After many years and countless thousands of comments, the most compulsive poster in the history of Ivy on the web, the infamous English troll known as “Russell Street” (among many other online identities), has apparently reached a dead end.

Claiming to more or less control the entire Internet as part of a grand scheme, the troll in question has lost dictatorship over the web forum known as Talk Ivy, finally inspiring an insurrection. As is the case in the absence of a dictator, warring factions have emerged.

If you catch the computer monitor you’re presently seated in front of in the right light, you’ll notice a reflection of yourself. The web is merely a mirror of its users, who can use it for good or ill, depending on their impulses. — c C m

We kick off a series of Gatsby posts with a piece I did for Ralph Lauren Magazine on Tommy Hitchcock, who served Fitzgerald as the model for Tom Buchanan.

My primary text for the article was the lone Hitchcock biography by Nelson Aldrich, Jr., who, in addition to writing the book “Old Money,” penned the 1979 Atlantic Monthly cover story on preppies we presented here a few years ago.

Hitchcock was rich, handsome, heroic and the world’s greatest polo player:

Back at home and lauded a war hero, Hitchcock enrolled at Harvard and spent time at Oxford before devoting himself to polo. With his home fields at the Meadow Brook Club in Westbury, he was the right man at the right time, dominating his era as Bill Tilden did in tennis and Bobby Jones did in golf. “Dressed for polo in shining boots and white breeches,” [writes Sarah Ballard in Sports Illustrated], “with a camel hair coat thrown over his muscular shoulders, Hitchcock appeared clothed where other men looked costumed.”

Head over here for the full story on the real American hero who, transformed in the imagination of F. Scott Fitzgerald, became a bigoted, selfish jerk. — CHRISTIAN CHENSVOLD

Richard Press has shared his thoughts with Finnish website Keikari.com. To learn more about our featured columnist and this great scion of Ivy royalty, head over here. — CC

,

Today Mr. Porter posted a video featuring 27-year-old musician Nick Waterhouse, who talks about his love of oxford shirts and interest in Japanese Ivy in a fantastic midcentury house. — CC

Earlier this month the Dallas Morning News did a style tribute to JFK. There’s plenty to nitpick in the story, including the awkwardly oxymoronic line that Kennedy’s style influence is “arguably eternal,” but there were a few parts I thought interesting.

First off is this 1958 quote referring to “Brooks Brothers couture”:

“This night, Jack Kennedy — the young Eastern millionaire with the Harvard accent, the Brooks Brothers couture and the egghead ideas — had them standing on their chairs, whistling and shouting.” — Cabell Phillips, The New York Times, July 13, 1958

Later, the author paints this terse picture of Kennedy’s off-duty style:

 Off-duty, Kennedy’s style was as refreshing. His upper-class, Ivy League life before Washington meant growing up wearing that echelon’s staples: tweed sports coats, Shetland wool crew neck sweaters, brightly colored polo shirts, khakis and loafers.

Then we get this quote:

“He never looked shabby. It was his culture to dress better than he had to.”

 But the next part is most interesting as it reflects Main Street clothiers’ appropriating of the Ivy League Look during the heyday:

Said Derrill Osborn, the former vice president of men’s tailored clothing for Neiman Marcus: “Being a student of the Ivy League period, which took hold during John Kennedy’s three years as president, I can attest [it] was a great moment in clothes.”

“We copied him,” said Osborn, then a menswear buyer in New York for Saks Fifth Avenue stores. “I sold Ivy League by the carloads. It was really about the adoration the youth had with Kennedy and the Beatles. It was the early ’60s.”

Saks had long catered to the student population in college towns, but surely never sold Ivy by the carloads except during the heyday, which, like JFK’s Camelot, was fleeting. — CC

I am currently working on a book about the importation of Ivy League fashion into Japan in the 1960s, and as part of the research I sat down with Toshiyuki Kurosu (pictured above second from left) in February at the Kamakura Shirts office in Tokyo.

Kurosu is legendary in Japan as one of the very first people to ever discover and wear Ivy League clothing. After joining brand VAN in 1961 at age 24, he convinced his boss Ishizu Kensuke to re-focus the whole company on Ivy style, a risky move that eventually brought the company incredible success, fame, and fortune. And as both a VAN employee and a writer for Men’s Club, Kurosu later became part of the team who created the legendary photo book “Take Ivy.” — W. DAVID MARX

* * *

IS: How did you discover Ivy League style in Japan?

TK: The first time I saw the word “Ivy” was Spring 1954 in the very first issue of magazine Otoko no Fukushoku (later renamed Men’s Club). In the issue, there was a glossary of menswear terms, organized by A-to-Z, and there was an entry for “Ivy League style” that read “In America, Ivy is very popular among college students.” That’s all that was written, but I was intrigued. I thought, that’s probably something I would like.

I then realized that I had seen African-American soldiers wearing clothes like that out at the Tachikawa Airfield where I would play in jazz bands. These guys were incredibly stylish. This was the middle of the Korean War, so there were a lot of aircraft coming in and out of Tachikawa. Everyone had money, and there were a lot of suit tailors, shirt-makers, and shoe places located near the camp. My friends and I all loved America, so we’d go out to the clothing stores near the camp, and say, make us what those guys are wearing.

At the time Japanese tailors didn’t know anything about Ivy style. They couldn’t do a “natural shoulder,” so you’d end up with these huge pads. When I made my first Ivy suit at a normal tailor, they just put a third button on top of the normal two-buttons. The silhouette wasn’t Ivy or anything — it was just weird. But I of course wore it thinking it was great.

IS: What was so appealing about Ivy style to you?

TK: It was just the total opposite of Japanese fashion at the time. All the hip musicians wore one-button suit jackets with huge shoulders. I couldn’t even understand the Ivy look as fashion — it was too different. When I started wearing Ivy clothing, people would say, you look like a mayor of a small town in the countryside. That was the image. But that’s what made it fun. I didn’t like it because it was new, but because it was strange. The other people to get into Ivy early in Japan were mostly art school students. (Continue)