This weekend we presented some great photos of composer Burt Bacharach. This led some readers to point out the other Bert Bacharach, which Ivy Style covered in this post from 2013. At the time, it never occurred to me that two men with the same name — but spelled differently — could be related, but …
An Ivy Style reader recently submitted this fine photo of composer Burt Bacharach circa 1966. Fans of the Great American Songbook will likely consider him the last in a line of succession that stretches back to the parlor tunes of the early 1900s. After Bacharach’s hits for Dionne Warwick in the late ’60s and early …
We haven’t had anything to classify under Ivy Trendwatch for quite some time, but we do now thanks to J. Crew. With a headline called “The New, Old School Oxford,” the company has introduced a collection of oxford-cloth buttondowns that tout their vintage collegiate inspiration and unlined collar. “With a longer, unlined collar, our new oxford …
Martin Landau died this week at the age of 89. The actor should be familiar to everyone here for his role in the Hitchcock classic “North By Northwest.” In 1995 he won the Best Supporting Actor award for the movie “Ed Wood.” Landau also starred in the TV series “Mission Impossible,” in which he had …
In Thursday’s post about Brooks Brothers, some readers expressed horror at the pairing of tailored clothing with sweatpants. While I certainly made fun of the forced nonchalance of adding a pocket square to the mix, combining athletic wear with jackets and trousers gets to the very heart of how college men revolutionized the way the …
Even an item as banal and unstylish as the hoodie can be elevated by its wearer. Case in point, that handsome old gent from Polo ad campaigns from the late ’80s and early ’90s. I remember these ads — including the hoodie shot above, taken alongside a tennis court— from when they first came out, …
Yesterday the trade publication WWD ran a slideshow of the Brooks Brothers Spring/Summer 2018 collection, giving us the first glimpse of what the company has up its sleeve in celebration of its 200th anniversary. Alas it was more of the same, and we will have to wait and see if Brooks has any kind of …
Perhaps, in some dystopian future, strange people (such as Ivy Style readers) who do not want to wear shirts that ’T’, pants that ‘sweat’ and shoes that ‘sneak’, will be placed in confined areas so as not to shock the majority of the population, that is those whose clothing style resembles homeless teenage skateboarders on …
Remember the days when America had a president who would go sockless in penny loafers? Outside the Oval Office, that is. That president was a Kennedy, and in order to bring back that tradition, it will no doubt take another Kennedy. On Thursday Town & Country posted an interview with Joe Kennedy III with the headline …
Contributing writer Christopher Sharp takes us on an epic journey through the 20th century, charting how madras went from obscure resort wear to a national craze during the “guaranteed-to-bleed” days of the Ivy heyday. * * * If I were to create an Ivy-inspired urban myth, I would spin a tale of how the first …
Yesterday we looked at young JFK in 1941 and wondered if his knit tie was black or navy. Today we have a knit tie whose hue is not in doubt. This is Ivy Style contributor Pani M., who’s channelling George Plimpton with his hair and severely underplaying his madras jacket with a severe black knit …
Who doesn’t love more JFK? On July Fourth we celebrated President Kennedy and the stars and stripes. Today we celebrate solids and stripes — plus a plaid. This pattern-mixing scheme of plaid jacket, striped shirt and solid tie is a timeless winner. I don’t recall having seen this photo before, which was just brought to my …
On this Fourth Of July 2017, Ivy Style proudly offers three cheers to the Red, White & Blue, as well as something for the hardcore JFK fan. American Trench, a new company on the neo-trad radar, has developed a reproduction of the athletic socks sported by John F. Kennedy in photos of him watching the …
If you’re fortunate enough to be enjoying a long holiday weekend, you might just find yourself checking out retailers’ Fourth Of July sales. On the other hand, if you’re looking for something a bit more one-of-a-kind, how about a set of four Andover Shop patchwork throw pillows? That is, if you can patch together three …
Phil Sears Schoonmaker wears a black knit tie 98 percent of the time. This one preference serves as a symbol for his entire approach to dressing. Thirty-seven-year-old Schoonmaker, a New York-based business process consultant, is a living embodiment of the idea that less is more, of restrained taste and bold simplicity. With his superb balancing …
We head into the long holiday weekend with a grab-bag of news items, starting with the New Yorker cartoon above, from an issue earlier this month. The cartoonist takes the thread of time and bends it, thereby bringing an Edwardian woman and a contemporary young man onto the same subway car. She concludes that his …
Our last post looked at Dierdre Clemente’s book “Dress Casual,” which charts how college students over the course of the 20th century transformed the way the world dresses. Dr. Clemente today takes a curtain call as we share a piece she did last month for The Atlantic. The piece is entitled “Why American Workers Now …
Here’s a long-overdue look at Dierdre Clemente’s book “Dress Casual,” which credits — or blames — college students for the concept of informal clothing. It’s a must for every serious student of the history of fashion and culture, and you can order it on Amazon here. * * * Exposure to the world of tailored …
If you’re in London, there are still a couple days left to see a small Ivy exhibit. “Craft To America, Style To Britain” debuted in 2015 at the University of Northampton (see Ivy Style’s coverage here); it has been edited down and repackaged for the atelier of tailor Timothy Everest. Below here are images from …