Biltmore Clothes has offered good taste since 1912. The jacket above is a perfect example. Actually, perhaps the company’s taste was questionable: It doesn’t seem to be in business anymore.
Pity, as this is a fine jacket to wear with black tie on New Year’s Eve in a place like Palm Beach.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
I don’t think ‘taste’ divorced from socio-psychological considerations and the effect of clothing on the wearer and those with whom he interacts can really exist. Which in turn negates the ‘it’s only clothes’ mantra.
This jacket has been on ebay for months, listing and relisting.
Yeah… there is a pretty good reason for that, it’s fucking horrid.
No one in England would understand it.
It’s not part of your culture.
It’s Ivy.
“No one in England would understand it”.
Sensible Brits.
Manufactured for Pinky Lee?
http://jewishcurrents.org/april-3-pinky-lee-4540
Evidently, Pinky Lee was the “King” of GTH look.
That’s some awesome go to hellage!!!
@ Chelsea.
“Only clothes”: Could there have been anything more transparently provocative to say when discussing clothing? Yet still it would seem to have the power to provoke. Don’t believe the hype!
@ Mark Miwords
At last someone has got on topic.So much better than swearing and stating the obvious. However, both the expletive and the tongue- in -cheek (or so it seems) comment regarding culture, clearly illustrate that clothing is a lot more than the silhouette, or fabric or color palette and similar choices. Whether or not the wearer and beholder of apparel are conscious of the fact each choice and combination of choices says something — even if that something is an understatement. It’s a shame that one needs to belabor such an elementary truth, but when dealing with a cartload of nose-picking primates thiswould appear to be unfortunately required.
@ Chelsea.
I couldn’t agree more! That one man’s trad can be another man’s mod (one man’s meat, another man’s poison) seems obvious. Slyly, the originator of “just clothes’ never gives a personal take on this, unless I’ve missed something (and I do tend to tune out). Why? To provoke conversation just for conversation’s sake? Maybe the resultant conversation can provide illumination, but the originator of it certainly does not!
Whatever, it is still a very basic level of conversation. Thank you.
“No one in England would understand it.”
I disagree. We have more than our fair share of halfwitted dandy’s too.
Ah, but the jacket above is not the garb of a half-witted fop, but an expression of sartorial bonhommie for the appreciation of a certain in-crowd, a crowd native to American soil.
The good thing about being outside of that in-crowd is that you don’t have to associate with the sort of people who would wear that jacket.
Good luck to you and your crowd.
I look to Ivy Style to inform and entertain and that jacket is certainly entertaining!
This conversation strangely makes me want this jacket more and more.
Don’t like.
Black trim makes it useless except as a dinner jacket. Notch lapel makes it a non-dinner jacket, even if you were of the place and time and milieu where people thought a patch madras dinner jacket was cool.
^ Looks better as blue, though still not crazy about the jacket. Madras looks fantastic up close.
The plaid jacket looks remarkably similar to the coat Rodney Dangerfield wore in the dinner scene in “Caddyshack”. Missus Smails asks “Who is that disgusting man?”
There are several reasons why this is not “Ivy”… but some Ivyists/Preppies may like it though. Ivy League Style does come from Brooks Brothers. They were the first company to make a suit that wasn’t bespoke but manufactured. Their number one suit was a sack suit – undarted, 3 buttons, patch and flap pockets, flat fronted cuffed trousers… we all know that. That very particular style was the style that led into “Ivy League style”… That jacket – plaid or not – horribly looking or not – has lapels that are too wide, it has two buttons, and it has darts. Not too much of “ivy League” there… The cut reminds much more of the 70s… and it is awful looking. But that’s another story. I think not only the Brits don’t understand it. No one that knows about Ivy style can understand why this awful blazer should be “Ivy League” style. It would be like telling a German Jeans are traditional clothing, too. They are not, as we all know…
De gustibus non est disputandum: there is no disputing about taste.
Quite the contrary!
How right you are, Pinpoint!
That’s why we speak of “good taste” and “bad taste”.
Although I don’t own a madras jacket, patched or otherwise, this one with the black sections is unique and viewers are warned, it just might cause eye damage.
I don’t think that a all American ivy guy would dress this monstrosity before 70s.