Young men who came of age during the heyday of the Ivy League Look could largely rely on their peers for sartorial guidance.

By the ’80s, things were much different, and the budding man of style had to rely increasingly on books, magazines and movies.

But today’s young men, who’ve never known life without the Internet, are positioned to be more precociously informed about clothes and style than any generation before.

Case in point: New Orleans high school student Robert I. Brown.

I discovered Brown’s blog while performing a Google Image search for Clark’s Desert Boots (turns out they’re his favorite shoe). At the top of his home page is a shot of Brown wearing a madras jacket, white oxford-cloth buttondown, glasses, and sporting a trim haircut. He looks simultaneously early ’60s and yet timeless and modern. Another shot shows Brown in a necktie and Fair Isle sweater vest.

As I browsed his blog, I discovered the tastes of a man much older: Fred Astaire and Cary Grant films, James Bond, exotic sports cars, The Rat Pack, “Mad Men,” and books on gentlemanly style and deportment are just a few of Brown’s interests.

And as if being a teenager and running a style blog weren’t impressive enough, naming it after himself — Robert I. Brown Style — is both an admirable assertion of impetuous youth and a bold stroke of confidence considering the number of bloggers three times Brown’s age who insist on being pusillanimously anonymous.

We began corresponding, and that’s when Brown really blew me away. No juvenile IM-speak in his missives: Brown’s correspondence, like his blog posts, is pithy and direct with a mastery of punctuation. My grandfather used to say, parenthetically, that you can tell a lot about a man from his punctuation. I’ve no doubt in his senior yearbook Brown will be voted “Most Likely To Become Editor of GQ.”

Brown describes his style as “simple elegance and preppy,” adding, “I like to wear Ivy garments because they make me feel a part of this tradition and legacy that will never go out of style. It’s timeless. Even though I’m only 16 years, I’m a bit of an old soul.”

You’ll hear more from Brown in his own words in an upcoming post. — CC

Thanks to Valetmag.com for picking up this post.

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