The Museum Of Modern Art here in New York has a new exhibit entitled “Is Fashion Modern?” I went to check it out on Friday, when the museum is free in the late afternoon. The scene was a perfect illustration of the genius behind the law forbidding yelling fire in a crowded building. I deftly …
Penny loafers: suitable for everyone, including old bearded men who like safari-hunting, sea-fishing, arm-wrestling, bullfighting and hard drinking. Shout-out to longtime comment-leaver “Old School” for submitting this great photo. — CC Addendum: photo info: “Ernest Hemingway at his standing writing desk on the balcony of Bill Davis’s home near Malaga where he wrote The Dangerous Summer.” …
Yesterday I met with MKG, my partner on the Ivy Style Club Tie (of which there are still a few left; order info here), to see the samples from our latest project: The Ivy Style Heyday Commemoration Belt (until we come up with a better name). In a handful of motifs, the belt cleverly illustrates …
Last month, when we shared G. Bruce Boyer’s piece on cardigan vests for Drake’s, someone remarked that cardigans are fine under sportcoats, but never under blazers. Naturally we followed it up with a series of images from Ralph Lauren that included — what else? — cardigans and blazers. And then the new issue of the …
J. Press is brimming with new energy. For starters, construction is moving along at the new New York location, and we’ll announce the opening date as soon as we hear it. Next, the company has revamped its website, which is now easier to navigate and features a bunch of live humans wearing the clothing, as …
There’s a new book — with a whopping 800 pages — devoted to one of the things Yale is most noted for, besides being the mecca of the Ivy League Look. And that is the secret society, which flourished during the simultaneous heydays of the Ivy and the Cold War. Many a buttondowned Eli went …
In 1966, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was a guest on William F. Buckley, Jr.’s TV show “The Firing Line.” Here’s how it all went down.
Hugh Hefner, who once hosted a TV show called “Playboy’s Penthouse” in which he talked about Ivy League suits before becoming a full-time pajama wearer, has died at the age of 91. He will be remembered for many things, chief among them the association of pipesmoking with promiscuity. Here are Ivy Style’s posts on Hefner …
I spent the past week in Newport and what a letdown it is to return to the honking hullabaloo of New York. I can see why people find the transition from vacation life to normal life so jarring. Perhaps we’re doing something wrong in life and only get it right one or two weeks a …
In 1954, LIFE Magazine declared New Haven the home of the Ivy League Look, writing “Sometimes regarded as more of a club than a clothes shop, J. Press is delighted rather than dismayed that its look is now capturing the country.” Though it is closely associated with Old Blue, J. Press was hardly the only …
When I was an undergraduate at Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA, there was a wonderful campus shop on Main Street called Tom Bass. It served three colleges and a university (Moravian, Muhlenberg, Lafayette and Lehigh University), and it stocked many of the iconic Ivy League labels: suits by Southwick, buttondowns by Gant and Sero, Pringle …
Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend who is a fellow clothes lover. His style is something I would describe as excessively patterned but casual and nonchalant. He cherishes elements of the Ivy League Look but mixes in pieces of this or that as he fancies. We were discussing whether Ivy Style is …
Funny how everything’s turned upside-down, as I argued in the “50th Anniversary Of Slob Nation” essay. Back during the Heyday, Brooks Brothers never had to invoke the terms “Ivy League” or “preppy” — in fact company executives often abhorred the terms — for a very simple reason: Brooks had crafted its signature style long before …
This summer G. Bruce Boyer published a lengthy think piece in the magazine First Things called “Dress Up: What We Lost In The Casual Revolution.” I’ve only neglected sharing it here in a post as Bruce and I have brainstormed about recording a discussion about its main themes. Astute readers will recall that I’ve mentioned …
We’ve still got a lot of counting down to do until overcoat season arrives. In the meantime you can start counting up, as in saving your pennies for a chesterfield coat. Check it out on this young man of yore. — CC
My four years at Loomis (now Loomis Chaffee) were adolescent days of wine and roses, but lurking behind the bush was six degrees of separation. Our Glee Club concert at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in the middle of a gritty black Hartford ghetto was a long six miles away from the lush Loomis campus down …
As part of our year-long look at the year 1967 — a time of immense social change, including the fall of the Ivy League Look — we present this lengthy New York Times Magazine feature from last week. The story recounts the first African American boys to integrate the South’s elite prep schools. The piece …
The news is starting to spread about the return of a proper J. Press retail store to New York City. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported on it; WSJ subscribers can log in and access the story here. For the rest of us, here’s a snippet: Preppy clothing retailer J. Press said it is trying …
In honor of Ralph Lauren‘s 50th anniversary in business, here are 67 vintage marketing images to celebrate the year 1967.