Recently a most unusual email landed at Ivy Style headquarters. Seems a new reader of the site has converted to trad and now wants to build an entire wardrobe and needs advice on what he should get. Naturally I had a few questions by way of clarification. He says by “entire” he pretty much means …
Sears called its Christmas catalog the “Wish Book.” It, along with other oversized glossy catalogs, came to American households every year heralding the Christmas buying season and giving children plenty of images to fantasize over. Studying them is a remembered rite of passage. In the days before gender neutrality, girls’ thoughts turned to Mrs. Beasley …
This weekend Main Streets across the US are full of ice and snow. But here’s something to warm your heart in whatever town you call home. A delightfully random assortment of heyday-era “Main Street” magazine ads and fashion shoots was posted to Ivy Style’s Facebook group, which you’ll find below. Peruse the images and then …
Time is a funny thing. It’s a lot easier to look backward than forward. Has something to do with the past being real — having actually happened — while the future is indeterminate and isn’t real until it becomes the present. Brooks Brothers is celebrating its bicentennial this year. It’s incredible, but not impossible, to …
Ivy-Style has just learned from a top-notch (and top drawer) source, who will be the subject of our next post, the identity of the creator of the late ’70s dorm-room poster “Are You a Preppie?” Long before he went on to helm such films as “Patch Adams,” “Ace Ventura” and “Liar, Liar,” Tom Shadyac created …
Greetings and Happy 2018 from Ivy Style, which is now in its tenth year! To think there was a time when I talked about our sophomore and junior years. That means we’re basically doing our medical residency at this point. Which leads us to the first post of the year, one I won’t call a post-mortem …
… and in with the new. Once again it’s been my pleasure and privilege to inform and entertain you for another year. And special thanks to all the wonderful contributors we’ve featured in 2017. Next year will mark Ivy Style’s 10th year, as we cruise towards 2,000 posts. Let’s all resolve to look, feel and …
As the year comes to a close, here’s some food for thought from a piece that originally posted in 2012. I’ve spent most of this year doing deep self-work in the effort to become a better person, reading psychology, and watching hundreds of hours of lectures and documentaries, including New Age stuff on the vibrational …
This post from 2013 is a nice follow-up to yesterday’s essay from a novice who’d recently discovered the style — or at least the name and sources of what he’d long been drawn to. Alas the voting plugin no longer works, but there were nearly 100 comments the first go-round. * * * How Ivy …
This young lawyer was a lost soul until he found his way to Ivy Style, the website and the clothing genre, and joined the online trad brotherhood. * * * Twenty-seventeen is the year I found my style. Prior to this year, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Although I am in a …
A handful of shots of Ivy Style readers celebrating the holiday in their finery. Merry Christmas to all!
Over the course of nearly ten years, Ivy Style has received some 45,000 comments. According to a reader yesterday, the following is the best — what’s more, it’s the best comment on the entire Internet. I suppose it depends where your interests lie. Nevertheless, this lengthy comment in response to Charlottesville’s essay on the 500th …
At some point in the 1980s, I was working in Manhattan and overheard a conversation between two fellows from another borough discussing one of my business associates, whose unlikely given name was Win, possibly short for Winston. “Win? Who knows anybody named Win?” asked the first. The other guy noted that he had discovered this …
Here’s an Ivy Style reader busting out his polo coat with, he admitted, “lapels wide enough to land a plane on.” Note the timeless four-ingredient combo of polo coat, blazer, OCBD and Argyll & Sutherland tie, here rendered as a bow. Now how about what’s unseen: namely belt, trouser, sock and shoe? What should the …
A reader sent me these three photos illustrating the rapid change in dress and grooming on campus beginning in 1967. These shots are of our friends up north at the University of Alberta, and feature the same club seen over three academic years. Above is the year ’67-’68. Below, ’68-’69: And finally, with barbers and …
As a longtime admirer of Jack Carlson’s “cryptic menswear brand” Rowing Blazers, I felt a pang of injustice when his New York pop-up emerged in October. When would Boston, the seat of the Head of the Charles itself, receive its turn? Turns out I didn’t have to wait too long. At the start of the …
Today, on the first day of Hanukkah 2017, we revisit one of Ivy Style’s top posts, CC’s 2011 interview with Richard Press, which was reprinted in the book accompanying the MFIT “Ivy Style” exhibit. Chag Sameach! * * * For years Richard Press would leave work at the J. Press store in New York …
‘Tis the season for holiday parties, culminating in the biggest one of the year: New Year’s Eve. So if you’re the kind of die-hard insouciant prep who wears his everyday white (or pink) oxford buttondown with black tie, and who can’t bear to be shod in anything but penny loafers, Bass might have just the …
J. Press just got in a pair of wonderful gifts for the Yalie in your life, with a nifty connection to Ivy Style. The artist — Deborah Fowler Greenwood — is the mother of our very own Millennial Fogey DCG! The prints feature the NYC Yale Club as well as mascot Handsome Dan, are part …