Some complain that slim-fit shirts are evidence of Brooks Brothers losing its way, yet the brethren have offered them for decades, as this late ’80s catalog shows. In faxt, the pleated pants are fuller cut than the shirt.
Preppy types have typically preferred a generous cut to their clothing, and this may (or may not) have something to do with how the sack suit got its name. But “Take Ivy” shows that the Ivy League Look had plenty of streamlined cuts in keeping with the general fashion of the early ’60s. So shirts that actually fit — especially slender guys — may be a tad less tradly but certainly aren’t heretical.
Sorry, but it still looks goofy. I understand really skinny guys who can’t wear full fit shirts, but seriously? slim fit just looks wrong on most people.
I’m a 33 waist, the regular cut is way too much shirt for me and makes me look heavier. I’m all for being trad, but I don’t want to look stodgy. No disrespect to anyone else thats just what works for me.
Manys the time on thrifting endeavors that I run across vintage 50s-60s era button-down shirts with private labels proclaiming a “University Taper” or, as on Arrow’s Cum Laude line, a “Tapered Fit”. Like Gant’s classic “Hugger” fit (on the vintage shirts not the modern kind) these shirts seem to fit a bit more close, but are not the chest hugging variety we see in the slim fit of a modern brand. The shirt label’s references to academia seem to suggest that they were being marketed as a shirt college kids were wearing, and as certain images from the era prove, this seems to be the case. As a 6′ 2″ 185 pounder, I much prefer this style. Glad this was brought up.
This is an interesting discussion. I noticed the model in the picture is wearing these double-pleated trousers with his slim fit shirt. I would agree that slim fit shirts are just swell and not anti-tradly, but wearing them with ballooning pants makes me think that B2 might have made a mistake–even if it was a mistake that has benefited from being an old mistake.
There is much more from the BB catalogue to see if you visit Jim’s new tumblr and I’m sure much more excellent content to come from a man who has made the Ivy look his life.
I am all for the Trad look, but seriously, some gentleman look like they are simply swimming in their oxford cotton. The claims of something to hide make no sense to me, since those baggy shirts emphasize that extra something some want to cover. I feel the best fit for shirts comes from our English friends, always clean, never too tight, and plenty of slack in the arm so when it goes, the sleeve goes with it.
Am I right in thinking the ‘sack’ name comes from ‘sacque’/’sac’ because the back of the jacket is cut from two pieces of cloth? Rather than it being “like a potato sack”? I thought that name was just a coincidence? Some of the Japanese guys into the ivy style have sack jackets tailored really quite slim.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all the BB’s shirts were still made in the US. In my town, they have to go to the back room to find the few all cotton, untreated shirts still made in the US. And then, they only have 2 or 3 colors. Oh, and the shirts they sell at their outlet stores? Now those are a joke.
Gents, if your Brooks shirts fit like the illustration of the model above, you would do far better with the women than dressing Trad baggy to impress your buddies. No?
An SA explained that the Traditional and Slim Fits were “H” shaped, while the Regular and Extra-Slim Fits were “V” shaped. They complement different body types, and everyone has some leeway in the cut of their shirts.
However, lanky men can pull off blousy shirts better than anyone because the garment balances their physique, so approach that rack of extra-slim fits with a bit of caution. Slim fit clothing can make a skinny man look awkward.
I think the idea that wearing anything but the traditional fit makes one less “trad” is silly. I prefer a shirt that actually fits. For my OCBDs I like a bit more room than broadcloth or pinpoint shirts I wear with suits.
The fitted shirts need to be taken with a grain of salt. Only the most athletic builds will look good in them. At my athletic pinnacle 30 years ago, I looked emasciated rather than sexy in a fitted shirt. Tall men like myself (6′ 3″) will look like escapees from a TB sanitarium.
A young man around 5′ 10, 160 pounds will look good in a fitted shirt. The girls will love him. Forget the tie, and leave half unbuttoned. Wear a gold chain around the neck and watch the babes crawl all over. Trouble will soon follow.
I don’t recall the chronology, but at some time, maybe in the late 70’s or early 80’s, Brooks Brothers discontinued the University Shop or whatever it was called, maybe something else, I don’t recall the exact term. It was about the same time they began to offer the slim-fit shirts, because in effect those shirts filled the gap that used to be filled by the University Shop, in other words shirts not extremely voluminous for younger men who may be slimmer than older men.
