Well, if pictures are worth a thousand words each. Ok, let me head off a few errant comments before they are posted. (1) Boat shoes are leather. (2) Sneakers are justifiable as exhibits because they tend to be tighter, you tend to walk more …
It is MIGHTY hard to not wear socks with loafers and not veer too prep. No knock against prep, but if you are moving the needle in the Ivy direction and you want to wear loafers and no socks, you probably default to the traditional penny loafer, with its unfortunately named beefroll, wide slot for …
Editor’s Note – The Jay Butler Penny Loafer review was supposed to post today, but it has rained here in Bedford for the last maybe 213 days straight, and I couldn’t get the pictures I wanted to show you of them. Today is supposed to be nice, so fingers crossed. It is written, I just …
Before I forget, Jay Butler is running 15% off the entire site today. Famous for the bit loafer, they do a great penny loafer too, belts, etc. My impression after wearing the bit loafers and the penny loafers is that everything Jay Butler sells is worth more than you pay for it. And the owner …
We put this off as long as we could. It is April 15, the day things come due. You have two months before the Memorial Day, shorts, and no excuse for the extra layer you think is hiding things. There are slimming silhouettes (Flouser Sack Suit comment notwithstanding) but that only works in air conditioning. …
The Andover WOCBD is what would happen if a 70 year old master tailor took four years off and went to Columbia in the 50’s, came home and said, “I can do that.” The shirt belongs in your rotation, for sure. At $145 it is in the same conversation as Press and Mercer in terms …
I went to a Christian undergrad when Gospel Rock was starting, and it was so mediocre. The spirit (small s) was right, but the execution was horrific. All the good rock musicians were making real money. But. Because Christian Rock was a small niche, anything that anybody put out was immediately canonized (I did that …
These are the world’s oldest pants. They are high rise. So all fashion is cyclical. From the article in Ars Technica: With the help of an expert weaver, archaeologists have unraveled the design secrets behind the world’s oldest pants. The 3,000-year-old wool trousers belonged to a man buried between 1000 and 1200 BCE …
You may notice that for this WOCBD review I am not posting pictures of myself. There are two reasons. First, I hate pictures of myself. But more importantly, any random shot you have seen of me in the last few years, including my profile shot on the site, has me in a JAB WOCBD. And …
By now, you know that you can preorder the getting-famous Black Watch Regimental Tie here. And save 10%. On one of the best made ties you will ever own. Why best made? I am glad you asked. All M&S ties are made in America. Family owned and operated business, third generation, two guys who love …
So I review True Style, by G. Bruce Boyer, which is for my money the only book you can start a wardrobe library with. The link one more time to buy it is here. And I wind up finding Mountain & Sackett, two guys running a third generation family business making fantastic ties right here …
Thanks again to the amazing Tom for sending me an article from Bloomberg by Max Berlinger this week about what is happening, somewhat disturbingly, to custom clothes. The gist of the article is (it’s a paywall and we don’t link paywalls anymore) is that… A 2022 forecast from personal-styling service Stitch Fix found that half …
There are things that New Englanders are very specific about, and New York not being in New England is amongst them. They’d be correct. New England was first defined by John Smith in 1616, but I think he meant New England as in, “Everything I can see from here is New England.” And before you …
P.J. O’Rourke and I were not friends other than online, but I was going back over my emails when it dawned on me that P.J. O’Rourke is the Father of Degage. Exhibit A Exhibit B Exhibit C I am loving Bruce Boyer’s work on music, and the playlists are doing well. I did see …
Editor’s Note: Our first round of questions for Marc Chevalier, whose Ivy History cred stands up with anyone’s. As always, you can email me questions or just put them in the comments. And that last question, we already voted, the quarter zip is in. 🙂 Q: Are there other types of collars, other than the …
Alright man, look. In various professional capacities over the years, I have had to write funny for money. My brief to my divorce attorney was both hilarious and ultimately economical. I have punched up scripts (a godawful project I couldn’t finish, it was written by an actor, a REAL actor, who should REALLY act. He …
Editor’s Note: There were some questions about sleeve length and measurement here. For a guide on how to measure shirts and convert between European and American measuring, Mr. Bresnard published this piece. From his email response to me this morning: “I have noticed that Americans measure sleeves differently than Europeans. We measure from the top …
“The distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – Albert Einstein Einstein and J. Press are both… pretty Ivy. In his theory of General Relativity Einstein submits that there really is no past, present and future. J. Press’s Spring Book is an exhibit thereof. You can check it out here. …
Uniqlo has a navy blazer out that was brought to my attention from Jakob in an email. You can check it out here. Jakob wrote: To my admittedly novice eye for Ivy, it looks like this checks most of the boxes for the ideal Navy Blazer: sack-cut, undarted, swell stitching, patch pockets, and even brass …