Back in the heyday, if you couldn’t afford to shop at the right stores and mom was handy with a needle and thread, you could get your very own homemade Ivy League jacket for a fraction of the cost, as these images from a 1965 McCall’s pattern book show. It’s possible the in-crowd might not even …
On the first of this month, founder Christian Chensvold announced the completion of 12 years of running Ivy Style and his “retirement,” or so he’d like to think, from the natural-shouldered mafia of Tradsville. His announcement led to new alignments and plans for the next 12 years of Ivy Style, and today we are pleased …
“Your wedding day will be the second happiest day after you beat Yale,” Coach told the team in the locker room at Harvard Stadium before The Game. John Phillips’ novel “The Second Happiest Day” may not be great literature, but if you want to experience the heyday of Ivy at Harvard, go find this book. …
GQ’s Style Guy advice column once had the following curious exchange apropos of our collar of choice. A reader asked columnist Glenn O’Brien the following: I heard somebody refer to a button-down-collar oxford shirt as “middle-management” the other day. I always thought the oxford was the great American shirt. Have I been sending the wrong …
In 2012, Susan Cheever, the daughter of legendary WASPdom chronicler John Cheever and a celebrated author in her own right, wrote a piece for Newsweek entitled “Gin Without The Tonic.” The URL of the digital version explains the theme a little less cryptically: https://www.newsweek.com/how-modern-preppies-got-style-forgot-values-64473 The theme of Cheever’s essay — that the uber-rich of today are …
I like to teach the essays that the poet Donald Hall wrote in his eighties, beautiful, moving and often funny reflections on literature, aging, and mortality. Before leaving academia, Hall worked as an English professor at the University of Michigan. One summer he retrieved his mail at the department, dressed (as he recounts) in “plastic …
Big development here at Ivy-Style.com to announce soon. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of the latest news from Tradsville. Above is a reader snapshot of the tragedy of 346 Madison Avenue. Black was never a trad color, except for funerals. It’s impossible not to feels one’s metaphoric sack suit turn from navy to …
“Oh what a night,” goes the Four Seasons tune, “late December back in ’63….” Well about that time, Tennessee-based Hardwick was selling its natural-shouldered clothing to the masses in a series of chivalrous print ads. According to this one, your “natural shouldered presence” will earn approval from a “damsel”: Hardwick was in the clothing business, but they …
We recently posted about the differences between Ivy and preppy, which remains a perennial topic. So much so that I’m speaking to an author later this week about this very topic. Here are Richard Press’ views from 2012. No idea whether his thoughts have changed, but this post is worth revisiting for this photo alone. …
This week for reasons unknown, though perhaps related to a fine bottle of California Zinfandel, I sat down and watched the movie “Grease.” The movie was released in 1978 when I was eight years old, and as my sister and I were both in dancing class, my parents took us to this clever addition to the …
This year the Olympic games were to be held in Tokyo, but they’re on hold until next year due to the pandemic. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the last time the Games were held in Japan, which produced a movie germane to the topic of Ivy League Style. “It’s the Olympics, you …
Last week, after a Zoom call for work, I noticed that my closet door was ajar. This is in my home office where I keep my casual clothes, whereas my suits and dress shirts are in the closet adjacent to our bedroom. Usually, the casual closet is accessed only on weekends, but during Covid, I …
When I founded Ivy Style, my editorial plan was to cover both the Ivy League Look as well as prepdom, seeing them as inextricably intertwined. Viewing Ivy and preppy as separate from each other seemed to me just as silly as the dubious assertion that there is in fact a legitimate genre of clothing (with …
Kamakura Shirts, a great friend of Ivy-Style.com, was forced to close its Madison Avenue shop, which was founder Yoshio Sadasue’s longtime dream. Below is a statement from his daughter Nanako, who has taken over the family business. * * * Since opening on Madison Avenue in New York on October 30, 2012, our New York …
Did you know that nine out of 10 men prefer chemically treated non-iron shirts that feel funny and look artificially perfect to pure unadulterated cotton? And I’m not talking about the general population, but specifically shoppers at that bastion of traditionalism, Brooks Brothers. Some years ago Ralph Gardner had an interesting write-up in the Wall …
After Ivy Style founder Christian Chensvold announced his 12-year anniversary on October 1, two associates came forth with an offer to take the site into a whole new direction. Ivy Live, in partnership with Ivy-Style.com, has bold plans for 2021, positioning itself as a broad-reaching men’s lifestyle brand and media outlet geared towards guys with …
In 2012, and in part because of Ivy-Style.com, which helped bring Richard Press back onto the stage of life, the former J. Press president once again became a citizen of Manhattan, leaving the suburbs of Connecticut for an Upper East Side apartment. Since then Richard has become a part of his family’s firm once again, …
In 2012 English photographer Nick Clements did a photo shoot entitled “The Ivy House” for the retro magazine Men’s File. The shoot combined modern and vintage clothing and sought to recreate the mood of a ’60s fraternity house. While it’s tough to tell the new clothing from the vintage, the fraternity house mood could hardly be called modern. …
Twelve years ago today, brimming with enthusiasm for a new project and no idea where it would take me, I unveiled Ivy-Style.com. I was in Los Angeles at the time, and the town had long maxed out what it could do for me. I was in a benign rut that perpetual sunny weather tends to …