@ Earl Duke
Does the original post which sparked the above comments not do that itself with its talk of slim fit shirts not being trad or being less tradly? Fantasy rules about shirts indeed.
@ Curmudgeon
But trad is not Ivy League, with the greatest of respect. It is a much later retrospective cliche of the style. Still with a certain online validity but without a genuine tradition in menswear. It’s an attempt to reconnect with classic Ivy League, in my opinion, but still needs to find its way. I hope it will.
Gentlemen wear clothes that fit. I hope.
C.L.
Slim/trim fits? YES PLEASE. As it is, I usually have to wear boys versions of shirts in 18-20. Sorry, but given my hour glass figure, and yes, some males have it, if I don’t get a slim/trim fit in many types of shirts, I have ridiculous amounts of fabric pooling around my waist. Clearly a proper fit trumps any mania for “natural cuts” and what have you.
I am continually amazed by the never-ending vitriolic attacks on this blog by a small group of UK obsessives. OK, we get it. You don’t like CC or this blog. Nobody here thinks you’re clever. They think you’re jealous, obsessive, bitchy, and mentally unstable.
Get a life, move on, and grow up already. Find a new hobby. Train-spotting, gardening, bingo, watching paint dry, military miniatures, masturbation…anything.
Or, maybe start your own blog wherein you can be master of your own small alternate universe.
There’s always at least a bubbling under of resentment between these two camps. I find it ridiculous that there are two camps. I don’t know the ins and outs of all this – we all have better things to do – but I find Christian often appears unduly vilified and more dignified in his dealing with the predicament. Often the more sinned against, in short. He’s even appeared the more genuinely conciliatory. There again, as I say, I don’t know the ins and outs. The amount of vitriol from Talk Ivy has increased with this post, however, that much is clear and it can’t only be coincidence that this post takes an uncredited found image from the Smoking Cat blog.
Kionin: yes it’s a found image but, as I’m sure you know if you have even a passing acquaintance with journalism, etiquette dictates a credit.
@ Mr. Bean
I am currently in contact with Christian about various things including James. I think you are just fanning flames and feeding trolls here. Again, this detracts from this blog’s potential. Only an opinion and with respect.
No intention to tease. This is Christian’s blog and so I would rather talk to him first. My intention is to get the best from everybody on this subject, James included.
With my best wishes,
Jim owns the actual Catalogue. To my knowledge he didn’t steal it. It was scanned and uploaded to the smoking cat tumblr @ http://smokingcatjim.tumblr.com/ by the man who writes that blog-not Jim incidentally from an actual hard copy catalogue…and when he did that he referenced his source, the BB catalogue itself. He did his part.
Christian should have referenced the Smoking Cat tumblr. That’s the only issue here. Why didn’t he reference it? Why does he time and time again, use material from forums and blogs without saying where he got the material from? Why does he skirt round the issue when it’s raised here?
It would seem to me that he does it all in an attempt to convince his readers, his supporters, his financiers that he is doing something other than skimming the surface of the look. Does it convince most? Probably. It doesn’t mean that Christian isn’t a con man and a hack though. He’s the perennial suckfish.
@ Mr. Bean
However I will conceed that James is a very difficult man to work with when he chooses to be difficult. I have long since delegated talking to him and it works. His knowledge and his archive is the problem. To have those without his sense of humour would be the best of both worlds.
Only because this highlights the problem with James. We have all this and potentially so much more but he will not comply with netiquette, etiquette or any reasonable standards of business practice.
I write this from London where it is past midnight in a family home and he has just telephoned yet again. Par for the course, as one golfer to another.
I’ve honestly come from an unbiased perspective and know very little of the larger dispute. Perhaps I’m beginning to get a sense of things, however. It looks as though you took this image without credit in full knowledge of the upset it would cause. There are plenty of examples of found objects for which I hope you’d respect credit. I won’t even talk about the general importance of the principle of objet trouve to the world of vintage-style clothing. The closest related example to this circumstance that I can think of is The Ivy League Look blog. The people behind it curate the most incredible collection of vintage, found advertisements, articles and images. It’s a labour of love and the least anybody could do is reference the blog if they were to use anything from it, implicitly or explicitly. They, in turn, credit sources whether primary or secondary. Here’s an example where they credit the original source, Life, and from where they took it, which happens to be your blog:
The source from which you took your current post’s centrepiece appears to be Jim from the Talk Ivy forum, which might irritate you, but then you chose to use the image. All you should do, here more than anywhere perhaps in light of ongoing disputes, is credit the Smoking Cat website from which you took the scan.
