Double Date: Vassar Girls and their Beaus, 1951

A quick look back at this charming photo posted a decade ago, with dating customs that go even farther back.

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London-based Ivy Style contributor Rebecca C. Tuite, currently at work on a book on the iconic Vassar Girl of the ’50s, posted this photo on her personal blog. The shot is from the Vassar archives and commemorates the school’s sesquicentennial.

Writes Tuite:

Vassar students and their weekend dates take a stroll around Vassar’s beautiful Sunset Lake. The weekend ‘mass exodus’ of the Vassar campus as students went off in droves to neighboring Ivies is well publicised, but students did enjoy some chaste dates on campus too.

Afternoon walks and dinners at the Pub in the Alumnae House were especially popular. It’s entirely likely that these four enjoyed a double date over “Vassar Devils” at the Pub, which were incredibly gooey chocolate sundaes and the toast of Poughkeepsie throughout the 1950s. Of course, there’s the ubiquitous 1950s bermuda shorts and shirts, as we’ve seen before, but here are some equally dapper Vassar dates in clothes that foreshadow, rather than exemplify, the heyday of the Ivy Look Look that will soon come.

Tuite also has several more posts planned for Ivy Style that shed light on campus life at mid-century. — CC