While J. Press was busy reopening a proper flagship store in New York, something else was happening in Los Angeles. Jeffery Plankster, a commercial director and host of the jazz radio show that featured me last year, has opened a retail store in LA’s historically most preppy enclave of Pasadena. The store is called The …
“Brooks” (note shortened name and quotation marks) was known and respected in many of the best schools and colleges, according to this ad circa 1940. What else would have been known and respected at the time? The high button stance, with the bottom of the three buttons above the hip pockets, and the top button …
An entertaining comic number about going off to Yale during the heyday, sung to the tune of a Gilbert & Sullivan classic.
In 1965, Esquire jazz and style writer George Frazier wrote this essay for the liner notes of the album “Miles Davis’ Greatest Hits.” The Warlord of the Weejuns By George Frazier I don’t mean to be a bastard about this, but, at the same time, I have no intention of being agreeable just for the …
Sounds like a title for a museum exhibit, doesn’t it? And no, this isn’t Rob Lowe, but an avid Ivy Style reader who might just have missed his calling in Hollywood.
Frequent comment-leaver SE dug up these photos in light of the recent LL Bean post. They show that traditional New England style is — or at least was — youthful rather than stodgy, and that it exports well all around the country. * * * It’s that time of year. Bean boots, corduroys, and Norwegian …
With its first-ever CEO from outside the family, LL Bean has a plan to boost its flat sales and aging demographic: shed its stodgy New England image and become an international brand. That includes tripling ad spending (a cost that will surely be passed down to the consumer), ads that feature greater ethnic diversity. The …
Back in the heyday of the Ivy League Look, when a boy was going steady he’d remove the locker loop on the back of his oxford-cloth buttondown, signalling to other females that he was spoken for. And how did a female student signal she was taken? By wearing her boyfriend’s college scarf. The practice was …
Hilarious photo submitted to Ivy’s Facebook group by JS of Chicago.
“Excuse me, sir,” tradly dressed locals are likely to hear from visitors to New York. “Can you tell me how to get to J. Press?” Now those of us who’ve been singled-out for directions because of such clues as our 3/2 button stances, collar rolls and hook vents can gladly answer, “Why yes, it’s on …
For the really, REALLY hardcore JFK fan, a chance to buy his 1959 Brooks Brothers boxers. Just think of the action they’ve seen. Yours on eBay for a mere $2,600.
Iconic horror actor Vincent Price knew how a proper Yale undergraduate should dress in the 1930s.
Given the tense national climate due to the current presidential administration, The Intercollegiate Committee For Admissible Halloween Costumes has been especially strict this year. Few getups have been deemed “acceptable” to wear on campus properties, and so, according to reports, here are the costumes you’re most likely to see at American universities for Halloween 2017. …
In 1969, when the Ivy League was shedding Weejuns and growing sideburns at an alarming rate, three students — Andrew Tobias, Arnold Bortz and Caspar Weinberg — published “The Ivy League Guidebook.” Exactly as its title would suggest, the book is aimed at incoming freshman and devotes a chapter to each school, plus general sections …
Here’s another interesting image posted to Ivy’s Facebook group. The year is 1969, and you can try and guess the subject, who is directing a film (a task he is not chiefly remembered for). He is reportedly wearing his casual uniform, which consisted of khakis, Chuck Taylor canvas sneakers, and — because he’s a bit …
Ah late October, the season for fall clothes — and skeletal remains. This photo was disinterred by a member of Ivy’s Facebook group, and alas the grave marker was undated. It also looks like springtime.
An extraordinarily witty and cleverly packaged new book by James Gulliver Hancock succinctly titled “The Bow Tie Book” addresses the idiosyncratic cravat style alternately viewed as eccentric, erratic, professorial, bohemian and Churchillian. The book is loaded with a compendium of bow tie history from many eras in an uproarious agenda. Social Primer K. Cooper Ray …
One of the characteristics of traditional clothiers across the years is how many of them were family businesses passed down through the generations. That’s how Brooks Brothers began nearly 200 hundred years ago. And J. Press went through three generations. There aren’t many businesses like that left, but one of them is R. Hanauer (aka …
Speaking of khakis, as we were recently with Duck Head (BTW, the company reached out to me and I should have some interesting info to divulge in a follow-up), Ivy Style contributor Eric Twardzik alerted me to current offering from Ralph Lauren depicted below. It’s called The Iconic GI Khaki Chino, and comes with a …