Over the long weekend America celebrated its 243rd birthday. Jay Walter, who runs the made-to-measure program at J. Press’ New York store, isn’t quite that old, though he did reach the milestone age of 90 not too long ago. And he still works, Monday to Thursday, dressed impeccably and always in good spirits. Ivy Style …
Behold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his 1954 yearbook photo at Princeton, the year the Ivy League Look and “Princeton haircut” were to become household names across America. Rumsfeld had been third-string quarterback his freshman year. He certainly looks more like a football player in the photo above than how we thought of him during …
Tennis is not tennis. Despite having played the sport competitively for nearly ten years, I only learned this fact a little over a year ago. Tennis is actually lawn tennis, the modern predecessor of a much older game. Court tennis, as we call it here in the US, real tennis in the UK, royal tennis …
For some guys, it’s easier to find a beautiful woman than the right clothes.
Over the past year I’ve found myself increasingly frustrated with contemporary filmmaking. It’s taken a while to put my finger on exactly what the problem is. Obviously the shaky camera used in things like the Jason Bourne movies is an an annoying means of creating tension. Hitchcock never needed that. Quick edits are also part …
Students in science and technology today aren’t exactly known for their style (then again, what students are?) But in 1956, MIT’s graduating class of 900 was better dressed than just about any random group of 900 people you could find anywhere today. There are also some real characters in there. Perhaps you need the poster …
A reader sent in this 1982 Playboy interview with William F. Buckley, in which WFB confesses to being an unimaginative dresser stuck in Ivy League mode. He also notes that his political foes tend to be tweedier and drive Volvos.
Previously we’ve posted on the 1956 prep-school angst film “Tea and Sympathy.” Here’s an image from the Hart, Schaffner & Marx archives, undated but from roughly the same time. Call this one Tea and Approval. The older gent is obviously the girl’s father, and clearly approves of her suitor’s suit. And here’s an interesting tribute …
Nothing goes with madras quite like a vacation. On the other hand, many Ivy stylists are daring enough to wear madras to the office during the summer. Here’s an assortment of madras items — ties, shorts and sportcoats — worn by members of Ivy Style’s Facebook group. If they inspire you to add something new to …
Fashion always reaches the extreme before it swings back the other direction. At some point in the ’60s some guys exaggerated the “I’ve had these since puberty” look by wearing their trousers with ultra-highwater hems. In the movie “The Outsiders,” the denim-clad greasers mock the khaki-clad socs (pronounced “soshes,” for social) for looking like they’re …
This was Ivy Style’s first post to go viral back in November of 2009. It is written by Tokyo-based W. David Marx, who went on to develop his pioneering research into Japan’s fascination with American fashion in his book “Ametora.” * * * The first Japanese to adopt elements of the Ivy League Look were …
Like many cities, Boston recently installed a series of “take a book, leave a book” stations that resemble oversized birdhouses and reliably contain obscure cookbooks and romance paperbacks. I found myself rifling the contents of one this past winter while procrastinating on an assignment, and was rewarded with an old-even-by-VHS-standards copy of “Preppies,” a 1984 …
Ivy Style revisits this piece we did on Thom Browne in 2008. * * * Lately it seemed like Browne had receded into the confines of his tailor-shop-cum-laboratory, content to make his line in peace. But now, thanks to the December issue of GQ, in which Browne is named Designer of the Year, the hullabaloo …
Is the stereotypical Ivy Style reader a grumpy Baby Boomer? Above is RP (that’s right, his initials are the same as “retired person”), whose post to our Facebook group was received with much amusement. In fact, fellow reader KS was inspired to post a tribute: It’s the kind of facial expression one makes upon seeing …
Editor & Publisher John Burton note on this piece: If you have been a fan of the site as long as I have, you know that it had an… era… where things got a little… harsh. I wanted to remove those posts entirely. BUT. The site is also the predominant digital historical archive of Ivy …
Here are some more early collegiate images from the Hart, Schaffner & Marx archives. Check out the nonchalance of the guy in the chair above: college sweater with formal pumps — now that’s a juxtaposition. Below, “prep” clothes: Back when college men were fastidious consumers of clothing.
In his memoir Cheerful Money: Me, My Family, and the Last Days of WASP Splendor, Tad Friend writes, “My generation was the last to receive silver christening cups and to be taken shopping for the chain mail of adulthood: camel hair coats and Brooks Brothers suits and Lloyd & Haig shoes.” The provider of the …
As we make our way through the Ivy Style archives, I see that this post originally ran on my 40th birthday. Having just arrived in New York (that’s right, life really does begin again at 40), this was one of my first appointments. * * * Recently I was invited to Hickey Freeman on New …
Andrew Meschter is an Ivy Style reader who has just released a book on gentlemanly deportment for young men entitled “As Iron Sharpens Iron: An Adventure In Building Gentlemanly Character.” It began three years ago when, as Meschter puts it, “Two prep-school headmasters asked me to write a book about gentlemanly character for young men …