The following is a message from one of Ivy Style’s loyal sponsors. Focusers is renowned for premium quality tortoise shell, metal and rimless eyewear. We offer classic frame styles, from our Windsors frames based on Ben Franklin’s original metal ovals on through traditional Ivy League frames of the mid-twentieth century. Elegant gold and silver rimless …
We close out the week with a tennis sweater encore by way of this tribute to Bill Bradley, the 1965 National Player of the Year for Princeton. At the time, the school had produced more American presidents than basketball All-Americans. Bradley made the cover of the December 7th, 1964 issue of Sports Illustrated, complete with classic …
This week Todd Snyder sent out an email headlined “Trad to the Bone,” announcing a new collection of “authentic Indian madras shirts”, a patchwork madras sport coat, and a collaboration with sportswear brand Champion based on a vintage madras blazer. While the use of “trad” by such a mass-market retailer is interesting, the offerings are …
It surely strikes many of us that the devil is everywhere triumphant. And so in the spirit of satanic inversion we revisit post #666. Light the fire-and-brimstone-scented candles, put on Berlioz’ “Witches’ Sabbath” (or maybe the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil”), and behold this tribute to the 1968 movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” In the Roman …
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the movie “Trading Places,” and in anticipation of spring, we revisit this fine essay on the tennis sweater served up by Christopher Sharp. * * * Late fall and winter evenings in 1989-1990 would find me lingering over a cup of coffee in the gothic dining hall that …
Today, on International Women’s Day, Ivy Style pays tribute to an iconic character from preppy cinema. * * * Back when Caroline was learning from Sloane how to navigate the intermediate to upper courses of adult life and communications, I had Penelope Witherspoon from Trading Places (1983) to teach me the ropes. Although she …
Why do the prettiest girlfriends always end up being the worst relationships? Years ago I was involved with a striking beauty who was half-Norwegian and half-Chinese. I met her swing dancing, and for one of our first dates we went to a retro event held on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier museum located in …
This week J. Press “dropped” — as the kids say these days — its new Spring brochure. This is essentially the last surviving hard-copy Ivy League Look “fashion shoot” still being produced, so make sure you get one. And if you haven’t created a collection by now, you probably should. The company known by insiders …
Richard Press has just released a collection of his “Threading The Needle” columns for J. Press, which you can order right here. We’ll hear all about it from him in a subsequent post. In the meantime, congrats to Mr. Squeeze, who looks every bit the dapper sage and witty columnist in this shot by Rose …
After all these years, has anyone in Tradsville pointed out that March 2 is 3/2? That makes it the perfect day to celebrate the history of the Ivy League Look with National Ivy Style Day. If it’s been noted, please excuse the lapse as I’m fast approaching the point where I’ve forgotten more than I …
“Protean” is a word often used to describe Miles Davis. And while it’s become a cliché nearly 25 years after his passing, this Bootleg Series release, which came out in 21015 illustrates just how true it is. The Miles reissue parade has focused largely on specific groups, mammoth recording sessions, or complete concert experiences. They …
As traditional men in our more seasoned lives, we tend to advance through this age of crisis and uncertainty, longing for the Hegelian synthesis of stability and change, continuing to defy our loftier years through performing sterling, upright deeds to shoulder the burden of worldly progress. To those classic gentlemen who enjoy a good smoke, searching …
Unless you wear high-end or vintage clothes, you might feel a bit insulted looking under the lining of your suit jackets and sportcoats. While jacket in the past typically featured half or quarter linings requiring inner seams to be finished cleanly, sometimes even decoratively, many mid-tier jackets today use a full lining to hide shoddy workmanship. I …
To paraphrase an old adage, some men are born with the sense for clothing, others acquire it, and still others have clothing thrust upon them. I was born with a feeling for clothing: that part is fixed. What isn’t fixed is the protean part, the urge to explore and express with different items, combinations and …
John Coltrane, saxophonist and visionary, set standards in nearly every facet of his short but ultimately fruitful life. While generally associated with Philadelphia, Coltrane is actually from Hamlet, North Carolina, and never tried to hide his Southern roots. In an interview by author Frank Kofsky — one of the few times his voice was recorded — …
George Plimpton certainly had pedigree. His father was “a successful corporate lawyer who became the American ambassador to the United Nations,” the New York Times noted in his obituary. “The family traced its roots in this country to the Mayflower. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard and Cambridge.” This pedigree no doubt accounted …
I recently took a pair of brogues to the cobbler for a shine, one of the little rituals, half preparation, half procrastination, that I find myself performing as a new semester draws near. Of course, we are not living in normal times. Because of COVID-19, I am again teaching my classes online, which means my …
When Richard Press first unveiled his column “A Tummler On York Street,” Ivy Style received an email from Peter Feen, great nephew of the man profiled in Richard’s column. Feen went on to tell us about his other great uncle, John Norey (above left), who also worked at J. Press in New Haven. Norey was an …
Try to be less grumpy!