The Andover Shop and Constantine Valhouli: Interview Part 2

Interview Part 2 with Constantine Valhouli, author of Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie: An oral history of The Andover Shop

Back in February, Ivy Style editor Matthew Longcore had the opportunity to interview Constantine Valhouli, author of a book about The Andover Shop. Here is Part 1. We reconnected recently to continue our conversation. This is Part 2.

Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie: An oral history of The Andover Shop chronicles how The Andover Shop, an iconic clothier in Harvard Square, became an unexpected literary and jazz salon in the 1950s. At its center stood its renowned proprietor, Charlie Davidson, whom The Boston Globe eulogized as “the Baron of Bespoke” after his death in 2019. Constantine Valhouli, whose lifelong admiration for and friendship with Charlie began when he was only 10, has compiled a fascinating oral history of the man and the legend. The book was recently chosen by the Robb Report as one of “27 Style Books Every Man Should Own, Read, and Learn From.”

IS: Which clothing items from The Andover Shop would you consider to be the most iconic?

The Andover Shop is credited with either inventing or popularizing patchwork tweed garments in, I believe, the 1960s. Their patchwork trousers, waistcoats, and jackets are truly works of art. They balance the different patches in a way that color ‘reflects’ from one patch to another –– a blue tweed beside a neutral with a blue overcheck, for example. On one occasion, they even selected the individual tweeds for a bespoke patchwork waistcoat to accompany the specific colors that the client favored in coats and shirts.

However, Charlie advised clients to only ever wear one of these garments at a time. And never too regularly. Otherwise, you become “that guy.” And Charlie never wanted his clients to become that guy.

IS: What is the one clothing item that every customer of The Andover Shop must own?

Charlie did not want everyone to come out of The Andover Shop looking the same, but rather looking more like themselves. He did suggest that whatever you wore most often –– whether that was a suit, a blazer or tweed coat, or something more casual –– to purchase better versions of these that were well tailored.

IS: Are “ivy style” and “preppy style” the same? If not, how do they differ?

I’m going to turn to the wisdom of Bruce Boyer and Richard Press (the former CEO of J. Press and the grandson of founder Jacobi Press) to answer this one. From the turn of the last century until the Second World War, what we now call “ivy style” was the very private purview of a narrow swath of society –– those who went to college, before student loans made it more broadly accessible. The clothiers who served this clientele thus referred to this clothing as “collegiate” or “natural shoulder.” It only became known as “ivy style” later. My guess is that the term emerged during the GI Bill years, which enabled returning veterans to attend college at the government’s expense. This suddenly made possible social and professional mobility for a significant segment of young people, and the style long associated with the elite universities for a period of perhaps twenty years became the national style of the United States.

(That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about how ivy style got its name).

Ivy style began to decline in the 1960s. What had begun as a rebellious, youthful, fresh style –– something which stood in opposition to the more stiff and formal Victorian style –– began to have stodgy or elitist connotations among the general public. Another way of saying that is that a style which had long been apart from fashion cycles, had been in fashion for twenty years and suddenly fell out of fashion as the activism of the 60s was accompanied by its own set of clothing signifiers.

Preppy style, at least in my view, represented the revival (and reinterpretation) of aspects of ivy style. But it felt divorced from the institutions and underlying beliefs embodied in the earlier style. It echoed and rhymed with the original but did not copy it exactly. Nor was it meant to. The bright colors of the early 80s felt like a reaction to the black worn by the punk and experimental musicians of the late 70s. But the biggest differentiator from the original ivy style was, I think, the logos. The alligators and crocodiles and crocogators and polo ponies. This was not something we would have seen earlier, and nudged the style more toward ephemeral fashion than timeless style.

IS: Ivy style is very traditional but also evolves with changing times. How so?

