, but I bought 2 very BCBG sport coats from Façonnable. They are undarted, which was unusual in France in those days, and have a 3/2 closure and fairly natural shoulder (I think more so than the Canadian-made J. Press coat I am wearing today). The button stance is a bit lower than standard Ivy and they have double vents which distances them further from the heyday norm. However, I still enjoy wearing them very much.

  4. ç’est si bon.

  5. Mitchell S. | April 21, 2017 at 5:05 pm |

    Tres elegant! Rene is dressed like Matt Damon from The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tan corduroy is very American. He probably gets mistaken for an American all the time. Stereotypical Frenchmen wear black all the time and always have a cigarette dangling from their mouths.

  6. Merci Rene! Your frames fit spot on!!!

  7. françois ferdinand | April 22, 2017 at 3:51 am |

    you’re “cool & chic”

  8. René Lebenthal | April 22, 2017 at 9:52 am |

    @rvpress59 I feel honored by your comment, Richard, merci pour votre clin d’oeil
    @charlottesville Faconnable used to be the french Ralph Lauren…there is merely nothing left of it by today. I owned a whole dressingroom made by Faconnable in the 90’s
    @mitchell S. Thanks for comparing me to Matt Damon in the talented Mr. Ripley, j’aime beaucoup this movie and the way he dresses in it!
    @makaga @GS @M Arthur merci pour vos beaux compliments
    Et merci. @ Francois Ferdinand pour ton compliment aussi.
    Francois is btw the founder of jkeydge, which is in fact, as Christian belives the jacket I sport with my ivy tie!
    Bon WE à tous, we elect our president (fist tour) this WE… Let’s see what’ll happen
    René

  9. Alvin-Dennis | April 22, 2017 at 11:15 am |

    Rene – I like your eyeglasses. What brand/type are they? Thanks!

  10. Grey Flannels | April 22, 2017 at 12:17 pm |

    René,

    I too would be very pleased to learn the brand and model of your eyeglass frames.

  11. René Lebenthal | April 22, 2017 at 1:43 pm |

    @Alvin-Dennis @Grey Flannels.. My glasses are a german brand called
    “Lunor”, A5 model 226 color 15… Great handmade glasses you can check them out
    at their website lunor.com
    They are handmade and of extremely good quality (german engineering)

  12. Alvin-Dennis | April 22, 2017 at 4:17 pm |

    Merci!

  13. CC:
    Hoping the project you mention above with MKG, is the retro style/fit pants you were considering a while back.
    Now that we be sweet!
    Jim

  14. Grey Flannels | April 23, 2017 at 9:05 am |

    Monsieur Lebenthal,
    Je vous remercie beaucoup.

  15. “Mitchell S. | April 21, 2017 at 5:05 pm |

    Tres elegant! Rene is dressed like Matt Damon from The Talented Mr. Ripley. Tan corduroy is very American. He probably gets mistaken for an American all the time. Stereotypical Frenchmen wear black all the time and always have a cigarette dangling from their mouths.”

    Il may get mistaken pour une well dressed American, posiblemente. Mais en moi experience many US visitors over 35 ans en Paris (ou en otres countries Europeans) aujourd’hui appear to wear the “American Abroad” uniform, viz. un casquette de baseball, windcheater, chinos, socks blanc et trainers ‘New Balance’. Not all of them dress this way of course, but enough.

    Au contraire, mais mon aimee Rene looks tres chic et Francais en his cord du Roi jacket et son spectacles de shell de tortoise. Tray bong, Monsieur, tray bong!

    Et tous le mode savez que un Frenchman sterotypiqe dresses avec un shirt stripey avec un beret, un string de oignon around son neck, et fumez le Gauloises while cycling en un bicycle tres old. Why dans mon part de paris c’est tous le rage!

  16. René Lebenthal | April 24, 2017 at 6:34 am |

    Thank you @General Reader for your nice comment…..made me smile a lot.
    Mais naturellement je ne suis pas habillé comme un francais “moyen”.
    The standard “chich French” would more be dressed like Emmanuel Macron…and not like a trad.
    But there are still many trads (BCBG’s) left, in some arrondissements of Paris and of course in the western parts of the country, like the “Vendée” or in Bordeaux for example.
    We’ve lost Faconnable which has become not trad at all…..unfortunately….there are still some brands left like JKeydge, Breuer, Charvet, Cremieux, Paraboot, and the very nice Boulevard Saint Germain RL shop……

  17. Blue Pinpoint | April 24, 2017 at 1:18 pm |

    Rene’s Lunor frames seems to be quite difficult to find in the U.S..
    Perhaps somebody could recommend a more readily available similar or identical model produced by another maker.

  18. Dear René, may I add Eden Park (www.eden-park.fr) to your list of interesting French brands? I would particularly recommend their rugby shirts. Best regards to you all from Germany.

    • René Lebenthal | April 28, 2017 at 4:02 am |

      Guten Morgen Murat,
      ja, Eden Park is partly also a brand you could mention. But their real heritage is Rugby…as you indicate.
      There were even more, Cyrillus for example which used to be “THE” BCBG brand in France. It has also lost a lot of its Trad character in the past years….

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