The following is an excerpt from Alison Lurie‘s 1981 book “The Language of Clothes,” a fascinating study of the semiotics of clothing. Lurie taught English for many years at Cornell. The book includes a section called “Social Conformity: The Preppie Look.” In it Lurie calls the prep look the descendent of ’50s Ivy League leisure …
After a run of posts devoted to IBM and its ultra-stern dress policy — in which a faux pas in tassel loafers could ruin your chance of becoming a middle manager — we are bringing back a celebration we did many years ago by officially declaring it Squaresville Appreciation Month. Throughout the rest of June …
Although Fortune magazine proclaimed him the most successful capitalist in history, Thomas Watson, Jr. was no pinstriped Chipp-wearing egomaniac. In fact, the IBM president was quite the opposite: a consummate gentleman who once said, “Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous — not just to some people in some circumstances — …
The corporate conformists take a curtain call. Let us peer once again into the offices of International Business Machines, circa 1962. The shots almost have a sci-fi vibe to them. I love the contrast between the vintage computers and simple, formal dress. Today’s web start-ups and flip-flops just aren’t the same. Just because you have …
In keeping with the theme of our last post, Ivy-Style presents the following photo spread. In “IBM Story,” Life Magazine chronicled the company’s new headquarters in Dayton, NJ, which IBM moved into in the fall of 1962. Time changes perspective, and perspective changes everything. IBM at midcentury was the epitome of corporate-drone conformity, a punchline for …
Over the weekend this tweet achieved moderate virality on Twitter. It’s a beau geste by a young man who donned a suit to wear to the hospital where his sister was giving birth, amusing his family and defying social norms with a daring act of counter-subversion. The young man seems to be channeling a combination …
On our recent post on jazz albums from the Ivy heyday, someone commented saying he was at college in the ’50s and that jazz was only for beatniks. Sure beatniks dug jazz, but so did the guys above, and they’re goatee and sandal-free. The photo is from the 1960 yearbook of Lehigh University, and the album …
In 1952, LIFE Magazine ran a profile on the Taft family, one of America’s great political dynasties, having produced President William Howard Taft. The family also produced a prep school — The Taft School in Watertown, CT — which was founded by William’s brother Horace Dutton Taft, an early Skull & Bones member, and attended by …
As a curtain call to our series of ’70s posts from last week — not to mention yesterday’s post on Yale from Richard Press — Barnaby Conrad III shares these memories of Yale in the decade between the fall of the Ivy League Look and the rise of prepdom. Conrad is a writer and artist and …
The role of Yale in American popular culture and the sartorial legacy of New Haven together comprise the metaphor of my life. Ivy Style jogged my memory a few weeks ago when we posted an ad for Macy’s showroom on York Street from a 1941 edition of the Yale Daily News. “Macy’s Knows Its Yale,” …
Some of you may remember one of my smaller web projects from a few years back called MasculineInteriors.com. I’ve always enjoyed decorating my apartments and really liked working on the site. In the end it proved too narrow a topic — or perhaps too broad. It was purchased, but looks like the owners never …
Memorial Day weekend traditionally marks the beginning of summer and the wearing of one of its signature fabrics. And so Ivy Style is pleased to introduce The Original Madras Trading Company, a third-generation maker and weaver with offices in New York and Chennai, India, the city formerly known as Madras that gave the distinctive checked …
From Alan Flusser before retirement: three buttons, contrast buttonhole stitching, double vents, hacking pockets and ticket pocket. Plus horizontal striped shirt, to complete the Gekko-in-the-Hamptons look.
Madras season is officially open, and what better way to declare it than with patch madras shorts. Surely you agree?
Best wishes for a delightful holiday weekend as we remember those who’ve given their lives to defend this great nation of ours, and when we also remember what a great genre of clothing our forefathers have given us. Note the great sartorial variety in the image above, from charcoal suits to madras shorts, all thrown …
Here’s a gallery of album covers from the Ivy heyday, when jazz was as common on campus as buttondowns and Weejuns.
Today’s Google Doodle — the little graphics and animations that sometimes accompany its home page — celebrates the legendary Savoy Ballroom. The Harlem nightclub shut down a generation before I was born, but that didn’t stop me from learning about its importance in American cultural history, as in the late ’90s all of us who …
I have been enjoying this website immensely since I discovered it a few months ago, and it has really stirred up memories for me. I attended a small boarding school in rural Maine from 1955 to 1960, on account of being held back a year after a small incident with the headmaster’s daughter in my …
Our little run of ’70s-themed posts has been brought to you by St. Johns Bay Rum and its fragrant and practical soap-on-a-rope. For those of you who don’t remember the ’70s, when the item was popular, soap-on-a-rope isn’t just a silly novelty. If you have a shower that lacks a ridged shelf for soap, you’ll …