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 …
Two weeks ago Ivy Style ran a post about the traditions and sartorial formality found at the University Of The South, otherwise known as Sewanee. The students shared the post assiduously, and it went on to break our all-time one-day traffic record. But as revealed in the comments thread, as well as on Ivy Style’s …
OK, maybe not ten thousand (as in the school’s fight song), but here are a few. The handsome gent above and below is Aga Khan (no date for photo; Khan graduated in ’59), whose step-mother was Rita Hayworth: Students and professor, 1952: Book fair, 1957: Commencement, 1961: Alumni Day, 1968: This one is captioned “Harvard …
Here is the latest in our series of reader anecdotes about the end of the heyday of the Ivy League Look. If you’d like to share your own memories, use the contact button above. * * * I was in school, college and grad school as an eyewitness to the Ivy League Look from the …
New Yorkers are no doubt familiar with the subway shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square. It was briefly in the news a few months back when the train cars were decorated with hybrid American and Imperial Japanese/Third Reich imagery to publicize the TV series “The Man In The High Castle.” People, being wonderful creatures, …
Millennial Fogey columnist Daniel Greenwood just returned from another epic tour with The New York Gilbert & Sullivan Players, during which he zigzagged across half the country. When he has down time, he likes to seek out traditional independent menswear shops that have managed to survive. Here are his favorties so far. * * * …
Does menswear move inexorably and unstoppably towards a sartorially dystopian future, or is it possible for things to actually move backward, kind of like the way the stock market “corrects” itself? These three images from Wofford College (which is based in Spartanburg, SC) show how fashion does move in cycles — even as it cycles …
Last summer, when Ivy Style upgraded to a new magazine-style layout that is device-responsive, there were all sorts of glitches to work through. The subsequent jump in traffic also demanded a more frequent posting schedule. We have some 1,300 posts in our archives, and while I was vaguely aware that some of them had layout …
Recently I wrote about the evolving J. Press York Street store in the West Village, but there’s one more way to get a J. Press experience in New York despite the closing of the Madison Avenue store. Jay Walter, a menswear industry veteran of the highest order who celebrates his 87th birthday today, reconnected with …
This is the second installment in our new Tales From The Twilight series, about the final days of the Ivy heyday in the late ’60s. If you were a firsthand witness and would like to share your personal observations, please use the contact button above. * * * Your article about “sartorial anarchy” reminded me …
This morning I received the following email: I lurk on your site and remember seeing an article with some great photos of young coeds sitting on the grass watching some khaki-clad boys walk by. I recall how the comments about the young ladies were all filled with longing for the days when females acted like …
A couple of months ago, while browsing at the Alden shop in New York, I made a casual inquiry about a shoe in shell cordovan. I must have asked for an unusual color and style combo, because I was told it would take six months to get it, and that there was a waiting list …
This is the W. David Marx’s last installment in his series on the original magazine illustrators who depicted the Ivy League Look when it first reached Japan. * * * Yasuhiko Kobayashi (b. 1935) is the missing link between Ivy League style in Japan and the post-hippie West Coast style that followed in the 1970s. …
William Hamilton, a popular cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1965, has died in an auto accident at the age of 76. His work has been featured on Ivy Style before via an ’80s-era panel with the caption “We decided to just stay preppy as if nothing had happened.” From the New York Times: Mr. …
Need some fresh inspiration for your wardrobe? Look no further than Princeton in the 1930s. This passage is from the spring 1934 issue of Apparel Arts, and was alerted to us by Dan Flores of the blog An Uptown Dandy, a fine fellow I’ve met on occasion around town. Assuming the report is accurate (and …
A couple of weeks ago we put out a call for anecdotes about the transition years of the late 1960s, when the Ivy League Look rapidly went from smart and current to formal and outmoded. Here are the first few reader responses, and if you have one of your own, please email it to christian@ivy-style.com. …
Today is opening day of baseball season, and on Ivy’s Facebook page a member alerted us to a wonderful video by George Will, the author of two best-sellers on baseball, complete with fun animation. Clad in a buttondown and what looks like a bar rep tie from Brooks (and, alas, a nondescript American Boardroom suit), …