Deja Vu All Over Again
First your Lands’ End catalog arrives in your mailbox, and the following day the new issue of Cape Cod. Yes, the gods are watching us. And Neptune, god of the sea, is LHAO.
Articles by Christian
Art Imitating Life: Lands’ End’s Uncredited JFK Tribute
Yesterday I pulled from my mailbox a folded catalog. When I opened it up, I recognized the image on the Lands’ End catalog instantly. Search “JFK sailing” on Google and the second image that comes up is this: As you can see, just about everything in the cover painting is a copy of the famous …
From Crewneck Sweater To White Tie: JFK At The Maryland Hunt Cup, 1940
Last week Baltimore Magazine posted a video clip of John F. Kennedy during his years as a Harvard student. It’s 1940, the US is about to enter the war, and Kennedy will soon leave Cambridge for the Solomon Islands. This is footage from the twilight of the golden age of upper-class collegiate life, the era …
The Initiation
Pictured is freshman William Song keeping the Ivy Look alive and well at Harvard. He donned this festive outfit for what might be considered the rather serious matter of initiation into the Harvard Crimson Business Board. Wearing a vintage Brooks Brothers blazer, Song says he stopped by The Andover Shop on the same day as …
This Is Pennsylvania, 1957
Here’s a post that originally ran in the summer of 2012, and which makes for a perfect follow-up to yesterday’s post on a video from the University of Pennsylvania made in 1967. This is another school promo film, but from precisely a decade earlier. * * * Recently I ran across a video for Penn …
Dateline 1967: One Day At The University Of Pennsylvania
Today is Hey Day at the University of Pennsylvania. The tradition, now in its 101st year, involves juniors rising to senior status by marching in similar outfits, which today consists of “fake straw hats, red t-shirts, and canes.” While Penn students enjoy this special day, the rest of us can enjoy this video of just …
Dartmouth, 1964
Three more years until shaggy hair, sideburns, and possibly new clothes. Or would that be old clothes? — CC
Secrets of Sprezzatura: How to Wear a Crewneck
This post, originally from 2010, is being reposted again (it returned to the front page last October) as a follow-up to the recent shot of Bernie Sanders as a college student. While the bottom photo appears to be a boatneck sweater, the others all appear to be crewnecks worn high in the front on purpose. …
Who’s This?
Who’s this public persona during his college days, wearing his crewneck sweater high in the front, as we’ve analyzed before. Shield your eyes from the comments below while you formulate your guess. I’m sure someone’s seen this image before. — CC
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 …
Dateline ’67: Things Are Getting Hairy
A reader submitted the fascinating graphic above that supports the assertion around here that the 1967/68 academic school year marks the rapid fall of the Ivy League Look. The chart shows not the wearing of buttondowns and penny loafers, but the beginning of a sudden spike in facial hair, even mere sideburns. The spike trends …
The Court Demands To See Vintage Ivy Ads As Evidence
Recently we posted about a company called Worsted-Tex and how it used the term “Ivy League” to sell mass-market clothing as soon as the heyday of the Ivy League Look took off. In 1960 the company began filing lawsuits against other brands that were using variations of the term “Ivy” in their products. In a …
Sikh And Ye Shall Find: The Indo-Prep Style of Gagan Singh
Lisa Birnbach’s “True Prep” raised plenty of Old-Guard eyebrows with its inclusiveness. Whereas 1980’s “The Official Preppy Handbook” was WASPy to the core, the sequel opens the club to black, Asian, gay and Muslim preps as Birnbach declares “It’s a whole new old world.” As an example that those flying the preppy flag in 21st …
Prince Among Preps: Aga Khan At Harvard
For yesterday’s Easter post I shared the collection of top hat images that fills my apartment, one of which is a rakish photo of Aly Khan, an international playboy who married actress Rita Hayworth. His son, known as Prince Karim, the fourth Aga Khan, was featured in one of Ivy Style’s earliest posts, which we …
View From The Top
In the late ’90s I discovered the surprisingly large vintage costume-ball scene in the San Francisco Bay Area, where about three separate groups put on 19th-century-themed events with live music for waltzes, polkas, and English country dances. There was a smaller scene in LA (in Pasadena, naturally), but nothing like it here in New York. …
National Library Week: A Bookworm In Bit Loafers And Ball Cap
This week was National Library Week. Yep, there’s a day — or in this case a week — for just about everything. I asked the college men in our Facebook group to submit a photo of them hitting the books, and one man rose to the challenge. Pictured is Ben Schmidt either studying for class …
Harvard Divinity School by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1955
On this Good Friday we look at shots taken for LIFE Magazine in 1955 by renowned photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. — CC
The Ivy Style Community Guide To Keeping Your White Shirts Clean
Recently on the Ivy Style Facebook page, an important question was posed to the members: how do you keep your white shirts looking white, especially around the collar? The post was quickly inundated with various pieces of advice, which ranged from home remedies to professional laundering. The great, and varying, advice from that post has …
Well Groomed Conformity
In 1947, a letter from the Student Tailor Shop gave official notice to Princeton’s incoming class of ’51 that the university required its own wardrobe. “The style of clothing worn around the campus,” it read, “is different from that sold in metropolitan centers and home town stores.” From four-button suits and detachable-collar shirts in the …