I’m again thinking back to discussions with Charlie Davidson. With his stores at the edge of Harvard and Phillips Academy, he was constantly exposed to what young people were listening to and reading. What they aspired to. It was a happy exchange: he exposed young people to traditional style and young people kept him up-to-date and culturally relevant. He’s known for his love of jazz, but in his 80s and 90s, he was also listening to cutting-edge rap music.* This influenced the selection of products in the Shop. There was a playfulness to his selections that feels missing in many other clothiers. And it reflected his curiosity.

The jazz musicians of the 1950s and 60s remixed patrician clothing in ways that weren’t usually done. They wore the clothing of lawyers and professors but no one would mistake them for either one. In the beginning, the jazz musicians copied the ivy students and later, students across the United States copied the well-dressed jazz musicians.

As the culture changed, so too did the clothing.

When I looked back over their catalogs for the book research, it was fascinating to see the gradual evolution. There were periods of exuberant color and patterns, and those of understated tones. If I were to use a financial term to explain this, ivy style would be a low-beta stock –– one which moves less than usual in response to market changes. If fashion favors very tight clothing, perhaps the silhouette at traditional stores might become ever so slightly more trim. But just slightly. Ditto in the opposite direction.

Charlie was adamant about people not looking like a 1930s or 1950s caricature. Insistent that one’s clothing did not attract attention to itself. And if the clothing were completely unchanging, it would begin to look odd to the contemporary eye.

* I found myself channeling this aspect of Charlie recently when I had to explain who both Josephine Baker and Chappell Roan were to a young friend in university. There may have been some choice Swedish invective used.

IS: If you were to create a syllabus for a course on Ivy style, which authors and books would you include?

Oh, what a wonderful question! Everything by G. Bruce Boyer and Richard Press. And a few other books on style specifically, including:

Old Money by Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. (with whom I wrote The Master of Eliot House).

Class by Paul Fussell.

The Old Money Book by Byron Tully (and indeed, his blog at www.oldmoneybook.com)

Status and Culture by W. David Marx

A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Phineas embodies the nonchalance of ivy style.

But so much of style not about clothing. Elegance is an extension of humility, empathy, and compassion. Of a sincere and ongoing curiosity about the world and about other people. An extension of not just the books one has read, but of wearing their learning lightly. (I’m a terrible example of all this. A complete barbarian who spends most of his time alone, writing books, with the table manners of a feral raccoon).

IS: How do you see themes from your book intersecting with themes from other books like The Protestant Establishment by E. Digby Baltzell and Old Money by Nelson Aldrich?

Both are such wonderful books, and offer social context for what we’re discussing here in terms of material history. The Establishment-with-a-capital-E is not, and has never been, monolithic. There are old families with distinguished names but without family fortunes, newer fortunes without the social graces, many people somewhere in the middle.

Charlie and The Andover Shop served an unusual cross-section of consummate insiders and absolute outsiders –– Black jazz musicians in the years before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law. In the 1950s and 60s, there were many people who used their privilege on behalf of others, so that the country could live up to its ideals. (And along these lines, Nelson’s sister Frinde Aldrich Maher has written a memoir of her experiences as an activist in the 1960s that explores this theme of culture and counterculture, and how they intersect. I’ve had the privilege of seeing a galley of the book, and cannot recommend Class Encounters highly enough when it comes out later this year).

IS: Are you working on any new projects right now?

Thank you for asking. I just wrapped up the first leg of a book tour for The Master of Eliot House, with NYC events at The Armoury and J.Meuser. And in unerring belief in the power of coffee and gin-and-tonics, I’m currently doing two projects at once –– both due before the end of the year. The first is a yet-to-be-titled oral history of the legendary New York City clothier Chipp (also with G. Bruce Boyer and Richard Press), and an adaptation of one chapter of the Eliot House book into a film script. It’s a real-life Good Will Hunting. Surprisingly, there have already been a few offers to do table readings of the script, which is steeped in ivy style and all the ideas explored in Miles, Chet, Ralph & Charlie.