From Brooks Brothers to Ralph Lauren

By Dan Covell

Devotees of this space might recall pieces from last year written by my brother and me about the power of the Brooks Brothers brand in the Ivy Style universe. I was reminded of this again as I continued my research into Ivy League football souvenir programs at a recent revisit to the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscripts Library on campus at Princeton.

Campus was quiet – the majority of the student body yet to return from holiday break – and the grounds were especially picturesque since the region had experienced a light coating of snow a few days earlier that the cold weather had kept from melting away. And it was cold – not just central New Jersey cold, but legitimate cold – with temperatures around 20 degrees and brisk north winds making 20 feel like 0. I was prepared for the conditions on the 10-minute walk to Mudd from the newly opened Graduate Hotel on the corner of Chambers and Nassau streets, having donned my dark orange J. Press wide-wale cords, a brownish-orange J. Press “Presstige” three-button sport coat of Robert Noble cloth, a black and grey striped scarf, and a light tan wool flat cap. Underneath was a white OCBD with black flecks and a Paul Stuart black-orange-gold patterned silk tie. I’m very much a “when in Rome” dresser when visiting college campuses, often adopting the school’s colors in a subtle bit of homage; I had even worn an orange J. Press shaggy dog sweater and a black wool Borsalino flat cap I bought in Milan on the three-plus hour drive down from Connecticut.

I had the former outfit out sans scarf and hat as I came down to the lobby, and another patron, holding a cardboard tray full of beverages from the coffee bar and clad head to toe in Princeton licensed gear, spotted me and blurted out, “I want those pants!” “You can’t have them, I’m wearing them,” I replied with a smile. We chatted a bit as we got on the elevator, and I asked, “Does anyone here ever get tired of black and orange?” (I like the colors but have wondered if I might feel differently if I was immersed in it every day) “No way, man! We love it! Loud and proud!” Loud indeed. We parted ways and I wondered what he was like after he had his morning coffee.

I had been to the Mudd Library – an unassuming red brick-and-glass, low-budget International Style rectangle on the northeast corner of campus – the in the Fall of ’23, and once I arrived the helpful staff got me situated and looking at materials in short order. The original plan for this research was to study and to compare the articulation and meaning of the programs’ cover art, but there’s much more to these publications, including articles explaining the sport in these formative years, predictions on the day’s outcome, player photos and, yes, advertisements, many for men’s clothiers. And that’s when Brooks Brothers reappeared in the very first program I looked at.

A year or so ago, I had come upon the first BB ad in the 1897 Yale-Princeton game program, which touted the firm’s new location at 346 Madison Avenue – “only a step from Grand Central.” As I wrote last year, the building is still there, with “BROOKS BROTHERS” inscribed above the 44th Street entrance, but sadly the company is long gone.

But in this library visit I was looking further back, to the more formative years of Ivy football, and BB was there, too. To wit:

Thanksgiving Day, 1891: Yale-Princeton, 19-0 Yale win before a then all-time record crowd of 40,000, played at New York City’s Manhattan Field at 155th Street and 8th Avenue, the future site of the Polo Grounds. A full-page ad on the back cover of the game program touted BB’s Broadway and 22nd Street location, about seven miles south of the game’s site and near where the Flatiron Building is today. A handy location, the ad told us, “one block from Madison Square … convenient to the leading hotels … and accessible to the principal railways stations in New York and vicinity,” since Midtown had not yet become the haunt of the major retailers who would follow the city’s steady northward growth. This ad, which also featured a small rendering of the store, promoted BB’s fall and winter product lines, including such apparel as “Vicunas” (odd jackets from a type of Scottish wool, I’m told) and “rough and smooth-faced Cheviots (odd jackets from another Scottish wool) in colors and mixtures,” as well as “overcoats of Beavers, Meltons, Kerseys, wool and silk lined.” The goods used, the reader is told, are made “almost without exception, (from) imported materials of the higher grades – the cut is carefully revised each season to keep pace with every change in style.”

Two years prior, when the Yale-Princeton game, heralded as “The final championship game of football,” took place at Berkely Oval in the Bronx, a BB full-page ad ran on the inside back cover. The ad heralded “ready made and made to order … foreign suitings and trouserings,” including “double-breasted sack suits of rough and smooth faced cheviots.” “In the cutting and making up of our garments,” the reader was informed, “we exercise particular care to avoid the stiffness and awkwardness of appearance which so frequently characterizes ready made clothing.” Also available were “a great variety of English neckwear, including the new color popular just at present on London” – What could it be? Should we stop by and see for ourselves? – and hats of the “best quality and in the most correct shapes.” Again, what might those shapes be?

