On assignment for CNNGo.com, Tokyo-based Ivy-Style contributor W. David Marx reports that “Take Ivy” will be reprinted in the US in August with a price of $24.95.
If you’ve been sitting on an original waiting for the right moment to sell, that moment is probably gone.
Mark your calendar and plan to be in New York sometime in the fall of 2012, as you won’t want to miss an exhibit on The Ivy League Look currently in development at the Museum of The Fashion Institute of Technology.
I met with the curators recently and they are very excited about bringing scholarly attention to this chapter in American menswear history. There will also likely be an accompanying book published by Yale University Press, MFIT’s usual publisher and a nice tie-in considering the subject matter.
The MFIT has released the following statement:
The Museum at FIT is embarking upon the study of menswear, specifically the clothing styles worn on the campuses of America’s Ivy League universities from the early 20th century to the 1960s.
The study will also encompass the rise, fall, and subsequent revival of the Ivy look, both in the United States and abroad, that began in the early 1980s.
Deputy Director Partricia Mears and Exhibitions Manager Fred Dennis hope to turn this study into a comprehensive exhibition that will open to the public in the fall of 2012. Ideally, the exhibition will be accompanied by a publication similar in scale and scope to recent MFIT books published in conjunction with Yale University Press.
Advisors to the project will include writers Christian Chensvold and G. Bruce Boyer. Chesvold and Boyer are menswear historians who specialize in the Ivy look and other relevant sartorial styles.
Expect regular updates over the next two years as the project and dates of the exhibit and book publication become available. — CC
The designers at Gant Rugger appear to have hit the books in preparation for the Spring 2010 collection. Or at least one book: “Take Ivy,” the 1965 Japanese photo book hyped to the max on the Web over the past couple of years.
The sartorial motifs of “Take Ivy” abound in the Rugger collection, mixed and matched with colors changed. There are hooded rain slickers, shorts worn with white socks and loafers, skinny chinos with untucked oxfords, jeans with the pant legs rolled up, and canvas sneakers sans socks.
There’s also the wool and leather varsity jacket:
Danish photographer Sergei Sviatchenko has released new images from his ongoing photo project “Close Up And Private” (our previous post on him can be found here).
The photos feature a modern European take on traditional preppy looks. Included in the latest shots are such collegiate staples as khakis, wrinkled oxfords, white bucks, desert boots, boat shoes, rep ties, herringbone jackets, and, this being Spring/Summer, plenty of madras.
To see the full set of images, head over here. — CC
Longtime denizens of Tradsville surely chuckle when their perennial preferences become temporarily trendy. Then again, perhaps the current Atomic Age influence on menswear is not an ephemeral fashion blip, but a veritable Reconstruction of the American Wardrobe.
What we have here is a double-shot endorsement of the trouser cuff, which probably owes a lot to Thom Browne. The image above is from Valetmag.com, which in a post today extols the virtues of cuffs on the buzz-generating LL Bean Town & Field Pant, here paired with Bass penny loafers. (Continue)
OK, I think it’s time to accept that this Ivy-is-the-new-preppy thing may be much bigger than we expected. You know that’s the case when European artists start getting in on it.
Close Up And Private is a “photo project” (I couldn’t tell if it was a clothing line or an online magazine, and apparently it’s neither) by Danish photographer Sergei Sviatchenko. The splash page features suede tassel loafers and cuffed trousers with no break. It’s a sign of what’s to come in the photos, which are a kind of cross between modern prep and the Japanese book “Take Ivy,” as seen through the eyes of a European fashion photographer.
The shots include a veritable checklist of the Ivy-Prep canon: Baracuta jackets; knit, rep and bow ties; wrinkled oxford-cloth buttondowns; club collars; university-stripe shirts; cardigans; duffle coats; Fair Isle sweaters; argyle socks; cable-knit crewnecks; desert boots; penny loafers; longwings; engine-turned buckles; madras and herringbone.
Plus a bunch of weird Euro stuff.
I think the expression on the guy below says it all. We’re a bit bewildered, too. — CC
Addendum: Nice shout-out from Valet. Thanks, guys. (Continue)
I think this how-to video from GQ is zeitgeisty enough to qualify for our Ivy Trendwatch news beat. I spied it the other day on the blog Unabashedly Prep and thought it worth presenting here.
