When I was an undergraduate at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, there was a wonderful campus shop on Main Street called Tom Bass. It served three colleges and a university (Moravian, Muhlenberg, Lafayette and Lehigh University), and it stocked many of the iconic Ivy League labels: suits by Southwick, buttondowns by Gant and Sero, Pringle and Alan Paine sweaters, flannel and khaki trousers by Corbin, and raincoats by London Fog. Anyone old enough to remember will tell you these manufacturers produced clothing of the highest standards in those days (the ’50s and early ’60s).

But when I went to graduate school at Lehigh in 1963, I moved up a notch, to what was arguably one of the three or four best campus clothing shops in the country. There were of course J. Press in New Haven, The Andover Shop in Cambridge, Chipp in Manhattan… and then there was Langrock on Nassau Street in Princeton.

I don’t want to go into the history of that esteemed firm at the moment, merely give a few fleeting impressions of that sublime outfitters. The owner of Langrock at the time was Alan Frank, a man of impeccable taste who looked as though he could have walked across the street and stepped onto the podium of a lecture hall. In my memory he tended to wear charcoal suits most of the time: flannel in winter, tropical worsted in summer, with the occasional nod to a seasonal Harris Tweed or seersucker sports jacket. Usually a white oxford cloth buttondown, and a dark silk club tie. Very proper, yet he always looked perfectly comfortable and at ease.

The shop itself occupied a regal, colonial-looking brick building on a corner, so the large floor-to-ceiling plate glass display windows (obviously not original because the building had originally been a home) could be seen from two sides. Inside were a series of rooms, each paneled in dark walnut wainscoting and with old Persian rugs on the well worn wooden floors. Hunting prints of course and college shields. Everything to reflect the hushed and slightly dusty ambiance of a gentleman’s club or dining hall. It seemed impervious to time.

In the center of the main room, as one entered from the street, was a large round table, a good five-to-six feet in diameter, laid out with rep striped ties: hundreds of them in military, university and club stripes of the most vivid colors, a wheel of shimmering silk afloat in the dimly polished ambience. To the right was a glass-and-mahogany case which held the club and paisley neckwear. All from England. Also from England and Scotland, in a similar case to the left were the crewneck sweaters (with saddle shoulders), and wool hosiery, as well as cashmere V-necks and beautiful cashmere hosiery in heathery tones of lovat and fawn and tobacco brown and Cambridge grey.

Shirts — mainly buttondowns, with some straight point and rounded club collars mixed in — were stacked on shelves running the length of the left-hand wall from waist to within a foot or so of the ceiling. It was at Langrock that I first saw — and bought —  a true royal oxford cloth shirt. It happened to be in a lustrous pale yellow, not quite cream. It was light as a cloud without being delicate, and I got years of wear out of it.

The two other rooms held the tailored clothing: suits, sports jackets, odd trousers, topcoats and raincoats. And there was a real tailor, not just an alterations tailor but a man who worked a pattern, and who had swatch books of handsome Cheviot and Hebrides tweeds, flannels from the West of England, and Irish linens. I once extravagantly commissioned a hearty tweed sports jacket in a  camel-and-olive check with an orange windowpane. The tailor put a special sweat-proof lining in the back skirt panel of the jacket, “just in case you want to do some riding, Sir.”

My purchases in this sartorial arcadia were actually few and far between because Langrock was violently expensive, particularly for a young man in grad school. But funnily enough, I still have several of their ties today, and always felt I’d gotten my money’s worth. Since I was an English Studies student, I was thrilled to hear from Mr. Frank that John O’Hara was a customer, although I never had the luck to see him on my rare Saturday appearances. O’Hara’s not read much these days, but in his time he was a literary giant. And he wallowed in campus clothes: Jacob Reed (Philadelphia’s best Ivy League store in its day), J. Press and his beloved Brooks Brothers were his haberdashery haunts. He once invited the dandy columnist George Frazier to drink with him simply because Frazier was wearing a Brooks buttondown. O’Hara lived in Princeton at the end of his life, and is buried there. His epitaph, written by himself:

Better than anyone else, he told the truth about his time,
the first half of the twentieth century.
He was a professional.

— G. BRUCE BOYER

G. Bruce Boyer is the author of numerous books on menswear, most recently “Fred Astaire Style” for Assouline. He is currently a contributing editor at The Rake.

Compared to Western fashion magazines, Japanese magazines often get very specific about how to achieve a certain look. Editors and stylists do not just play with themes, as with most fashion editorial, but painstakingly recreate the exact styling from definitive fashion guides and personages.

In its February 2010 issue, Japanese weekend wear magazine 2nd decided to go back to the bibles of Trad/Ivy/Preppy to build perfectly authentic outfits of American casual (see scans below). Stylist Hajime Suzuki showed readers how to replicate exact outfits from the works “Take Ivy,” “Ivy Illustrated” and “The Official Preppy Handbook” with new brands.

