Today I stumbled across the custom boat shoe program on Sperry Top-Sider’s website. For $120 you get to choose everything, down to the color of laces and outsole and type of eyelet, and they send them in about three weeks. The software is fast and slick for instant gratification, though you’ll need some design skills …
My latest piece for Ralph Lauren Magazine allowed me to learn about how the US prepares for the Olympics, as well as bringing the opportunity to interview gold medal wrestler Jordan Burroughs. RL has a close relationship with the Olympics, having provided the uniforms for a number of years. But the games in Rio are …
The recent New York Times piece on the the new/old Brooks Brothers oxford shirt contained the source of an important sartorial anecdote. Years ago I’d seen a reference online to the custom that Princeton boys back in the day who didn’t come from WASPy families and prep schools would sandpaper the collars of their shirts …
Founded in Virginia in 1776, Hampden-Sydney College is America’s 10th oldest and one of only three remaining all-male schools. Earlier this month the college, whose motto is “come here as boys so you may leave as men,” graduated its class of 2016. Here are some photos of the commencement, along with other shots of campus …
This is the latest installment in our occasional series on the fall of the Ivy League Look in the late ’60s. If you’d like to share your memories, use the contact button above. * * * I was born in 1952, so I was 15 in 1967. A friend of mine says the height of …
Social media sources are reporting that Bobby Garnett, founder of Bobby From Boston, has died. Garnett was considered a pioneer in vintage fashion. His influential store was well known to the props department at Ralph Lauren (as well as to Lauren himself), and the store’s reputation was global. More info as we get it. — …
Today is National Golf Day, for which I offer three documents for your enjoyment. The purely sartorial among you can pore over the details in this photo of the 1959 Yale golf team. * * * Update: Richard Press just sent me an email saying this photo blew his mind, whereupon he proceeded to …
Our recent post “In Praise Of Style And Grace” brought about some brisk discussion on Facebook, mostly on matters of proportion when it came to lapel and tie widths back in the day. For the first half of the ’50s they were fairly neutral, and by the late ’60s they had already swept back to …
Norman Hilton was known for his high quality and impeccable taste in fabrics. He also knew how to commission a sharp wordsmith. Just look at the copy in the ad below. “Yesterday, today and tomorrow are all one.” Nice line. As for the gentleman depicted with such ample aplomb, I can imagine him in a …
James Kraus, who’s been featured on Ivy Style previously for his book “Jet Age Cooking For The Bachelor Gourmet,” recently read Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 best-seller, because that’s the sort of thing you read when you’re into vintage bachelorhood. He spied this interesting passage from a chapter called “Shopping In Men’s Departments” and forwarded …
Yes, there was a time when GQ would run an eight-page story about Harvard’s most exclusive final club, The Porcellian. Not to boar you, but I don’t think this story would fly today. We’ll stop hamming and leave you with this fascinating tail. — CS & CC
Yesterday Harvard’s president announced that starting next year the school will effectively punish members of its all-male final clubs. Although the clubs are not directly afiliated with the university and are located on private property, the school will prevent members from campus leadership roles and opporttunities such as the Rhodes scholarship. Harvard Magazine has a …
Will Lands’ End be the next American trad brand to become Italianized? Today the Wall Street Journal carries a story with the headline “New Lands’ End CEO Delivers High Fashion—and a Culture Clash,” and the subhead, “At the catalog retailer, frumpy duds are out, strappy heels are in; ‘It doesn’t look like Lands’ End anymore.’” …
Content Warning: politics, poetry, bowties Everyone should have a bowtie-wearing professor. This figure is deep in our collective unconscious. Looking at old photographs or watching old movies, you’re likely to encounter this wise and genial figure complete with tweed jacket, pipe, and floppy hat. Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones comes to mind, as well as …
Remember the scene in Whit Stillman’s “Metropolitan” when a character sings the praises of detachable-collar shirts? Well a new Kickstarter campaign aims to make them a reality. Boston-based Al Castiel III, who runs the site Regattas & Repp Ties and who will spend the summer in New York interning in Paul Stuart’s custom department, has …
Back in January, when I learned about what we now call the new/old Brooks Brothers oxford-cloth buttondown, Ivy Style did something unprecedented: we ran two posts in one day. And the next day we did it again. These four posts — the news announcement, followed by analysis pieces by myself, Bruce Boyer, and Dan Greenwood …
Roger Sack, Cornell class of 1962, was a young man who knew clothes. He inherited a sense of style from his father, who, though the son of poor immigrants, shopped at Rogers Peet, Brooks Brothers and Paul Stuart. He was a man of “refined taste,” remembers Sack, whose souvenir from World War II was a …
Like many suburban California boys of a recalcitrant nature, I spent my early teenage years in the ’80s listening to rock, metal and punk. I went to many concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area, and even started a fanzine, foreshadowing my forays into Internet publishing years later. I even got to interview Kirk Hammett, …
We’ve had an especially mild winter in New York that has turned into a hit-and-miss spring. New York springs are always too short, with summer just one quick subway stop down the line, and so my wardrobe is itching to shift into warm weather gear. Enter Ratio Clothing, which I challenged to make something that …