Harvard Commencement, 1961
Shot for Life Magazine by Alfred Eisenstaedt, the same photographer who brought us the wonderfully atmospheric shots of New Haven commuters. Top hats and morning coats by day, white dinner jackets at night.
Enduring Bland Appeal
Brooks Brothers made news in a rather dubious fashion this week. The magazine Garage ran a piece entitled “On the Enduring Bland Appeal of Brooks Brothers — and the Freaks Who Love It.” This is followed by the subhead “How has this brand been around for so long?” Quotes the piece: The titular man from …
Hamilton Curtain Call
We’ll let George Hamilton take a curtain call after yesterdays post. It is Spring Break for the college kids, after all, and yesterday on Twitter I shared the above image of what things were like — at least in the mythologized Hollywood version — before twerking contests and chugging beer from a callipygian vessel. The …
George Hamilton: A Tan For All Seasons
If George Hamilton’s long career in TV and film has taught us anything, it’s that cultural relevance depends almost exclusively on one’s ability to reinvent oneself. Known today primarily for his permanent tan and penchant for self-parody, it’s easy to forget that Hamilton began his career looking very much the part of a clean-cut collegiate …
Birth Of The Cool
This Esquire illustration was recently posted to Ivy’s Facebook group. It obviously has great visual appeal, but I found it especially interesting for the date: it was drawn in 1942. Now you can see the ’40s-era drape in the cut of the blazer and the trousers. And of course by the time the Ivy …
Disgrace Under Pressure: Alger Hiss at Princeton
In 1954, after serving 44 months of a 10-year sentence, convicted perjurer and alleged Communist spy Alger Hiss set out to exonerate himself. Accusations against Hiss first surfaced in 1948, when Whittaker Chambers testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had acted as a courier for an underground Communist network operating in Washington …
Ahoy Pinoy
Anton Miranda was featured here at Ivy Style in 2017 and is an active member of our Facebook group. A few days ago the resident of the Philippines published an essay about how he discovered Ivy and prep style — or rather how it discovered him. He writes: Through the years, my conviction for this …
Poetic Injustice
Before his untimely death, few men of letters embodied the jazz-fueled cool of midcentury New York better than poet Frank O’Hara. The Whitman of the modern urban landscape, O’Hara captured the essence of the city, its multitudes, and its motions of constant speed punctuated with moments of stillness. Heavily influenced by Abstract Expressionism and jazz, his …
Corporate Dress, 1987
This week the venerable Goldman Sachs announced it is no longer requiring suits to be worn. Yet another end of an era. Above is a photo taken at a broker function in 1987 for the opening of a commercial office building in Reston, Virginia. The event was held for the firm I was with at …
Diddley Squat
This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the greatest contributions by the state of Arkansas to the American way of life. In 1959, fraternity brothers at the University of Arkansas were suffering from a shortage of chairs. In protest, they took to “hunkering,” or squatting, or what you might call Ozark yoga. It’s …
The Andover Shop And The Art Of Patchwork Tweed
Most of the traditional tailors and clothiers have contributed some signature piece or look to the canon. Henry Poole gave us the dinner jacket in 1865. In the late 1800s, Cordings pioneered the covert coat and tattsersall shirts. Haspel introduced seersucker suits around 1909, and Brooks Brothers’ contributions are almost too many to list – …
Chipp Off The Old Block
Paul Winston’s bold suit linings are so famous, many clients select the fabric for the lining before the fabric for the suit itself. Vivid linings are just one of the signature styles of Winston, the renowned tailor who began working for his father Sidney’s New York-based clothing company Chipp in 1961. Chipp soon became renowned …
What We’re Fighting For…
… and what we’re fighting against: Top image from O’Connells. Bottom image (as in rock bottom) via Thom Browne.
Sex Education: A Playmate at Dartmouth
This Life Magazine photo shoot is a bit of a mystery. First off, there’s no date, but it looks like the second half of the fifties. Next, it has evidently been mislabled “Miss Playgirl at Dartmouth.” Playboy began using the term “playmate” with the magazine’s second issue, making “playgirl” a typo. Playmate with Hef: Lucky …
What’s The Preppiest Thing You Own?
In the spirit of the recent feature at Ralph Lauren Magazine, what’s the preppiest thing you own? For me, it’s probably a custom blazer from J. Press. That and Ivy-Style.com. You? — CC Image from Scot Meacham Wood.
RL Mag Spring 2019 Prep Stories
The latest Ne0-Prep news comes via Ralph Lauren’s online magazine, which has several prep-themed feature stories in the latest issue. Writer Sean Hotchkiss has the requisite “rule-breaking” take on prep, as ever since the invention of rock-and-roll in 1954, everything in American pop culture must break rules instead of upholding them. Of course, it’s tough …
Bermuda Short
As this native Californian has learned after a decade on the East Coast, this is about the time of year when you start getting stir crazy for spring. So here’s a piece to get you even more in the mood. It’s a little shortie I did for the Rugby Ralph Lauren blog back in 2009, …
Soul Man
Level Up is a new category I launched last year to share my extracurricular writings on becoming a better man. My latest essay posted over the weekend and centers on a few traditional activities all but guaranteed to improve your sense of well-being: weightlifting and martial arts on one hand, and prayer and meditation on …
Man of Taste
In 1954, culture critic Russell Lynes published “The Tastemakers: The Shaping of American Popular Taste,” a lengthy meditation on the nature of taste, which Lynes believed had supplanted class as the new social hierarchy. Taste, Lynes argues, can be broken into three categories: Highbrow, Middlebrow and Lowbrow. Naturally the theory applies to clothing. A supplementary chart in …