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 …
Ivy Trendwatch: False Boundaries And The New Fashion Remix
Earlier this week the UK-based website Fashion United ran a piece entitled “The great prep revival a growth opportunity for menswear,” which introduces the term “remix” into the latest iteration of neo-prep. Ralph Lauren takes the opening of the piece, followed by Rowing Blazers, which is driving much of the publicity for the new prep-meets-streetwear trend. As …
New Haven Commuters, 1961
Since prep school they told you the right schools, connections and career would bring the keys to the kingdom. They neglected to mention, however, that you’d be commuting to get there. The art of avoiding conversation: If you weren’t a smoker, you are now: By Stamford, this is the most crowded car: Let’s see: You …
J. Press Spring/Summer Lookbook Sneak Peek
J. Press has given Ivy Style a sneak peek at its new lookbook, which goes up on its website Thursday and is hitting snail mailboxes already. Here are some highlights.
Somewhere in Time: Back to the Button-Down
The currents of change move slowly in menswear; there is always time, as TS Eliot put it, “to murder and create.” Adherence to this adage may result in innovation, but more often than not the target of “murder” and the object of creation are one and the same. In short, menswear does away with certain …
Penny For Your Thoughts
One day at my local thrift shop I came across the 1997 book “All American” by Tommy Hilfiger. It only has a few pictures worth presenting, which is fine, since it only cost a buck. So let’s jump in. In the shot below there’s great contrast between the formal and informal, as a pinned club collar …
Presidents Day: Power Dressing In A T-Shirt And Chinos
A book on the relationship between clothing and power examines centuries-old European monarchs, maharajahs and tribal leaders, totalitarian dictators — and the Ivy League Look. “Power & Style: A World History of Politics and Dress,” by Dominique and Francois Gaulme, presents JFK as the centerpiece of its chapter on post-World War II American style and global …
Ivy Trendwatch: Ivy League Rebellious Urban Counterculture
The trade publication Sourcing Journal, for which I’ve written for in the past, put out a trend report last week noting the coming popularity of “New Ivy League.” Not surprising, it comes with an irreverent spin. Rather like an Ivy League education, symbols of wealth and prestige can be cool so long as they are …
Hold That Tiger
Lately we’ve been posting about Princeton and the Joe College years of the late ’20s. Now we combine the two with images from a Charleston-themed retro party held at Princeton in 1949. Arriving fashionably late in dad’s coonskin coat: This pair of twinkletoes were winners of the dance contest. Imagine what the losers looked like. …
If You’re Called Joe College, You’re Dressed Pretty Well
Frequent comment-leaver “Caustic Man” alerted me to this short video from the ’50s that serves as a nice follow-up to our last Joe College post. In it a group of high schoolers are asked about clothing, and one kids says how they try to ape the college boys. That may still go on today, though when …
Campus Capers
In the ’80s it was the preppy look. A generation before that, the Ivy League Look. And a generation before that was the Joe College years. What they all had in common, besides some sartorial ingredients, was appeal to the broader masses, and in the case of the ’20s and ’30s, guys who’d never even …
Ivy Trendwatch: BEAMS Plus And Vampire Weekend
Yes, it’s really happening: big media outlets are reporting on an Ivy League men’s fashion trend. What the clothes look like is a different story. The latest comes from the website Hypebeast and concerns the new lookbook from Japanese brand BEAMS Plus, with a headline about celebrating “Ivy League America.” There are three links in …
Questionable Gentleman
The scion of a distinguished literary family, Charles Van Doren — who turns 93 today — was a professor of English at Columbia when he became a contestant on the popular quiz show “Twenty One” in 1957. His youth, clean-cut looks, family background and spectacular winning streak made him an instant celebrity destined for 15 …