Harvard Divinity School by Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1955
On this Good Friday we look at shots taken for LIFE Magazine in 1955 by renowned photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. — CC
The Ivy Style Community Guide To Keeping Your White Shirts Clean
Recently on the Ivy Style Facebook page, an important question was posed to the members: how do you keep your white shirts looking white, especially around the collar? The post was quickly inundated with various pieces of advice, which ranged from home remedies to professional laundering. The great, and varying, advice from that post has …
Well Groomed Conformity
In 1947, a letter from the Student Tailor Shop gave official notice to Princeton’s incoming class of ’51 that the university required its own wardrobe. “The style of clothing worn around the campus,” it read, “is different from that sold in metropolitan centers and home town stores.” From four-button suits and detachable-collar shirts in the …
Ivy League By Worsted-Tex, 1955
Another great find by Carmelo Pugliatti showing mass-market Ivy at the dawn of the heyday. And the worst-dressed award goes to the young man in the middle, who’s wearing a coat that looks like an orphaned suit jacket, along with a hat for over which his classmates will give him infinite grief. — CC
News You Can Trust
From now on, get all your news from the Washington Post. Or at least from the gentleman of the press pictured above wearing his Ivy Style Club Tie. Matt Schudel has been writing obituaries for the paper for many years. So next time a prominent persona dies (last week it was Don Rickles), be sure …
Tastefully Different
Golf fans out there are no doubt tuned into The Masters, where weather conditions for the first two days made the iconic tournament quite a challenge for the players. Those more inclined to sartorial matters and looking for an eloquent Saturday afternoon read should head over to the website of Nick Hilton, son of the …
As Great As Any War Can Be
This week marks the centenary of America’s entry into World War I, also known as The Great War. (Whether this week marks our entry into a new war is another matter.) Above is an image of what Brooks Brothers did that fateful year of 1917. Its Christmas advertisement took special note of soldiers, and seems …
The Story Of The Cape Cod Tartan
Today, in honor of International Tartan Day, associate editor Chris Sharp shares another tale of sartorial esoterica. * * * Three thousand thirty-three miles separates Cape Cod from Scotland, yet this dune-covered land has its own tartan. You will not find it in any official tartan registry, but it was once one of the items …
I Like Jazz, Ivy League Clothes, Gin And Tonic And Pretty Girls
This Friday Amazon will premier a new docuseries on Hugh Hefner entitled “American Playboy.” An actor will portray Hefner, but there will also be unseen footage provided by the iconic libertine. Hefner founded Playboy right when the Ivy League Look was taking off, and adopted the look along with many other urban professional men. The …
Ralph Lauren Closing Fifth Avenue Polo Store
Comment-leaver “Chewco” spotted the news today that Ralph Lauren is closing the Fifth Avenue Polo store here in New York. While it was never anywhere close to the majestic Rhinelander Mansion uptown (it wasn’t trying to be), it was a nice place to stop by (my church is across the street). I got to know …
West Wing: Ivy Style Group Meetup In Beverly Hills, Wednesday April 12
Ivy Style contributing writer James Kraus has organized a meetup for fellows trads in the Los Angeles area for next Wednesday, April 12, at 7 PM. The plan is to pick a nightspot in Beverly Hills with some midcentury heritage, to be decided based on the number of RSVPs. Working behind the scenes and with …
Campus Shop Launches Preppy Antifa Collection In Effort To Court New Customers
Axelrod’s, a menswear shop founded in 1954 and serving Aldrich College, the small liberal-arts school located in coastal Connecticut, has taken a bold step in attracting new customers by launching a collection aimed at anti-fascist student protestors. “We’ve always been resistant to change and have sold the same buttondowns and tweeds since ’54,” says owner …
Pace-Setting Traditionalists: Davidson College, 1969
Thanks to regular comment-leaver “SE” for the recent head’s up on the 1969 Davidson College yearbook, from which I took these screenshots. Yearbooks always provide a fascinating look at college life from the past, and you’ll find several things noteworthy here from a dress and deportment angle. Davidson is located in North Carolina, and the …
Grail Blazer
This week I received an email from a young guy just discovering traditional American style. He was in need of a blazer and wanted to know all the proper Ivy details and then where to get one. I offered up the usual suspects, but told him there are many variables, price being the first one. …
Camera Roll
Golden Age of Hollywood actor Robert Montgomery poses for the camera with ample roll: not only on the lapels of his ’30s-cut suit, but on his buttondown shirt collar as well. Wonderful example of Old Hollywood masculine glamor (with obligatory pipe and sleek hair) combined with the youthful nonchalance of a buttondown. Thanks to Ivy …
Dream On: Bruce Weber’s “Postcards From Paradise” For Ralph Lauren
Many remember Polo Ralph Lauren for its reverie-inducing advertisements of the 1980s, a period referred to as the brand’s golden age. The ads had a dreamlike quality, and Lauren often said that he had always wanted to be an actor, and the ads were his way of making movies. They were photographed by Bruce Weber, …
Preppy Pundit: A Tucker Carlson Style Gallery
A college student and Ivy Style reader recently submitted this article on TV pundit Tucker Carlson. Mr. Carlson was kind enough to respond to the young man’s email asking about his clothes. And it’s no surprise he’s a trad dresser: Carlson grew up affluent and has quite the preppy education. He even married the headmaster’s …
Return Of The Green Stripe
Brooks Brothers has brought back the university-stripe oxford in green rendered in the new-old (as opposed to the old-new) version with unlined collar and $140 price tag. Brooks has also started making alpha-sized sport shirts the same unlined way and at the same price, but with the chest pocket that was removed on the new-old …
Botany 500’s Ivy Executive Collection, 1955
Within one year of LIFE Magazine’s 1954 feature “The Ivy Look Heads Across The US,” which surely would have caught the eyes of the apparel industry given the magazine’s enormous circulation, Botany 500 was already jumping on the new menswear trend. You can all but imagine the product development meeting. Let’s come up with a …