Men everywhere try to stand out. But you remain One step ahead. You are a true real man of genius. This Bud light is for you
Thank you, Matthew Reichlin over at the FB Group. I know, you don’t like FB. You should join just for this group. In fact, if you click on the picture…
That’s Maria Popova. She has an interview policy I do not understand. I understand asking for donations for your site, the thought has occurred. But what I do not get is refusing to do interviews to drive traffic to your site so that you could attract advertisers and not ask your readers for money. That said, her website…
… well, okay, I don’t get this either. It used to be called Brain Pickings, and I am sure some of you know of it. It is fantastic. Tons of thought goes into it, she is a great writer and an even better curator, there are serious gems in there for the thinking person. But then she changed the name to The Marginalian, and says that the name Brain Pickings was “unbearable.” You do something for 15 years you have pretty much disqualified it as unbearable. Yes?
Still, a great website. Worth your time. She won’t do an interview. I would love her perspective on our work here. But alas. Click on the photo.
Have a great weekend, I am doing another post on Saturday so if you are out at a dive bar after doing errands like my hero John Sutter in The Gold Coast, pull your phone out and have a look.
JB
This post is so random I do not even know what it means. Plus her webpage is hot garbage. And not IVy at all
How hard is this? One is an historic image of one of the first button down collar shirts. I.V.Y. The second is one of the most incisive websites covering literature, art, poetry, and notebooks. What’s not Ivy about that? – JB
The Bud Light “Real Men of Genius” ad reference gave me all the nostalgic feels. Trying to understand what is being said in the rest of this post literally gave me a headache.
Hi Paul. Just hang with the nostalgia today then. 🙂 – JB
Tell me I’m the only one who tried to zoom in and figure out that tattoo.
Guilty. – JB
Nice hands.
Ms. Popova’s site looks fascinating on a quick scan. I’ll have to read more to get the full gist of what it’s got going on. Thanks for pointing the way to another quite interesting (and yes, in my view, Ivy,) corner of the Internet.
Somehow, the look of a button-down collar unbuttoned and flapping in the breeze looks sloppy to me. I know it’s meant to look casual and dégagé (à la David Hemmings in Blow Up), but the buttons seem lonely sitting there out in the open, and the button holes in the collar seem conspicuous and wanting. I’m not a super buttoned-up kind of person, but I can’t bring myself to leave the OCBD buttons unbuttoned at any point. (Pun just discovered upon rereading, but I’ll say totally intended.)
Have experimented with the aforementioned, I agree with you. It is like having a gift certificate to the best home cooked meal and instead doing drive through. – JB
@TomTom:
Quote from Maria Popova:
“I moved to LA–which I really resented more than anyone’s ever resented a city in the history of resenting cities. And now I’m finally in New York, and I’m here to stay.”
That sure sounds Ivy to me.
Yep. – JB
The guy in the first picture refuses to button his collar, because that is not how it was done 70 years ago.
In the smaller picture he decided to get with the times, and as you can see from the phone, he sent his nephew a picture via Snapchat.
There’s a long (well, everything’s relative) history of the unbuttoned button as a sign of what amounts to insouciance. Other phrases have been used, including one that makes a lot of sense: “studied nonchalance.”
Boyer is on the right track with this look, as confusing and/or offensive as it may to some. He, mildly dandyish, understands this vibe really well–and knows how to pull it off. Consider ‘working buttons’ on your sport jacket sleeves– buttons that remained unbuttoned. Consider the three-button jacket: two of the three remain– yep, unbuttoned.
It’s a natty, jaunty look that will leave some, well, to repeat, confused. Even offended (“An unbuttoned button? Who does he think he is?”). In a world filled with men who don’t care about (a sense of) style at all, a bit of playful-yet-considered jauntiness is most welcome.
I’ve tried that out of necessity a couple of times. The chinese shirt collars, too short to begin with, shrink so much that it looks dorky either way.
Since I’ve decided never to post a reply on the FB site, here’s some interesting info about Herzfeld:
http://lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/2012/09/h-herzfeld-manhattan-haberdashery-to.html