A couple days ago I visited the Finnish menswear site Keikari and spied a quote from Hugh Hefner that was right up our alley — or at least mine:
I like jazz, foreign films, Ivy League clothes, gin and tonic and pretty girls — the same sort of things Playboy readers like.
I posted it on Twitter, where it got a dozen or so favorites and retweets, so I thought I’d share it here. The quote is from 1957, which got me wondering what Hef looked like at the time. A quick Google search turned up the image above.
We’ve featured the legendary sybarite a few times before, including this post, in which he talks about Ivy clothes in 1960, plus this one from approximately the same year. Finally there’s our post “Pipes And Cardigans Get The Chicks,” in which Hef is described as looking “like a college senior on his way to class.” — CC
Photo via New York Times.
Anxiously awaiting an anecdote from Squeeze.
Among the many interesting facts about Hugh Hefner is that he’s a Mayflower descendant, from Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford.
https://www.themayflowersociety.org/about-the-pilgrims20/notable-descendants
He certainly claimed to come from a sexually repressed family!
Hefner chased the fashion rabbit on the dog track of men’s clothing his whole life. Yes, in the 50s and early 60s Ivy was that rabbit. 😉
Christian, You must have forgot where you first saw that quote – in JP Gaul’s “The Ivy Look” 😉
Well I certainly remember first seeing the quotes in his book on the Miyuki-zoku at Ivy-Style.com!
As the posts referenced in the article attest, Hef both dressed and championed Ivy in the late 1950’s. He then started adding some Continental items to his wardrobe; and by the mid-sixties had pretty much transitioned to the Continental look.
In the third installment of The Playboy Philosophy (published March ‘63) Hef wrote ”To the universal gray flannel sameness of ivy has been added the individual style and flair of Continental, with a new elegance and enough variety in its design to permit a re-emphasis on the individual within the clothes.”
This was all well and good, but around 1968, he leapt over the storied aquatic creature and began wearing really bizarre clothing with scarves, strangely collared shirts and other now hilarious-looking garb.
I guess this is not too much of a surprise as many in his circle also went off the sartorial deep end. As an example, this is the same time Sammy Davis stopped wearing Ivy and/or black tie and stared donning beads and dashikis both on and off stage.
Beads and dashikis? Yeah!!! Maybe Sammy was taking his cue from Brother Blue?
Best Regards,
Heinz-Ulrich von B.
But, was Sammy’s dashikis BATIK? 😉
Of all his “likes” in 1957 I know jazz has endured.
And “Heff’s Favorites” album’s opening “My Foolish Heart” by the incomparable Bill Evans told us much about his taste: impeccable.
Christian, could the budget stretch to an “edit” click?
I should have typed “Hef’s Favorites”.
Christian
Tis reminds me of a fantastic – for this site – cartoon in an old Playboy (late-60s?; I only read them for the cartoons of course) of two guys getting dressed in a locker room. A short scrawny guy is putting on a tweed jacket over a BD shirt and tie and saying to a frowning large muscular guy words to the effect, “Well, not everyone has the right body to wear Ivy League clothes…” Maybe your search skills and turn it up for us….
There’s a Playboy cartoon from the heyday showing a woman in a negligee with a buttondown collar. The guy on the bed quips, “It’s very Ivy League.” I’ve thought of running it here, but bomb-sized cartoon boobies might be a bit bawdy for the front-page.
By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot lads are laid,
The rose lipped maids are sleeping
In fields where roses fade….
But the gin and tonics still taste good.