Recently we’ve examined the “bro,” who represents a kind of shadow figure of the contemporary young trad, sharing some of the trad’s qualities, but in a negative way. So what was the shadow figure of the ’80s preppy? Why, the gone-but-not-entirely-forgotten yuppie. Contributing writer Matthew Benz delves in. Like this post and want more content …
Over the years of working the trade shows and covering menswear, I can’t tell you how many lawyers I’ve run into who started an accessories collection, often neckties. Arguing the case for the anti-tie side of things, however, is a California litigator-cum-mayor who made news last week for a proposal that his town of Lancaster …
When I was 18, I decided I wanted to be a renaissance man. It was the late ’80s, and I must have learned the term from the magazines GQ or M, The Civilized Man. It wasn’t exactly a concept knocked about in my particular California suburb, nor passed down from my father. I was already …
Like this post and want more content like it, more often? Help Ivy Style reach its goal of 1,000 true fans. * * * I already had this post in mind, and so when, in our previous dispatch on Tab Hunter, Italian comment-leaver and expert in midcentury Americana, Carmelo, invoked the name Troy Donahue, it …
Actor Tab Hunter died yesterday at the age of 86, prompting a revisit of this 2016 post, updated with new images. Like this post and want more content, more often? Help Ivy Style reach its goal of 1,000 true fans. * * * Tab Hunter was a clean-cut, all-American ’50s dreamboat heartthrob. But when …
This post from last spring snagged a mention in the comments section on yesterday’s post about the launch of the new RL collection Boathouse, and so we pay it a revisit. Enjoy this and want more content more often? Help Ivy Style reach its goal of 1,000 true fans. * * * After a mild …
While fruitlessly searching for no-show socks at the downtown Boston Macy’s Monday, I stepped into a time portal. Or at least I felt that I had. There, hanging from a rack in the store’s little Polo Ralph Lauren section, was a genuine article from Rugby Ralph Lauren. And another beside it, and another beside that… Could …
A decade ago, in 2008, I founded Ivy-Style.com. A couple of years later, I announced the 2.0 version, live from New York. And now on this Independence Day 2018 — 1,800 posts and 50,000 comments later — I’d like to announce the next stage of the site, Ivy Style 3.0. We have reached a crossroads, and …
Last week an interesting discussion broke out on Ivy Style’s Facebook group. What do your fellow trads eat, and how do they stay fit? It’s not all squash and gin-and-tonics. Here’s what they do. Chime in and let us know what works for you. * * * Play football/soccer 3-4 times a week and watch …
Collective Wisdom is our new series in which I cleverly redirect questions that land in my inbox to you, the illustrious commentariat, because someone seeking advice should have access to more opinions than just mine. TJ writes: I’m taking the family to Paris in a week. I really wanted to pack clothes that were neutral …
A few weeks ago I received an email from a Bermuda-based clothing brand, and, in light of our current island-based miniseries, now is the perfect opportunity to address it. It’s also a follow-up to my essay on the “bro,” which I thought was posted not so many months ago, but in fact dates from last …
Today loyal reader BC emailed me to say he’d just returned from Bermuda and rushed to check Ivy Style to see what he’d missed. Coincidentally, our most recent post was on what to pack for a trip to Bermuda — if you were a wealthy Princeton man in 1949, that is. So here are a …
Our man in Princeton is semi-officially Julian B. Dean, an Australian doing graduate work there who’s fascinated by the history of the Ivy League Look. This guy is so dedicated he’ll take the train in for J. Press events and then train back home in the wee small hours. Dean will be presenting a number …
Random photo discovered on Pinterest. Checked sportcoat, club tie, and blue buttondown with delightful roll.
Whenever we put up a post on the bright colors and crazy patterns of what is known colloquially, or rather Internetically, as go-to-hell, the chorus of curmudgeons always chimes in with cantakerous remarks about how it’s all mere kids’ stuff. There’s no changing the minds of intractable fellows such as this, but for those of …
Our last post was about color, its charming effect on others and how that can open up new possibilities in your own life. And so we follow it up with a man who regularly wore bright colors and who also charmed millions, the late, great Fred Rogers. Last year Ivy-Style contributor Andy Owen wrote a …
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with color. You could say there are two archetypal 19th century dandies dueling in my closet: George “Beau” Brummell, the so-called father of modern costume, advocates in favor of a simple palette and elegant restraint, while on the other side is Count Alfred d’Orsay, the “butterfly dandy,” who was …
England is just kicking off its first game in the World Cup, and so here’s a bit of belated Blighty Ivy news. In the wake of the new documentary about UK Ivy pioneer John Simons, last month The Guardian ran a lengthy profile, in which the soon-to-be 79-year-old talks about the “magical and distant” place …
You don’t have to be a staunch supporter of our president to be capable of diagnosing Trump Derangement Syndrome. In fact, a couple of tolerant, level-headed guys were talking about it just the other day. And so today a story caught my eye that immediately made it roll. “I didn’t buy my dad a tie …