First up is “Take Ivy,” a photo book that was incredibly influential in Japanese Ivy circles for decades before recently being rediscovered in the West. Suzuki kicks things off with a suggestion of white oxford button-downs from Michael Tapia, Individualized Shirts or Gambert. 2nd, unfortunately, had to go to vintage pieces from Tokyo’s best clothing recycle shops to find the letter sweater famously worn by a Princeton undergrad in the book. Barns Outfitters, meanwhile, somehow has the identical faded Brown University sweatshirt from the book for a mere ¥13400 — likely more than what the Brown Co-Op wants for something more modern. Other key items include plaid flannel shirts, classic sneakers, varsity jackets, white pants, rugby shirts, chinos and anorak parkas. The overall feel is sporty, but these were students after all.

Suzuki then presents real-life recreations of the Kazuo Hozumi-illustrated work “Ivy Illustrated,” another bible of Ivy style amongst Japanese baby boomers. The book’s images come to life in comical and somewhat unrealistic ways, including goofy smiles and more than one bandana ascot. The general impact is very Tokyo weekend dad rather than New England during the Kennedy era.

Finally, 2nd recreates some looks from “The Official Preppy Handbook,” which had an official translated release in Japan back in the early ’80s. Suzuki outfits a dummy in perfect ski vest over thick sweater with a hint of 2010 magic (it’s all about the plaid bits on the green vest from Cresent Down Works). 2nd doesn’t go for the classic LL Bean Norwegian Sweater oddly, perhaps because LL Bean Japan failed to sell the sweater this year despite its revival in America. The second look in the series does, however, manage to replicate prep-school sloppiness in orderly Japanese fashion by using paint-flecked, art-damaged khakis from Waste(Twice).

The overall feature does a relatively good job of distinguishing the differences between Ivy (in its “authoritative” ’60s incarnation) and preppy (in its “authoritative” early ’80s, Birnbach-curated incarnation.) While most Japanese fashion culture is not particularly comfortable with wild extrapolation, stylist Suzuki does deserve credit for not making the outfits look like period costumes. Traditional clothing presumes a timeless elegance, but the breath of brand options here in Japan for these items gives the wearer a considerable amount of flexibility between playing the classics and playing around with the classics. — W. DAVID MARX

W. David Marx is a writer living in Tokyo whose work has appeared in GQ, Brutus, Nylon, and Best Music Writing 2009, among other publications. He is currently Tokyo City Editor of CNNGo and Chief Editor of web journal Néojaponisme. (Continue)

Yesterday Bruce Boyer and I visited Brooks Brothers, who were showing the Fall/Winter 2010 collection on the sixth floor of the 346 Madison flagship store. The goods represented the company’s growing commitment to reclaiming its heritage, and there were many nods to its golden age in addition to the new girls and home collections.

Though not a separate line, University has a distinctly younger feel, similar to the Brooksgate of yore. This section of the showroom was set up like a locker room, with trophies and athletic gear scattered among the clothes. (Continue)

The following article is actually the first one The Rake assigned me, but it was held for several issues while they waited for new spring clothes to photograph.

It’s out now in the current issue, and was great fun to research, as I got to talk not only to Bruce Boyer and Paul Winston, who’ve since become friends and colleagues, but also Alan Flusser, Denis Black, Ethan Huber and Lisa Birnbach.

The complete text is below, or you can click here for a PDF with the accompanying fashion shoot.

* * *

Damned Dapper: The origins, philosophy and specifics of the “go-to-hell” aesthetic — the conservative WASP’s colorful, critter-filled creative outlet
By Christian Chensvold
The Rake, Issue 8

Thomas Watson Jr. was president of IBM during the years when it was a punchline for sartorial conformity. Throughout the ’50s and ’60s, gray suits for employees were standard, white shirts required.

It may seem an odd non sequitur, then, that Watson once ordered a custom sport coat whimsically embroidered with dozens of little skiers, to wear during cocktail hour at the lodge after a long day on the slopes.

Since the time of Martin Luther, the Protestant nations of the Western world have been known for a sober palette compared to the scarlet and purple of their Catholic neighbors. Perhaps this repressed sense of color ironically accounts for the riotous display of blinding pastels that characterize the preppy look of the WASP, or White Anglo Saxon Protestant, a term popularized in 1964 by sociologist E. Digby Baltzell to describe the small caste of elites that ran American business and politics.

While WASPs have largely lost their power stranglehold on American society, their influence on the world of fashion is stronger than ever. And despite their notorious character flaws (bigotry, emotional impotence, fondness for peanut butter), they’ve long led America with sterling examples of virtue and self-sacrifice.