November 11, 1899: At Manhattan Field, Princeton versus the U.S. Industrial School of Carlisle, Pennsylvania – that notorious school for Native-American students, the team led by head coach Glenn “Pop” Warner (Jim Thorpe would come along in five years); a 12-0 Tigers win in front of 8,000 fans. A full-page BB ad ran in the middle of the program. “We beg to call attention at this time,” pardoned the ad, “to our heavy-weight flannels and tweeds, as well as all other apparel and accessories for Riding, Driving, Golfing, etc., etc.” Specific items listed included sandowns (a long formal overcoat), Scotch long hose and puttees, highland gaiters, caddy bags and leather and wicker goods, and an offer that “a catalogue will furnish details impossible to enumerate here.”

November 16, 1901: Yale-Princeton at New Haven’s Yale Field (a 12-0 Bulldogs win, attendance 19,000). The games were no longer played at neutral sites in New York, but BB still sought to reach the game’s fans in Connecticut and New Jersey. A full-page inside ad included a small photograph of BB’s leather and wicker bags, suitcases and portmanteaux, and a small drawing of an automobile with a female rider and a small bulldog, meant to feature BB’s new line of automobile clothing, including leather suits, dust coats, gauntlets, masks, goggles, and “automobile liveries,” a harbinger indeed of the fast-approaching auto age. The ad also promoted Norfolk and Chester Jackets for “lounging purposes” and “all garments and accessories for golfing, tennis, riding, shooting, yachting, polo and the hunt.”

November 14, 1903: Yale-Princeton at Yale Field (a 11-6 Princeton win, attendance 30,000). A full-page inside ad promoting “ready made overcoats, rain-coats of specially prepared tweeds and coverts, “comfortable – because porous, no stiffness, no odor.” “Each of our overcoats is separately cut by hand. The draping and making are entrusted to work-people of the highest class. Many of the fabrics are controlled by us.” The ad also listed luncheon and tea baskets – how better to prepare for and to enjoy tailgating?

November 15, 1913: Princeton-Yale at Yale Field, a 3-3 tie. A full-page ad in middle of the program using the now well-known “Brooks Brothers” cursive word mark, featuring two drawings – one of a man in riding attire, the other in overcoat, gloves and bowler. The ad touted the typical items plus “imported novelties in leather and silver for men’s Christmas gifts”; the ad also announced a branch store in Boston at 149 Tremont Street – opposite the Boston Common just around the block from the Massachusetts State House – and that representatives were scheduled to visit the Yale and Princeton campuses “every fortnight.”

November 18, 1916: Yale-Princeton at Palmer Memorial Stadium on the Princeton campus (a 10-0 Yale win, attendance 42,000). A full-page inside ad and the first ad since the store’s move to 465 Madison Avenue, with a photo of the new digs without much else around it as the neighborhood was not yet fully realized. The ad also included the iconic golden fleece logo, as well as another mark, a rounded triangular logo featuring the founding date, backwards and forwards letter B’s separated by a t-shaped mark, all in art nouveau lettering. The ad promoted items for “week end visits or football games by motor or train,” specific items featured included fur and wool robes, shawls and mauds (a shawl of grey wool plaid worn in Scotland), as well as an ad tracking offer that “a copy of our new illustrated catalogue containing more than one hundred photographic plates will be mailed to anyone mentioning the YALE-PRINCETON FOOTBALL PROGRAMME.” The ad also mentioned a branch store at 220 Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island. Today that site is located right next to the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

November 10, 1923: Harvard versus Princeton at Palmer, a 5-0 Crimson win. A full-page ad very similar to the 1916 version, but alerting readers that “our representative will be at the Nassau Inn December 7, 8,” and that a new Boston location, down the street from the old one, at the corner of Tremont and Boylston.
After coming upon each ad, I’d snap a pic on my phone and text it to my brother, the former BB salesperson and fellow Ivy Style enthusiast, eight hours ahead and halfway around the world. In a matter of minutes, I get a response. “Rough and smooth-faced Cheviots. I never knew I wanted one of each until now.” “Deepen your supply of puttees and Highland gaiters.” “Fancy an Ulster for your outerwear rotation?”

After about three hours in the Mudd reading room, I’d seen what I’d come to see, thanked the staff and packed up and headed back across campus, west toward University Place, then north to Nassau Street. As I walked, I thought about BB’s presence in the programs, and how it made sense. Of course, college football’s orbit up until the 1930s was an Ivy-dominated universe, and one culturally and geographically in synch with BB’s marketing plans. Football historian Michael Oriard notes that football’s “tremendous growth as a spectator sport … led to increased coverage … (and) by the end of the 1880s it has become the premier American spectator sport in its season with an audience extending into the middle classes.” So, BB was correct in trying to reach this burgeoning demographic segment by using game programs, to communicate that BB had locations near its key customers, and to offer specific types of products for the season and for attending games, with a full array of formal, dress and sportswear. BB also emphasized comfort and style while responding to changes in trends with the latest in fashions and materials from abroad.

