Lately we’ve been talking about the year 1954 as an arbitrary starting point for the Ivy heyday. Both LIFE Magazine and Playboy ran big stories on the look that year, and Miles Davis is believed to have first donned Ivy duds about that time, serving as an example of the many guys who would become …
Last week the website Cool Material asked me to contribute to its “Wear This” series and pull together an outfit based on stuff currently on retail shelves. The result is illustrative of how I’ve been dressing lately: a foundation of traditional items spiced with stylish accessories that give off — to me, at least — …
Last week Ivy-Style.com presented Julien Dedman’s 1954 Playboy article on Brooks Brothers. In this post, Rebecca C. Tuite, whose book on Seven Sisters style is forthcoming, examines the author’s parody of life at Yale. * * * “Yale men everywhere join in one brotherhood at eventide to remember the golden days of yesteryear and the …
We continue our series of related posts with these images by Nina Deen, the photographer who shot the 1954 LIFE Magazine article “The Ivy Look Heads Across US.” These photos, which didn’t make the print edition, surfaced several years ago when LIFE put its archives on Google, and were taken in J. Press’ New Haven …
We just got a note from Kamakura Shirts saying that it has just launched an oxford campaign in celebration of its newly operational e-commerce store, as well as its fully stocked oxford-cloth buttondown collection. Says our contact, “Unfortunately we did not have enough of them for a long time, and we are afraid if we …
Yesterday Allen Edmonds contacted me with a sneak peek at a survey they just completed. It is, as you’d expect, all about shoes, with the most interesting parts pertaining to the women who were surveyed. First off, the women all had incomes between $50,000-$200,000, and while there were only about 500 of them, Allen Edmonds …
Gentleman’s Gazette just published a great story on the history of madras. There’s much on the origins of the fabric in India, but even more interesting is Sven Raphael Schneider’s recap of the bleeding madras damage control at midcentury, when irate consumers were quickly educated that authentic madras was “guaranteed to bleed.” According to Schneider, …
Do kids still use the term “dope” to describe something cool? Evidently they do, and they’ll even use it to describe stodgy ol’ Brooks Brothers. If you’ve puzzled over who exactly is the target customer for Brooks’ more youthful offerings, I think we’ve found the answer. This week a Cornell-bound teen wrote a piece for his …
The colors of the American flag are almost the same as the traditional choices of oxford-cloth buttondowns. After all, who the heck wears yellow? And so on this Fourth of July Ivy Style bids you Happy Independence Day with this festive “fun” shirt from Brooks Brothers, which is almost as old as America itself. Let the …
Besides the obvious things like career and family, the two things for me that make life worth living are art and sport. During the winter I’m more focused on the art side (typically concerts), while in the summer I like to play outdoors. So when Birchbox, a company that introduces you to new stuff via …
Last summer saw the launch of a new US-made shirt company out of Massachusetts called Concord Button Downs. The line began with plaids, but has since focused on oxford cloth in both solids and stripes, including pink. “Our shirts attempt to replicate the OCBDs many men wore in the ’50s and ’60s,” says founder Daniel …
The Finnish menswear site Keikari recently profiled David Mercer of Mercer & Sons, maker of traditional buttondown oxfords. David talks about life, the shirt business, and clothing that’s built to last: I believe strongly that clothes you buy should last forever. I wear old Peal & Co. shoes I bought in the ’60s and ’70s, …
Over the past few years, the Ivy Trendwatch has helped bring scholarly attention to the clothing and social customs of college men during the heyday of the Ivy League Look. “Take Ivy” shined an outsider’s lens on college life in the mid-’60s with a specific eye for what men were wearing. Then came the MFIT …
In the shadow of a hulking cruise ship, Warehouse No. 1 sits nondescriptly on the West Indian Company dock on the island of St. Thomas. Ignored by most vacationers in search of duty-free bargains, it’s nevertheless a magnet for those accidental tourists lured by the mysterious scent that wafts from the building, or who misunderstand …
Update, 7 June, 11:55 AM: Camel City Dispatch has the latest minor developments on the story. Update, 4 June, 10:23 AM: WRAL has pressed Representative Holloway on the WASP 101 story, who has said he’s just another man in a Brooks Brothers tie: Monday night, offered the chance to reconsider his denial, Holloway declined. “I’ve …
Last night Ivy-Style.com was informed of strange similarities between “Richard,” the author of the WASP 101 blog (above) and Bryan R. Holloway (below), who is serving his fifth term as a Republican state representative of the 91st district in North Carolina. Thirty-five-year-old Holloway is the son of a chicken farmer and teacher’s assistant and is …
Ivy Style was recently given an exclusive peek at a new startup shirt brand from the UK intent on making bleeding madras shirts the old-fashioned way. In Yankee dollars, Leith Clothing‘s shirts come out to about $140, plus about $20 in shipping, so they’re not the most viable option, save for those with money to …
Although I recently posted a pink Brooks Brothers fun shirt I acquired, I should clarify that it’s for the dog days of summer. This spring, while others were quick on the draw with their pastels, I’ve been clad in the sober Ivy colors of olive and gray, snazzed up with a patterned belt. For example, …
Following hard upon the debut of Red Fleece is today’s Brooks mailer, which plugs a new, possibly temporary, product category called “Retro Style.” The category consists of standard Brooks items, but it’s interesting to see which items Brooks chose to group together, as well as its invocation of the word “retro,” which will sound cool …