And for that they have as good a chance for getting into heaven as anybody else — unless, of course, St. Peter guards the “pearly gates” like a nightclub bouncer enforcing a dress code. In that case, WASPs will surely have their trousers damned to the netherworld.

GOING TO HELL

Tom Wolfe may seem an odd springboard for a story about color. But while the dandy author’s wardrobe may be all white, his prose is pure purple. He’s also a keen sartorial observer, and in 1976, in an article for Esquire entitled “Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine,” Wolfe uses the catchy phrase “go to hell” to describe the garish pants worn by elite Bostonians vacationing on the island retreat of Martha’s Vineyard. The phrase continues to enjoy limited usage, and the passage that birthed it is worth quoting in full:

[Bostonians on Martha's Vineyard] had on their own tribal colors. The jackets were mostly navy blazers, and the ties were mostly striped ties or ties with little jacquard emblems on them, but the pants had a go-to-hell air: checks and plaids of the loudest possible sort, madras plaids, yellow-on-orange windowpane checks, crazy-quilt plaids, giant houndstooth checks, or else they were a solid airmail red or taxi yellow or some other implausible go-to-hell color. They finished that off with loafers and white crew socks or no socks at all. The pants were their note of Haitian abandon… at the same time the jackets and ties showed they had not forgotten for a moment where the power came from. (Continue)

Update: Results

Sperry gives a heartfelt thanks to all who participated. They were especially excited and pleased about this giveaway, and would like to bestow a new pair of CVOs to the following contestants:

1) “I’d take my grandfather to the coasts of Normandy, a place he has not been since June 6th, 1941, but one that he yearns to see again.” — David

2) “Wherever my love wanted. Many men say they’d go to the ends of the Earth for a good woman. Too few actually do.” — Shawn

3) “One should eschew
The shoe that’s new
And wear it out
Through sun and salt
From Maine to Spain
And back again.” — Charles Day

4) “I wish I had some Sperrys.
I wish I had a yacht.
I wish I had a beautiful wife.
But sadly, I do not.

But if I win these Sperrys,
I’ll sail around the world.
And I hope to find and someday wed
A beautiful island girl.” — Luke

* * *

For our latest Battle of the Wits giveaway, Sperry Top-Sider has generously donated four pairs of the new 75th anniversary edition of its classic Canvas Vulcanized Oxford sneaker. It even comes in a cool replica of the original 1935 box.

The shoe, priced at $75, comes in your choice of white, navy or Nantucket Red.

In the spirit of the CVO’s nautical heritage, here’s the question:

You’ve got a fresh pair of Sperrys, and your custom yacht with the walls lined in blue oxford cloth is ready to set sail anywhere in the world. Where do you go, and why?

Use the leave-comment feature to regale us with your inspiring and creative trip to the ends of the Earth, in 25 words or less.

The usual honor-code rules apply: One entry per household, US residents only. Contest closes Wednesday at 5 PM Eastern Standard Time. Bon voyage. (Continue)

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:

(Continue)

Was John F. Kennedy the most Ivy of US presidents, or did the most important man in the country actually encourage American men not to follow the Ivy League Look?

That depends on whether you’re talking about President Kennedy the nation’s leader, or Jack Kennedy relaxing among friends and family in Hyannis Port.

On assignment for the latest issue of The Rake, I examined the split between Kennedy’s public and private life, and how this was reflected in his wardrobe.

The text of the article is below, or you can download a printable PDF.

Setting the President: John F. Kennedy’s dress sense was central to his public persona, forming no small part of this truly modern president’s enduring iconography
By Christian Chensvold
The Rake, Issue 7

Photographs of John F. Kennedy generally fall into two categories. In the first, we see him at his family’s Cape Cod retreat, sleeves rolled up, wearing khakis grass-stained from touch football, or clad in Nantucket Reds and sunglasses sailing the sea. In the second, his presidential kit, we see another man altogether. Kennedy’s dark suits hang with a certain awkwardness, the shoulders large and high, his two chest buttons both fastened.

Though both are equally iconic, these two images of JFK reveal the sartorial differences between the man’s public and private lives. Privately he was the Choate and Harvard-educated scion of a patrician American dynasty, while publicly he was a progressive young Democrat, commander on the frontlines of the Cold War, and careful crafter of a public image in the new age of television.

This schism makes JFK both the ultimate preppy president — his administration reigned at the height of the Ivy League Look — and an ironic hastener of the look’s decline, undermining the very style he so perfectly embodied. Though Kennedy could hide neither his Catholic faith nor brahmin accent, this first great image crafter of the TV age could strengthen his broad appeal with two sartorial gestures: He would wear two-button suits instead of three-button sack models, and he would eschew buttondown collars. The result, noted LIFE Magazine in 1961, was that the president’s clothes “fail to conform to current Ivy League fashion.”