The video is from a series of 30 episodes called GQ Rules that purport how to teach you to be a “well dressed rebel” in 30 days. Yes, we realize there’s a logic problem in the notion that you can become a rebel by following rules, but skip that for now.
The interview subject is Sid Mashburn, owner of an eponymous men’s store in Atlanta. His look is by no means curriculum Ivy, but that’s not the point. The positive sign is that here’s a guy with a tailored shirt and an overall up-to-date look, who’s preaching the virtues of the natural shoulder and narrow, flat-front trousers with no break. And the cultural references in the video aren’t to ’80s preppy, but to the Ivy heyday of JFK and Miles Davis.
Like the rules/rebel conundrum, forget the fact Mashburn’s jackets are Italian and cost $3,200 and just roll with it. This is the kind of thing that can only lead to greater natural-shouldered variety for the rest of us. — CC
As a follow-up to our recent post “Ivy is the New Preppy,” above is an image from a Ralph Lauren promo email sent out a few days ago, with updated terminology.
A guy I play tennis with said his horse was used in an RL photo shoot done in Bodega Bay, setting for Hitchcock’s “The Birds” and home to Will of A Suitable Wardrobe. This must be the horse here:
Also on the mainstream media Ivy trendwatch is this article by The Toronto Star. Highlights include the observations “The Ivy League Look is cool,” “Harvard, the super-elite WASPy university in Boston,” “The look is very elegant, glamorous, and Old Money…. [but] you can achieve it at any price point,” and “Preppy might automatically mean clean-cut but this is a grungier preppy.” Not exactly “fidèle à l’esprit Ivy League.” — CC
Addendum: Another Canadian paper, this time the Vancouver Sun, says “The Ivy League Look is going to be huge.” Unfortunately, this remark was made in reference to the costumes on “Gossip Girl.”
If you keep an eye on our Ephemera column of news links, you’ve no doubt sensed there’s something zeitgeisty going on. The overall preppy trend in fashion has been around for several years now, reaching the point this summer where patch-madras shorts became available at retailers like Target and JC Penney.
Likewise, star bloggers like Hollister Hovey and A Continuous Lean have helped fuel a resurgent interest in vintage Americana, and the ’60s photo book “Take Ivy” has been covered by the New York Times and recreated by hy(r) collective. All this has added a piquant soupcon of fun to blogging here at Ivy-Style, beyond the excuse to pair words together like “piquant” and “soupcon.”
But as of today I think we can officially say there’s an Ivy League Look micro-trend afoot, as Harvard University has announced a new fashion collection called Harvard Yard that will “channel the simple all-American style of Harvard men back in the ’50s and ’60s.”
WWD Men’s, which has replaced DNR as the menswear industry’s bible, requires registration to read its articles, but the teaser of its Harvard Yard report runs:
American prep is having a moment as increasing numbers of style-conscious men sport sockless loafers, stiff oxford cloth shirts, tapered khakis and Ray-Ban Wayfarers like it’s 1959.
There’s more coverage of the Harvard Yard line by Black Book and New York Magazine. Also, the trend isn’t just brewing in menswear, as this fall Bobbi Brown introduces The Ivy League Collection for women.
While “Ivy League” may just be the fashion industry’s new term for “preppy,” the fount of inspiration is definitely coming more from the ’50s and ’60s than the ’80s.
People get understandably grumpy when their own style gets co-opted by the fashion industry. But if there is a resurgence of the Ivy League Look, perhaps it will bring about a kind of reclaiming of our national style in the realm of tailored clothing, where more natural shoulder and sack-front options are needed, and where the hooked vent could serve as a national symbol, like the bald eagle.
Italy and England produce fine clothes, but Americans shouldn’t feel that Europe has the last word in how to wear a suit and tie. As we’ve chronicled in the photos gathered in our Historic Images category, there was a time when the American male in the limelight of international business and politics stood out from his foreign peers instead of blending into the anonymity of what’s considered global good taste.
And if an Ivy trend produces truly good clothes and not just high-priced fashion novelty (as the Harvard Yard collection, whose entry-level price point is $165, unfortunately suggests; then again, it’s not a cheap school), then we can all enjoy a greater variety of pickings, at least for a little while. — CHRISTIAN CHENSVOLD