Confronting The Shadow: The Preppy’s Dark Alter-Ego, The Bro

There’s a guy you probably encounter on a regular basis. Sometimes it seems like he’s right over your shoulder, following you. He kind of looks like you. He has a neat haircut. He wears khakis and boat shoes. On festive summer occasions he’ll wear patch-madras shorts and polo shirts in bright, go-to-hell colors. When he …



Rye Humor

“Rebel In The Rye,” a new movie charting the development of JD Salinger and his writing of the classic prep-school angst novel, “Catcher In The Rye,” will open in September. Alas early reviews, presumably based on the festival circuit, are not good. There is much debate about whether “Catcher In The Rye” and its smart-alecky …



Aggressive Style

The past couple of April Fool’s Days, I’ve amused myself — and hopefully a few of you — by indulging one of my pet peeves: campus political correctness. It’s a pet peeve because, you know, it has the power to destroy Western Civilization. Some are concerned that Evergreen State College won’t be evergreen anymore because …



Blue On Blue

An Ivy Style reader recently submitted this fine photo of composer Burt Bacharach circa 1966. Fans of the Great American Songbook will likely consider him the last in a line of succession that stretches back to the parlor tunes of the early 1900s. After Bacharach’s hits for Dionne Warwick in the late ’60s and early …



Wooden Acting: Farewell To Martin Landau

Martin Landau died this week at the age of 89. The actor should be familiar to everyone here for his role in the Hitchcock classic “North By Northwest.” In 1995 he won the Best Supporting Actor award for the movie “Ed Wood.” Landau also starred in the TV series “Mission Impossible,” in which he had …


Don’t Sweat It?

In Thursday’s post about Brooks Brothers, some readers expressed horror at the pairing of tailored clothing with sweatpants. While I certainly made fun of the forced nonchalance of adding a pocket square to the mix, combining athletic wear with jackets and trousers gets to the very heart of how college men revolutionized the way the …



Countdown To The Brooks Bicentennial

Yesterday the trade publication WWD ran a slideshow of the Brooks Brothers Spring/Summer 2018 collection, giving us the first glimpse of what the company has up its sleeve in celebration of its 200th anniversary. Alas it was more of the same, and we will have to wait and see if Brooks has any kind of …


Delightful While It Lasts: Inside Henley’s Stewards’ Enclosure

Perhaps, in some dystopian future, strange people (such as Ivy Style readers) who do not want to wear shirts that ’T’, pants that ‘sweat’ and shoes that ‘sneak’, will be placed in confined areas so as not to shock the majority of the population, that is those whose clothing style resembles homeless teenage skateboarders on …


Oh For A President Who Goes Sockless In Weejuns

Remember the days when America had a president who would go sockless in penny loafers? Outside the Oval Office, that is. That president was a Kennedy, and in order to bring back that tradition, it will no doubt take another Kennedy. On Thursday Town & Country posted an interview with Joe Kennedy III with the headline …


Dye Another Day: The Spread of Madras Madness in the 20th Century

Contributing writer Christopher Sharp takes us on an epic journey through the 20th century, charting how madras went from obscure resort wear to a national craze during the “guaranteed-to-bleed” days of the Ivy heyday. * * * If I were to create an Ivy-inspired urban myth, I would spin a tale of how the first …


The Road Less Taken: Madras Jacket + Black Knit Tie

Yesterday we looked at young JFK in 1941 and wondered if his knit tie was black or navy. Today we have a knit tie whose hue is not in doubt. This is Ivy Style contributor Pani M., who’s channelling George Plimpton with his hair and severely underplaying his madras jacket with a severe black knit …


Young JFK Pattern Mixing

Who doesn’t love more JFK? On July Fourth we celebrated President Kennedy and the stars and stripes. Today we celebrate solids and stripes — plus a plaid. This pattern-mixing scheme of plaid jacket, striped shirt and solid tie is a timeless winner. I don’t recall having seen this photo before, which was just brought to my …


Three Cheers For The Red, White And Blue: JFK’s Socks, That Is

On this Fourth Of July 2017, Ivy Style proudly offers three cheers to the Red, White & Blue, as well as something for the hardcore JFK fan. American Trench, a new company on the neo-trad radar, has developed a reproduction of the athletic socks sported by John F. Kennedy in photos of him watching the …


Buy It Now: The Cary Collection’s eBay Shop

If you’re fortunate enough to be enjoying a long holiday weekend, you might just find yourself checking out retailers’ Fourth Of July sales. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something a bit more one-of-a-kind, how about a set of four Andover Shop patchwork throw pillows? That is, if you can patch together three …