My favorite story about presidential valets (grammar note before you get your blood pressure up, “presidential” is only capitalized when it is part of a formal title, like the name of an event, like Presidential Inauguration – it is not a proper noun unto itself so in this usage, small p – which reminds me, …
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Ivy is a fashion born of a mindset manifested in a lifestyle. There are values attached: dignity, the value and power of thought, ethics, hard work, aesthetics, appreciation of all things classic, and the dogged pursuit of excellence. While Ivy evolves (I haven’t worn socks since Easter) the values don’t. If you are a …
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Like many people who work in Washington DC, I am a transplant. However, I don’t work for a congressman or a law firm. I walk a foot beat in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods as a member of the Metropolitan Police Department. I grew up on the South Shore of Massachusetts and credit my …
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Although Brooks Brothers didn’t officially launch a full women’s department in its flagship store until 1976, young American women had been infiltrating the bastion of sartorial masculinity for quite some time. Since launching its pink shirt for women in 1949, Brooks had begrudgingly acknowledged the large number of females who wanted to wear the brand. …
With this post Ivy-Style brought our 2010 Preppy Week to a close, which we herein revisit for some hearty chuckles. Click here to have the Dead Kennedys’ “Terminal Preppie” play in another browser window as you rejoice in the demise of Biff and Muffy. Every trend carries within it the seed of its own negation. …
“If one more person comes in here and asks for Bass Weejuns, I think I’ll scream,” says an Atlanta saleswoman in a 1980 article from Time Magazine. A more muted but equally frustrated voice can be heard from a Time writer in an article several months later while writing about New York’s soon-to-be-closed Biltmore Hotel: …
It’s been nine years since the publication of a mysterious Japanese picture book called “Take Ivy.” The following is our 2010 interview with Wes Del Val, vice president and associate publisher at powerHouse Books, on how the viral phenomenon came about. * * * IS: “Take Ivy” isn’t due to come out for another month, …
I’ve previously presented two articles on Brooks Brothers from the troubled Marks & Spencer era. This one, from four decades earlier, was featured in the September, 1950 issue of the Esquire-owned digest Coronet, and also reflects a time of corporate management change. In 1946 Brooks Brothers was bought by the Washington, DC department store known …
The College Man By Albert J. Beveridge From ‘The Young Man And The World” Go to college. Go to the best possible college for you. Patiently hold on through the sternest discipline you can stand, until the course is completed. It will not be fatal to your success if you do not go; but you …
Last month Mad Magazine announced it would cease publication after 67 years. No surprise: humor is dead. Here’s a piece from the olden days, when Mad sought fit to spoof the advertising men of Madison Avenue.
I found this post sitting on Ivy Style’s server, never published. The only note is that it dates from a 1933 issue of Apparel Arts. * * * The word “collegiate,” now seldom used in speaking of college men, is altogether foreign to its famous meaning of some eight years ago, when the raccoon coat, …
When it comes to starting fashion trends, there’s Princeton and then there’s every other school. From the three-button suit to its namesake haircut, Princeton has popularized such menswear staples as Norfolk jackets, raccoon coats, tweed sport coats, rep ties, spectator shoes, khaki pants and Shetland sweaters. Princeton’s sartorial influence has been dulled by time, but …
What was it like for a public-school kid from nowhere to go to an Ivy League school during the heyday? Sure, you got to wear cool clothes (once you figured out what they were), but even that was fraught with anxiety. At least it was for Timothy Thompson, whose first semester at Yale was full of …