Some various images from the LIFE archives. First up are several shots from Bowdoin College in Maine. Above, 1952; below, 1957: No date on these three Bowdoin shots. The one below looks like a good starting point for a Ralph Lauren Home collection inspired by a ’50s college dorm room: Moving on, freshman class arriving at …
These undated LIFE Magazine photos of New York’s Gardiners Island have a kind of Slim Aarons quality to them. Of course, Slim Aarons never photographed the servants.
That’s one sharp-looking kid. Happy Easter to everyone.
Some undated shots of Martha’s Vineyard from the Life archives.
And with Sophia Loren, even better. Hope you enjoyed a fine spring day.
John Lindsay, mayor of New York from 1966 to 1973, personified the resolute confusion with which clubby, liberal WASPs faced the social upheaval of the era. Entering politics as a successful young lawyer, Lindsay represented the wealthy Upper East Side of Manhattan, known as the Silk Stocking District, in Congress from 1958 to 1965. While serving, …
Shot for Life Magazine by Alfred Eisenstaedt, the same photographer who brought us the wonderfully atmospheric shots of New Haven commuters. Top hats and morning coats by day, white dinner jackets at night.
This Esquire illustration was recently posted to Ivy’s Facebook group. It obviously has great visual appeal, but I found it especially interesting for the date: it was drawn in 1942. Now you can see the ’40s-era drape in the cut of the blazer and the trousers. And of course by the time the Ivy …
In 1954, after serving 44 months of a 10-year sentence, convicted perjurer and alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss set out to exonerate himself. Accusations against Hiss first surfaced in 1948, when Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had acted as a courier for an underground Communist network operating in Washington …
This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the greatest contributions by the state of Arkansas to the American way of life. In 1959, fraternity brothers at the University of Arkansas were suffering from a shortage of chairs. In protest, they took to “hunkering,” or squatting, or what you might call Ozark yoga. It’s …
This Life Magazine photo shoot is a bit of a mystery. First off, there’s no date, but it looks like the second half of the fifties. Next, it has evidently been mislabled “Miss Playgirl at Dartmouth.” Playboy began using the term “playmate” with the magazine’s second issue, making “playgirl” a typo. Playmate with Hef: Lucky …
In 1954, culture critic Russell Lynes published “The Tastemakers: The Shaping of American Popular Taste,” a lengthy meditation on the nature of taste, which Lynes believed had supplanted class as the new social hierarchy. Taste, Lynes argues, can be broken into three categories: Highbrow, Middlebrow and Lowbrow. Naturally the theory applies to clothing. A supplementary chart in …
Since prep school they told you the right schools, connections and career would bring the keys to the kingdom. They neglected to mention, however, that you’d be commuting to get there. The art of avoiding conversation: If you weren’t a smoker, you are now: By Stamford, this is the most crowded car: Let’s see: You …
One day at my local thrift shop I came across the 1997 book “All American” by Tommy Hilfiger. It only has a few pictures worth presenting, which is fine, since it only cost a buck. So let’s jump in. In the shot below there’s great contrast between the formal and informal, as a pinned club collar …
Lately we’ve been posting about Princeton and the Joe College years of the late ’20s. Now we combine the two with images from a Charleston-themed retro party held at Princeton in 1949. Arriving fashionably late in dad’s coonskin coat: This pair of twinkletoes were winners of the dance contest. Imagine what the losers looked like. …
Before 1894, when Yale adopted its special shade of blue (hex triplet #0F4D92), its school color was green. Kind of like the freshmen pictured above at a welcoming ceremony, 1964. Now that they’re bulldogs, it’s time to start looking the part. First, a college sweater (1959): Then a proper jacket. Freshman getting a sermon on …
Princeton University dance, 1960. The school didn’t admit women until ’69 — except on nights like this. According to Fitzgerald, Princeton men are “lazy, good-looking and aristocratic.” Whatever they’ve got, the chicks sure dig it: At least until the boys start getting fresh. Easy, tiger: The next day, the girls decide those Harvard sissies and Yale …
College fraternities of the past offered male bonding in a stylish setting. The photo above, plus the two below, are from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, 1949. Dig Joe College here in newsboy cap and varsity sweater: The chap in the bottom center providing the smoky atmosphere reminds us that for 400 years it was …
There was a time (1954, for example, as in these two LIFE Magazine photos) when you could visit J. Press in New Haven and have an old gent like this help you pick out a jacket. He may have been on commission, but he probably knew what looked good on you. You might even bump …