Before becoming a style setter, Kennedy started out as a ragamuffin. “As a young man he was notorious for his personal disorder,” writes Neil Steinberg in “Hatless Jack: The President, the Fedora, and the History of American Style.” “His boarding-school roommates complained of his messiness, particularly with clothes. He would show up with his shirt untucked, or without socks, or wearing a rag of a necktie.”

Before his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953, “Kennedy had been a sloppy dresser who favored baggy suits, clashing shirts and ties, and ratty tennis shoes,” according to historian Thurston Clarke.

With Jackie’s guidance, Kennedy’s style evolved into a paragon of simplicity and understatement. His casual weekend mufti was collegiate and Northeastern — Shetland crewnecks, penny loafers sans socks, white t-shirts, polo shirts and chinos, with a notable absence of pattern. His suits were solids or light stripes, shirts almost always white with a short straight collar, his ties discrete reps and clubs. Like Steve McQueen, another charismatic public figure with subdued taste, Kennedy gave his clothes style, rather than the other way around, a testament to the idea that clothes should never upstage their wearer.

Sartorial simplicity suited Kennedy best because he had star quality, an air of innate dignity, recalled his physician Janet Travell, “that was the product of personal reserve, self-respect, style and a distaste for ostentation.” But there was something else. With his sunglasses and convertibles, ironic wit and military heroics, Kennedy had something no American leader had ever had before: cool.

Much of Kennedy’s cool came from his hair, a Samson’s mane of potent charisma and something Kennedy famously avoided covering with headwear. “In a hat he looked far older and almost unrecognizably ugly,” writes Steinberg. “And he knew it.”

Kennedy’s effect on American taste was palpable. “Kennedy sets the style, taste and temper of Washington,” wrote GQ in 1961. “Cigar sales have soared (Jack smokes them). Hat sales have fallen (Jack does not wear them). Dark suits, well shined shoes, avoid button down shirts (Jack says they are out of style).”

As GQ points out, Kennedy set styles as much for what he negated as for what he advocated, and he stood in favor of two-button suits as much as he stood against buttondown collars. Historians have suggested that Kennedy preferred two-button suits because they better accommodated his back brace. Paul Winston, however, who made suits for Kennedy while working at his family’s legendary clothing company Chipp, recalls Kennedy wearing a brace during fittings at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, but says the button stance would not have mattered.

What is more likely is that Kennedy felt that while he couldn’t hide his privileged background in a television age that required mainstream appeal, he could at least obviate his image sartorially by wearing suits less redolent of the Eastern Elite and more becoming a man in the limelight of international affairs. When asked if suits for the newly elected president would be two-button, tailor Sam Harris said, “Certainly, two button. We don’t follow Ivy League or beatniks. We make gentlemen’s clothes.”

And when it came to shirt collars, Kennedy mocked his brother Robert in the press, telling LIFE, “He’s still wearing button-down shirts; they went out at least three years ago,” and told friend and confidant Paul Fay that his button-down collars were “too Ivy League.”

Privately preppy, publicly the leader of the free world, Kennedy was always an icon. But in the annals of sartorial history, JFK is less an example of a well dressed man than a man with tremendous charisma, and for such men understatement is always the best frame.

“Kennedy was a handsome and important man,” remembers Paul Winston. “That old saying that clothes makes the man? Not really. I think the man makes the clothing.”

Images from Time magazine’s “JFK Style.”

For spring, Sebago has released its classic penny loafer in new colors and with a roughed-out sole and stacked heel. Colors include navy (evidently the hot new shoe color, for reasons Reason can’t explain), sand, white, and light brown (pictured).

The shoes are available now from Sebago’s website and sell for $130. Click here and choose “Alternate Colors.” — CC

As promised, a few notes on the ENK menswear trade show held last week.

For spring and fall, Allen Edmonds will be bringing out a number of updated shoes in the trad category. Three of them are highlighted above, while all six are in the photo below (apologies for the bad shot). (Continue)

Harvard’s financial troubles have been well publicized. The university also made news several months ago when it was announced that it had licensed its name for a contemporary fashion collection called Harvard Yard, and was criticized for selling out its name for a frivolous new revenue stream.

Earlier this week, Wearwolf Group, the company that holds the license, invited me to the ENK menswear trade show to view the collection.

While chatting with the founder and checking out the clothes in the trade show booth, I noticed a piece of marketing collateral sitting on the table. It was a montage of vintage images meant to give potential buyers the vibe of the collection. I recognized a number of images from Ivy-Style, then went back to chatting with the founder, when suddenly I did a double take because right next to Aga Khan is my madras-clad posterior.

It’s true: Harvard is using my ass to sell clothing. I should be getting a cut off the back end. — CHRISTIAN CHENSVOLD

More on the collection and trade show in the next post. Image graciously provided by Harvard Yard at Ivy-Style’s humble request.