When Marks & Spencer installed elevators in Brooks Brothers’ Madison Avenue flagship, they only went down. Widely acknowledged for monumental mismanaging Brooks, hastening a decline in quality and the isolation of lifelong customers, the UK apparel firm Marks & Spencer eventually sold Brooks Brothers in 2001 after 13 years and hundreds of millions in losses. This …
I recently discovered this article about J. Press buried in the files on my computer. Richard Press sent it to me so long ago he doesn’t even remember it. He says he believes it’s from 1987 and a magazine called Success. Consider it successfully resurrected. — CC
As this native Californian has learned after a decade on the East Coast, this is about the time of year when you start getting stir crazy for spring. So here’s a piece to get you even more in the mood. It’s a little shortie I did for the Rugby Ralph Lauren blog back in 2009, …
G. Bruce Boyer gave Ivy Style permission to digitize this chapter from his 1985 book “Elegance.” It is based on an article that originally appeared in the May 1981 issue of Town & Country. Brooks Brothers By G. Bruce Boyer When it phased out its custom tailoring department, the story was carried on the front …
It is said that the winners get to write the history books. One of the now-official effects of the social upheaval of the 1960s was that young people broke down the oppressive conformity of society, including rigid and unimaginative clothes. The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (played by Gregory Peck, above, in the film of …
What were Ivy Leaguers wearing in the fall of 1953? According to Gentry magazine, anything in tawny black. In a fashion spread entitled “Fashions Cum Laude for the Undergraduate,” the uber-elitist magazine (every issue included fabric swatches, and no models were ever used, only genuine gentries) says tawny black is the hot new color. But mixed …
Traditional Ivy style is rarely exhibited by the most visible Ivy League graduates: politicians. For instance, George W. Bush (Yale, Harvard) and Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard) are never seen wearing sack suits, button down collars, or regimental striped ties. So when and why did establishment Ivy Leaguers abandon the Ivy look? “Goodbye to Wing Tips,” …
During the heyday of the Ivy League Look, Clipper Craft was a brand that explicitly touted its Ivy authenticity in advertorials placed in mainstream magazines. In 2009 a short thread was started at the Ask Andy Trad Forum in which a member dug up some info on the origins of the brand, which was founded in …
Our last post centered around how the ’80s preppy trend was covered in regional newspapers. Now we look at how it was viewed by professional gag-writers. The runaway success of “The Official Preppy Handbook” gave birth to a cottage industry of parodies and knock-offs, including “The Original Preppy Joke Book.” Most of the jokes are …
Like this post and want more content like it, more often? Help Ivy Style reach its goal of 1,000 true fans * * * Everything you always wanted to know about prep but were too stuck-up to ask By Mike Steere The Toledo Blade August 27, 1980 For lack of a better word, we’ll …
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 …
Today there’s multiple news in the world of pink, and so we’re revisiting — and reworking — this post that originally ran in 2009. Back then we examined a LIFE Magazine piece from 1955, when the Ivy heyday was just getting started, that all but credited Brooks Brothers with inventing the color pink — at …
Our last post looked at a Main Street clothier during the Ivy heyday. Today we revisit an historic piece on the brand that started it all, and spread its look from Madison Avenue to Main Streets across the US. This document, originally posted in summer of 2013, helped cement 1954 as the starting date of …
Gentlemen, I just found out that photos and video of Richard Press’ talk at J. Press last week have been delayed and it will be a couple more weeks until they’re ready. So in the meantime, let’s do one more piece from Princeton before we give the Tigers a break. Apparently 1964 was a watershed …
Time is a funny thing. It’s a lot easier to look backward than forward. Has something to do with the past being real — having actually happened — while the future is indeterminate and isn’t real until it becomes the present. Brooks Brothers is celebrating its bicentennial this year. It’s incredible, but not impossible, to …
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 …
In 1969, when the Ivy League was shedding Weejuns and growing sideburns at an alarming rate, three students — Andrew Tobias, Arnold Bortz and Caspar Weinberg — published “The Ivy League Guidebook.” Exactly as its title would suggest, the book is aimed at incoming freshman and devotes a chapter to each school, plus general sections …
The March, 1991 M Magazine article — of which scans are presented below after the jump (click “Continue”) — is our second article on Brooks Brothers during the Marks & Spencer era. Along with the previous one from Forbes, the article is part of a cache I collected while doing a paper for a Business …
This weekend we presented some great photos of composer Burt Bacharach. This led some readers to point out the other Bert Bacharach, which Ivy Style covered in this post from 2013. At the time, it never occurred to me that two men with the same name — but spelled differently — could be related, but …