Last Friday I had the pleasure of sitting next to man-of-the-moment Jack Carlson (author of “Rowing Blazers” and fresh off his packed party at Polo) at the National Arts Club. We were watching slideshow presentations on preppy and Seven Sisters style from Jeffrey Banks and Rebecca Tuite. Meanwhile, unassuming in a corner of the hall, …
The first day of fall corresponded with the first Christmas pitch to hit my inbox. It was from the direct-to-consumer needlepoint accessory purveyor Tucker Blair. Their soft-sell advertisement announced that custom monogramed items need to be order by Tuesday, September 30th, for guaranteed holiday delivery. For those who like to see how things are made, …
I brought my camera to the “Rowing Blazers” party last night at the new Polo flagship on Fifth Avenue, but the event was so packed taking pictures was too much trouble. That is until a certain bespectacled gentleman passed by, none other than Larry from The Andover Shop, who was down from Cambridge and looking …
Longtime Ivy Style supporter Jack Donnelly was founded by a young entrepeneur with the crazy dream of making khakis in America. “It’s something I believe in and have sunk my entire life into for the last five years,” says founder Gregg Donnelly. Now he’s heading into stage two of his endeavor with a Kickstarter …
I spent a summer at Cal doing a French intensive. It’s the kind of crash-course where you walk in on the first day and don’t hear a word of English eight hours a day for the next 10 weeks (that’s right, they teach you French in French). By the end of the summer you can …
At a party you never want to be the first to arrive nor the last to leave, though someone inevitably must be. Dorm life (which is kind of like an endless party) is no different. This young chap is either an eager beaver at the start of the year, or a sentimental sap waxing contemplative …
A few weeks short of our sixth anniversary, Ivy-Style.com has reached blog post number 1,000. For your brain-teasing entertainment, we have created a test to see how well you’ve been paying attention for the past 999 posts. Click here for a larger file of the crossword above, drag it to your desktop, enlarge if needed, …
Sharpen your pencils. Or if you’re really bold, use a pen. And get a good night’s sleep. Or pull an all-nighter reading the previous 999 blog posts. You’ll also need access to a printer. Post number 1,000 goes live Monday morning. — CC & CS
The name James M. Brown III may not be familiar to you, but every trad web surfer knows his face, the face of an undergraduate of 60 years ago. Brown is pictured above in a shot from LIFE Magazine’s 1954 article “The Ivy Look Heads Across US,” which was much seen when the LIFE archives …
Suiting up Eli frosh in the heyday was do or die for New Haven clothiers. Salesmen at J. Press were instructed by my dad Paul Press (front right) to memorize the Yale Freshman Blue Book. He quizzed them daily about dorm addresses, hometowns and secondary schools the book provided. Freshmen lived in seven ancient dormitories …
We continue our back-to-school celebrations with another gallery of vintage advertisements from college papers. Most interesting are those from Harvey Ltd. (seen above and below), which catered to the Brown community. “There is a certain style of clothing,” reads the copy in one ad, “which distinguishes the Ivy Leaguer from all other college men.” And …
Starting today Ivy Style celebrates the back-to-school season. We’ll start over the weekend with vintage ads from college papers welcoming freshmen and telling them where to get correct clothes. And next week you’ll get entertaining reads on the heyday from all of us. — CC, CS & RVP
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the declining demand for traditional-fit shirts at Brooks Brothers, I think we should take a sampling of the fit preference of Ivy Style readers. It occurred to me, though, that there is likely a correlation between fit preference, age and physique. Therefore, while this is hardly scientific, the …
Today Brooks Brothers is running an online campaign for its buttondown “polo” collar shirts. The tagline is “the shirt that changed history” (it’s also running as “a shirt that changed history”). Introduced in 1896, within a couple of decades it was already the default shirt for style-setting college men in the Northeast, and on places …
Like most retailers, Brooks Brothers is having a Labor Day Weekend sale. It’s a great time to take advantage of generous discounts, including on tan suits, which are currently half off. The president was just seen heading over to stock up on them: (Note: this is my second time posting on the prez this week. …
Ivy Style is approaching a milestone: We’re not only about to reach the end of our sixth year of publishing, we’re in countdown phase to our 1,000th post. Excluding this post, in 10 more we’ll reach number 1,000, for which we promise something special, the likes of which has never been seen before in the …
August 28th seems like an odd day of the year to dedicate to the wearing of bow ties. It’s summer, when many are trying to avoid ties if at all possible. And everyone’s preparing for the long weekend, if not already somewhere coastal or tropical. Yet tomorrow is indeed National Bow Tie Day. Consider this …
Last week something new shook the foundations of the sedate community of Tradsville — a rockin’ blues band called The Hook Vents. The coolest thing about the band and their tune “Soft Shoulder Shuffle” is that the musicians were never in the recording studio together. They simply laid down their tracks individuallly and emailed them …
It helps to be old enough to look dignified.