As I reached the corner of University and Nassau, I then thought about the some of the others local stores back then I had also seen in the Princeton programs. In the heyday of Ivy Style, Nassau Street boasted Douglas Mac David, which featured clothing by Rogers Peet and others, as well as the well-regarded Langrock. A few years back, Christopher Sharp wrote in this space, citing a 1973 piece from the Princeton Alumni Weekly claiming that Langrock was the town’s “oldest and most successful men’s clothing store … a curious mix of effete snobbery, highbrow intellectualism, and small town warmth and personal service that remained singularly unruffled by the sweeping sartorial changes occurring about it.” Sharp notes that in 1960 the store was thriving (another piece on this site, by G. Bruce Boyer, discusses with reverence Langrock’s physical store, staffing and product mix), but by ’73 undergrads eschewed it. Still, Langrock was surviving and employed a staff of 30, including 12 tailors, but by 1985, the store had consolidated into a section of the Princeton University campus store from its last location at 16 Nassau Street. Now it is gone entirely.

BB once had a store on Palmer Square, the retail quadrant presided over by the Nassau Inn, but no longer does. Today one can find a J. Crew, a Faherty, a J. McLaughlin, a Lilly Pulitzer, a Lululemon and a Ralph Lauren. I had already passed but hadn’t entered the RL shop, located directly across Nassau Street from the Holder Hall dormitory, in the same general vicinity as the dearly departed Mac David and Langrock. My own shopping mindset is such that I usually only enter stores on a specific mission, to buy a particular item I had decided I needed or wanted – mostly the latter – ahead of time. Seldom do I just drop into stores and simply browse. The third time I passed RL, I spotted a woman’s sweater in the display window and thought it might be a nice early birthday gift for my spouse.

With a goal now in mind, I entered the store. The layout of RL stores placed in affluent small towns such as Princeton seems to be much the same – the one in New Canaan, Connecticut, I visited when we lived there mostly mirrored this one. Adorned with white wood paneling both inside and on the store’s front, a series of high-ceilinged rooms connected by passageways with multiple shelves along the walls and dark wood tables displaying merchandise. The rooms were organized by men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing, with the familiar Polo branded items taking prime daily space near the entrance and the register. Even RL’s discount “factory” stores I had visited were similar in layout, structured just so to maintain RL’s brand equity.

The store was doing a pretty good business for a Friday midday. I was greeted by a staff person by the door, then I headed to the display I’d seen from the street, but to do so I had to pass the necktie display, something which I can never pass up without at least a cursory review. Most of the items were typical RL fare – reps and emblematics – but there was one that stood out. Although a fairly standard width – just over three inches at the base – the tail of the tie fanned out a bit at the end. A nice touch. The material was a rough silk weave of alternating two-inch combinations of stripes varying in width, going from navy and gold, to dark orange, olive and maroon, and back to navy. The dark orange was the same color as the J. Press cords I was wearing. If I’d had to guess I would have picked it as a Paul Stuart. I looked at the price, because price always matters: $125. I’d always felt RL was somewhat overpriced for what one got, but this seemed in the ballpark for ties I’d bought at other similar vendors. Sold.

Tie in hand, I made my way to another part of the store to look at the women’s sweaters, when the sales staff member I passed offered, “Those are great. It’s a new item we’re offering. It’s a renewed take on a classic style.” I paused, smiled, and said, “Isn’t that the same for everything in the store?” I could tell he was taken aback, so I backpedaled a bit and said something about how much I liked the brand, then went to find the sweater.

After I made my purchases and thanked the staff, it dawned on me that a few days earlier Ralph Lauren had become the first-ever fashion designer to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The RL press release celebrating the event noted that Lauren’s contributions as “a visionary fashion designer, trailblazing entrepreneur, innovative business leader and dedicated philanthropist” were the basis for the honor. In the photo with President Joe Biden, Lauren is wearing an ensemble he could have purchased from Langrock in 1960 – white shirt, black necktie, grey herringbone two-button jacket, black trousers. I will say the blue ribbon and gold and blue medal did pop nicely against his outfit.

Lauren, a native of the Bronx, had made his bones with neckties, the press release reminded us, and opined that Lauren had “redefined American style. His story is a profound testament to the boundless possibilities of creativity, determination, and the American Dream.”

About The Author

Dan Covell is a professor of sport management in the College of Business at Western New England University. He graduated from the Northfield Mount Hermon School in 1982 and earned his undergraduate degree in Studio Art from Bowdoin College in 1986 (where he also lettered in football). Much of Covell’s academic research focuses on historical elements of intercollegiate athletics, which often circles back to the Ivy League. The writing for this space is a happy derivative of this work, combined with other popular culture elements he finds of interest. Amongst his prized possessions is the tie he wore for his prep school yearbook picture, a wool Royal Stewart tartan purchased from the L.L. Bean store in Freeport in 1980.