One night on the quiz show “Jeopardy!” there was a jazz category. The three contestants left it for last, then failed to answer a single question. America’s classical music, indeed… So here’s to spring, seersucker, and Sarah and Miles with something from the Great American Songbook.
It was the summer of 1982, not quite two years after Lisa Birnbach wrote “The Official Preppy Handbook,” and I got a call from my agent in New York. After several rounds of auditions, I (then known as Susan Dow) was cast in “Preppies” and was rehearsing at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, …
Greetings, gentlemen, and hope that wherever you are your spring has sprung. We’re long overdue with a catchup on all the news in Tradsville. We’ll start with something rather salacious and really quite incredulous. We’ve known that Alden has done phenomenally well over the past decade, indeed apparently well enough to misplace $30 million. Former …
One summer day in 1946, Joseph Haspel, Sr. walked neck deep into the Atlantic Ocean wearing one of his family’s seersucker suits. He emerged from the ocean a part of clothing lore. Haspel was attending a convention in Boca Raton, Florida, when he took his now famous dip into the sea. Afterwards he hung his …
After yesterday’s post on George Will, a reader sent in this column on Brooks that the trad columnist wrote for the Washington Post back in 1997, when the appearance of buttondowns in odd colors were enough to spark fear of the end times. Will opens his lament with: Yes, yes, we have been told. Philosophers …
In a column some years ago for the Washington Post, George Will discussed William Zinsser and the craft of writing, making a passing reference to J. Press and the formality observed by old-school WASPs such as Zinsser: Tooting his own trumpet is not the style of this self-effacing and decorous WASP, who never leaves his …
Once the dust had settled from my journey back to California and I was firmly nestled back in the very same apartment where I’d stayed for six months in 2009 (shortly after founding Ivy Style), I began work on a lengthy article. It quickly became clear it was the most important story of my life. …
I’ve seen every masculine change in fashion from the “drape shape with the reet pleat” zoot suit of the WW II years to the latest “New Bohemian” look from Dries Van Noten, and the way I dress is still imprisoned by the years of my youth. But my appreciation of style is not, so I …
There will always be Americans and Englishmen who find the other culture more appealing. You don’t have to look hard to find Anglophiles in the States, and “Downton Abbey” has relit the Anglomania torch that never really gets extinguished. But while having English taste points your class arrow upward in the US, having American taste in England …
By definition, an Ivy League jacket has natural shoulders, three buttons and no darts. It may also have lapped seams, swelled edges, patch pockets, hook vent and two-button cuff. But what makes a pair of shorts Ivy League? Evidently having been designed while looking at photos of JFK aboard his yacht, the Manitou. At least according to …
OK, not a trend for this season, but it was in 1957. At least in one place: Rhodes College. And at least among this group of guys… on this particular day. But even in this small scientific sample, you can see human social tendencies asserting themselves. The guys in solid socks may be part of the …
When the forecast reaches 60 degrees in Boston, you may be blinded by the sunlight reflecting off of my fellow citygoers’ legs, which haven’t seen the light of day in months. I too am guilty of chomping at the bit to wear anything other than cords and wool stockings by the end of March, and …
The month of May means madras season for some parts of the country at least. And if you’re somewhere that’s still chilly, consider flying first-class — at least in your imagination — to a land of eternal sunshine in these premium shorts from Country Club Prep, which are priced at a cool $120, or enough …
We’ve been on the topic of buttondowns lately, and even rarer in Tradsville than the piqué is this iteration. Pictured is Tony Curtis in a custom shirt (note monogram) consisting of buttondown collar and French cuffs. We can only assume the stubble was for an acting role. It’s an unusual combination, but more of an odd …
Are you such a clotheshorse that you’ll remember an outfit you saw on a mannequin a year ago? Well I remember browsing the Ralph Lauren Rhinelander mansion last spring and spotting an ensemble that made me stop and scrutinize. It was a gold-buttoned navy blazer paired with a white buttondown, no tie. But upon closer inspection, …
Some things get lost in translation — academic jaron, for example — but not the buttondown shirt. Settle in for a lengthy read courtesy of Nathaniel Weiner, Ph.D. candidate at York University and his paper “Transatlantic Translations of the Button-down Shirt,” which appears in the journal TranscUlturAl. Here’s the article’s opening, as well as relevant …
This column from Richard Press originally ran in 2013. His new book “Threading The Needle” is out now and available here. * * * Until the 1960s, retailers respected the privacy of their celebrity clientele. The producers of “The Dick Cavett Show,” however, encouraged me to bend the rules. Beginning in 1968, the credit “MR. …
Years ago Tradsville personality “AldenPyle” started a thread at Ask Andy that included the above ad, which ran in the Yale Daily News in 1941. The ad touches on several themes we explored in our definitive rise and fall essay. First off, notice the split between clothes for campus and clothes for town, which consists of …
Yesterday as part of my pandemic-era ritual of wearing my Sunday best, I wore a fine custom shirt made by colleague Spencer Bennett as a tribute to the gentleman. Last week Bennett’s son informed Ivy Style of his passing, and issued this statement: On April 20, 2021 Spencer Bennett, co-founder of Michael-Spencer Shirts, passed away …