Today Ivy Style Facebook group member and comment-leaver Marc Chevalier, known for his extensive collection of historical menswear images, dug up this shot of Wall Street interns in 1987, the age of Gordon Gekko. The timing was perfect. Those of you who consume a lot of news no doubt saw a story last week that …
Pucker up, and we’re not talking to your oxford cloth. Today is International Kissing Day, and somehow we feel that a kiss in this vintage Norman Hilton ad is inevitable.* — CC * Despite what you may have seen in old movies, always ask permission before kissing someone.
Last month saw the DVD release of the rescue film “The Finest Hours.” Upon its theatrical release earlier this year, The New York Times movie reviewer Stephan Holden wrote, “The waterlogged disaster ‘The Finest Hours’ is a moderately gripping whoosh of nostalgia that shamelessly recycles the ’50s cliché of the squeaky-clean all-American hero.” That tepid …
On this July The Fourth we go back to 2010 to revisit this lengthy dive into the origins and practices of the quintessentially American go-to-hell look. * * * 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 …
Today, on the long Fourth Of July weekend, I went looking for something to repost from Ivy Style’s first summer in 2009. I found this, which seemed apropos for everyone celebrating sockless. * * * This is the second in our efforts to digitize the work of G. Bruce Boyer, whose many fine articles on …
Ratio Clothing, which offers custom-fit shirts made at a certain factory in Garland, North Carolina, yesterday introduced a longer-point buttondown collar option. Named the Fitzgerald model, the collar features points that measure 3.5 inches. Reads the description: We consider ourselves to be OCBD aficionados here at Ratio, and designed our Fitzgerald Button-Down to be the …
Various bits and pieces of sartorial and cultural trivia for you today. First off, a reader alerted me to the rather too clever “Jaws” collection by Sperry. I tweeted it out yesterday and it proved to be vastly more popular that my usual attempts at one-liner wisecracks. In fact, the best wisecrack was delivered on …
Is J. Crew testing the summer waters in contemplation of a return to its preppier roots? The brand’s origins lie in a capitalizing on the preppy ’80s by offering a mail-order version of Ralph Lauren at a lower price. And throughout the ’90s and early aughts J. Crew — like those other Js, Press and …
Growing up in 1980s Berlin, then a city with lots of “cool” but very little elegance, I caused quite a stir when I came to school in my new pink Lacoste shirt. What struck people as curious was not only the color of the shirt, unavailable for boys at the time, but also the color …
J. Press has produced a really cool new catalog for summer 2016. Why cool? Because it was produced in Japan and translated into English. That means it really plays up the heritage of the Ivy League Look, as well as offering that ever-curious glimpse into our national style from the point of view of outsiders …
Eight years ago, when I first interviewed Charlie Davidson of The Andover Shop about dressing Miles Davis, he used a simple but delightful phrase “my kinda clothes.” The phrase stuck with me and now, after all these years, I’m finally employing it as a new recurring feature. “My Kinda Clothes” will give Ivy Style readers …
When my sister and I were kids, our parents encouraged an appreciation of the great American musicals. They enrolled us in dance classes, and when “The Sound Of Music” would air on TV, it was one of the rare times when they would let us stay up late with school the next day. They also …
Our last post was on the fondness of rich WASPs for junk food, which leaves crumbs on their frayed pink buttondowns. This post is on how rich WASPs dressed in Southampton in 1959. Pictured are Vincent Banker and C. Henry Buhl III going Ivy chic in blazer with sockless bit loafers and madras jacket with …
As a follow-up to our birthday post on George HW Bush, we present this 1988 newspaper column by writer Calvin Trillin, who recently caused an uproar of outrage with his New Yorker poem on Chinese cuisine. Here he takes on the peculiarities of the WASP diet. It was sent to Ivy Style by reader CW, …
Funny, both candidates in the current presidential race are Ivy League… Maybe finally we know the difference between Ivy and preppy: you can have an Ivy degree and be anything but prep. Happy birthday to GHWB, a true American sartorial patriot. — CC
GQ has just launched a new magazine called GQ Style, which features an extensive profile on Sid Mashburn. If you don’t know a lot about him, Mashburn worked at Ralph Lauren for a spell and has been considered a tastemaker since opening his eponymous store in Atlanta (it helps that his wife used to work …
Today is National Seersucker Day, which grew out of Seersucker Thursday on Capitol Hill. But while the day’s origins are clear, the beginnings of the fabric itself are somewhat contested. Both Haspel in New Orleans and Brooks Brothers in New York claim to have either introduced or popularized seersucker. This is from Haspel’s website: On …
Here’s an idea for the new CEO at Ralph Lauren. How about more of the magical photo shoots that whisk you away to an island of the imagination? Back in the ’80s, Polo would take out 20 pages in GQ or Architectural Digest and run epic narrative ad spreads shot by Bruce Weber. These marketing …
The Wall Street Journal has a major feature on the struggles at Ralph Lauren, whose profits are down 50% over the past two years while market value has fallen from $16 billion to $8 billion. A new CEO has been appointed to help turn around the company, which will include closing stores and reducing discounts. …