Update: Kamakura has just edited and uploaded a longer version of its interview with me: * * * Kamakura Shirts took a big risk when it opened a shop on Madison Avenue in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. After all, no one had ever heard of them. But it was the dream of owner Yoshio …
During the Taisho era (1912-1926) and the preceding Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan confronted rapid Westernization while traditional Japanese ideals were being challenged and altered for the changing times. A product of the times was Taisho-era writer Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892-1927) whose epitomic works include “Rashōmon” (1915) and “In a Grove” (1922), which later became the basis …
Here’s a video from Kirby Allison talking to Alan Flusser about his new Ralph Lauren bio. — CC
I stopped by J. Press today and salesman Robert-kun was wearing an olive herringbone sportcoat and black turtleneck. I said he looked very jazz-beatnik (he’s a jazz guitarist, after all). Then I peered across the room and there was a fellow in a beret, and he wasn’t a young hipster. And so we revisit this …
The annual Harvard-Yale football game — known to students and alumni simply as The Game — has been played since 1875 and alternates each year between Harvard Stadium and the Yale Bowl. The Game is famous for its always-waning-but-never-quite-dead tradition of genteel tailgating, nowadays conducted alongside college parties more squarely within the “Animal House” tradition. …
It’s Halloween 2019 and this is me wondering if I should post another satirical “trick” about campus culture or if nothing’s funny anymore. And then I get the perfect idea for a Halloween post…. Me wearing a double-breasted waistcoat and watch chain! Peter Lavelle, Ivy Style’s new Japanese reporter, certain thinks it’s funny. Here he …
I remember being a poor college student and picking up a cheap bottle of bay rum at the drugstore. No doubt many of you had the same experience. Now that we’re older, wiser and richer, we also want to smell better. St Johns Bay Rum is the original purveyor of the “scent of Madison Avenue,” …
When Marilyn Monroe steps onto the screen in “Some Like It Hot,” wearing elaborate furs and gowns, her soft blond curls swept into an elegant chignon, she spends much of her time pretending to be a wealthy, well-to-do Vassar student. She is a classic example of Hollywood’s vision of the Vassar Girl: the stereotypical rich, …
Last Thursday, to a standing-room-only crowd at the Town Stages venue in Tribeca, Simon Crompton of Permanent Style, in partnership with menswear company Thomas Mason, kicked off their New York stop in a series of talks on menswear they have been running called the symposiums. This event had a focus on the distinctly American Ivy …
In the 1950s, what I call “shirt jewelry” — i.e., collar pin, tie bar, and cuff links — was taken for granted. A man, regardless of his age, would have worn all three items if he wanted to create an impression. Even young men in high school wore shirt jewelry. The most popular collar style …
You may have heard that HBO has produced the first-ever documentary on Ralph Lauren. “Very Ralph” airs on November 12. Check out the trailer below.
OK, you just read the headline, saw the embedded video, and you’re snickering. Let me explain. When I founded this site, I vowed never to post the Smirnoff “Tea Partay” video, which had become infamous in the online world of Tradsville. But I recently began covering digital marketing for Yahoo!, and found myself chatting with …
It’s been nine years since the publication of a mysterious Japanese picture book called “Take Ivy.” The following is our 2010 interview with Wes Del Val, vice president and associate publisher at powerHouse Books, on how the viral phenomenon came about. * * * IS: “Take Ivy” isn’t due to come out for another month, …
Last week I visited Ralph Lauren’s Madison Avenue flagship, known as the Rhinelander, and took some shots of the mannequins. Apologies for photo quality as lighting was exceptionally bright. There were logos galore — the final shot exemplifies the rule that all fashion ends in excess — even in the Purple Label collection. Speaking of …
If there’s one character in “The Official Preppy Handbook” who could be singled out for derision, it’s the skier. Wearing mirrored sunglasses and a cocky sneer, he looks like the kind of guy you’d hate everything about. Everything, that is, except his ski cap from Moriarty of Stowe, Vermont. For five decades the Moriarty cap …
Yesterday’s post on the LL Bean Norwegian sweater drew a helpful comment from a genuine Norwegian in our Facebook group. Although I’m sitting in a new deadstock sweater from Dale of Norway, the member told us about another storied knitwear brand called Devold. That’s a pretty good nickname for me, as in Da’ ‘Vold, though …
In the 1980s, I would stroll through the oak grove of my small college campus clad in a well worn pair of chinos, cream-colored turtleneck, a pink Brooks oxford and an LL Bean Norwegian Sweater. I was confident in believing I had found the perfect sweater that would be around forever. Boy was I wrong. …
This post from 2013 sheds a different light on the made-in-China issue explored in our last post. * * * James here is holding out my latest sportcoat to wear today. It’s the same one I’m wearing in the previous post, which a reader inquired about. It’s actually this jacket from Brooks Brothers; I’d been …
For years Tradsville has lamented how many classic items are now made overseas, and so, in the wake of the China-NBA story this week, I asked Ivy Style’s Facebook group if anyone had become inspired to engage in a personal embargo on items made in China. Here’s what some members said: Interesting question. However, it …