Yesterday I realized that Brooks Brothers is gone and it gave me a real sadness. A year ago this weekend, on a sunny day much like today, I took one of my nephews into Brooks Brothers and showed him around. I told him that one day I would buy him something there, when he was …
Perhaps because I scribe for a living, and know that a piece of writing always benefits from cutting,* I’ve always been a ruthless editor of my own wardrobe. There’s always something that can be discarded for being redundant, having fulfilled its use, or not being quite right. The simple test is to look at an …
Well here’s a super-cool discovery: a pack of 1960s playing cards using cover art for the magazine Heibon Punch, by artist Ayumi Ohashi. The cards, our translator tells us, depict a wide range of social situations and leisure activities and the proper attire for each.
The last week in March. You may remember this time from a year ago. It was when this mysterious virus we’d heard about in the news suddenly became real, and the businesses in your town — perhaps even your own — were forced to close, and people began panic buying the one commodity they deduced …
The above image, which comes from a 1928 Kuppenheimer catalog, ties in with themes explored in our comprehensive rise and fall essay: namely town and country, or city and campus. In it the three-button undarted suit is presented as “authentically designed” for the university man, while the postgraduate “Young Executive” model is a tapered two-button option.These …
On several occasions throughout Ivy Style’s tenure we’ve referred to this post, which originally ran in 2009. It remains a valuable pop culture document of what Spring Break used to be like, when young gentlemen wore blazers and ladies wore dresses, when romantic encounters were at least nominally aimed at being long-term, and when avant-garde …
Philip Roth, who died in 2018 and is considered perhaps the greatest novelist of his generation for books such as “Portnoy’s Complaint,” is the subject of two new biographies. Not many of us have led lives so pure they could stand up to the scrutiny of a biography published in 2021, and so it comes …
J. Press has generously donated three signed copies of Richard Press’ new book “Threading The Needle.” To press your luck, simply use the leave-comment feature below. The contest will stay open until Sunday at midnight and the winners will be chosen by random number generator. All you have to do is answer the following question: What …
Everyone knows the buttondown shirt has been around forever. Well, we can at least trace its popularity to John Brooks (grandson of the firm’s founder) trip to England in 1896. He saw the polo players wearing this style collar, liked it, and started to manufacture it on his return home. The buttondown was particularly popular …
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day we pay tribute to the Irish — specifically the Fighting Irish of the University Of Notre Dame. After a long and fruitless search for vintage images, I finally found a few in the campus magazine called The Scholastic, where there were some ads for Arrow buttondowns, “natural” tuxedo rentals (with …
Third-generation J. Press scion and Ivy-Style featured contributor Richard Press can now add “published author” to his list of credentials, thanks to the recent publication of Threading the Needle. The slim, hardcover volume (featuring a foreword by G. Bruce Boyer) collects many of the columns Press had previously penned for Ivy-Style and J. Press’s website, …
Fashion is cyclical, and what goes around comes around. Back in 2012 photographer Nick Clements shared with us these photos he took for the UK magazine Men’s File in, and which we filed under the then-burgeoning category of Ivy Trendwatch. Today, in 2021, they are once again on-trend as inspiration founts for the “Dark Academia aesthetic.”
The following is a message from one of Ivy Style’s loyal sponsors. Focusers is renowned for premium quality tortoise shell, metal and rimless eyewear. We offer classic frame styles, from our Windsors frames based on Ben Franklin’s original metal ovals on through traditional Ivy League frames of the mid-twentieth century. Elegant gold and silver rimless …
We close out the week with a tennis sweater encore by way of this tribute to Bill Bradley, the 1965 National Player of the Year for Princeton. At the time, the school had produced more American presidents than basketball All-Americans. Bradley made the cover of the December 7th, 1964 issue of Sports Illustrated, complete with classic …
This week Todd Snyder sent out an email headlined “Trad to the Bone,” announcing a new collection of “authentic Indian madras shirts”, a patchwork madras sport coat, and a collaboration with sportswear brand Champion based on a vintage madras blazer. While the use of “trad” by such a mass-market retailer is interesting, the offerings are …
It surely strikes many of us that the devil is everywhere triumphant. And so in the spirit of satanic inversion we revisit post #666. Light the fire-and-brimstone-scented candles, put on Berlioz’ “Witches’ Sabbath” (or maybe the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For The Devil”), and behold this tribute to the 1968 movie “Rosemary’s Baby.” In the Roman …
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on the movie “Trading Places,” and in anticipation of spring, we revisit this fine essay on the tennis sweater served up by Christopher Sharp. * * * Late fall and winter evenings in 1989-1990 would find me lingering over a cup of coffee in the gothic dining hall that …
Today, on International Women’s Day, Ivy Style pays tribute to an iconic character from preppy cinema. * * * Back when Caroline was learning from Sloane how to navigate the intermediate to upper courses of adult life and communications, I had Penelope Witherspoon from Trading Places (1983) to teach me the ropes. Although she …
Why do the prettiest girlfriends always end up being the worst relationships? Years ago I was involved with a striking beauty who was half-Norwegian and half-Chinese. I met her swing dancing, and for one of our first dates we went to a retro event held on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier museum located in …