“Credit”? For the ability to save your old junk mail?
Christ, it’s just a damn 80s Brooks catalog – printed in the thousands. It’s not the Dead Sea Scrolls or something, although some in the UK seem to view it that way.
Jim didn’t create it, write it, or draw it. Did he give credit to those who actually DID create it? Doubt it.
This is exactly what’s wrong with many of the UK lot. They’re more concerned with an imaginary internet “status” that only exists in their heads. So tiresome.
What a laugh! When was blogging supposed to be about originality?
I thought blogging was all about saving readers the time and trouble of surfing the entire Web looking for interesting stuff. If a blog features an illustration that interests me, I don’t care where it came from. Thanks, Christian, for sharing this BB illustration with us.
By the way, I may have modern ideas about supposed “plagiarism” (as if there were such a thing as originality), but I am old-fashioned enough to fully agree that slim-fit shirts should be worn by the baseball cap and flip-flop crowd.
Unfortunately, my crystal ball tells me that at some time in the future, some supposedly-Ivy enthusiasts will be claiming that flip flops, baseball caps, Crocs, and muscle shirts are part of the Ivy canon, along with extra slim fit OCBD shirts.
Slim Fit works for me; I found that the Extra Slims just bunched up into the armpits and around the chest but were still a tad baggy in the waist. Too bad Brooks is only offering the “fun” shirts in X-slim.
Oh, I mean, something about this site being impure and such.
Agreed that the isue of credit seems like a red herring. I suspect that other things are being talked about here under the guise of discussing an old catalogue.
Why should saving your old junk mail be a virtue? It shouldn’t, until you reach some kind of critical mass and an archive creates itself. I think what we are looking at here is an accumulation rather than a conscious collection which has only gained a certain cultural value by the passage of time. That this accumulation lies in the hands of the biggest prick in Ivydom is unfortunate. Although, having said that, I’ve just signed the monster up again for another month’s work.
Christian – Did you get my email OK? I’ve been having a few technical difficulties at my end of late.
Regards.
*Sigh.* When I saw 89 comments I should have known better. I assumed that slim-fit shirts must be the subject of hot debate, in itself an absurdity, but then I click into the comments section and find literally nothing of value. Nothing. Even those that actually deal with the subject at hand (slim-fit shirts) are no better than “I like ’em”; “well, I don’t.” Not a lot of insight there.
I think people should damn well wear what they want, and in any case it seems self evident that at different points of time the pendulum on some items has swung from wide to narrow, fitted to baggy, etc. and back again. However, I would say that citing a Brooks Brothers catalog from the late ’80s is not sufficient evidence for me — too recent in time.
Since Ivy style is largely apprehended with a reference to the past, it would be helpful to have more commenters here who actually lived through its heyday(s).
I have a 1980s slim fit BB oxford in a size 16.5 that measures pit-to-pit 24.5. A traditional fit from the same era in a 16.5 measures 26.5 pit to pit. That’s four inches of differential in ease, which is considerable, but it should also be pointed out that a 49″ chest measurement on a size 16.5 shirt is not “slim” by most conventions of shirtmaking, and is really only so when compared to the traditional fit.
Sorry to derail the debate about whether or not re-posting a blogged photo of originally copywritten material constitutes an egregious breach of journalistic ethics or a failure to throw out ones junk mail.
“Traditional” says it all. The other cuts have absolutely nothing to do with tradition.
First-time customers frequently mistakenly buy the “regular”, thinking they will get a classic BB shirt, only to discover that they have bought a tapered parody of the real BB cut.
Zach: your last line is nonsensical. How does reposting a blogged photo constitute either of those things, espeically the latter: failure to throw out one’s junk mail? The person who reblogged it didn’t have it. That’s the point. If the point is petty, if the collecting and posting of the catalog is without value, then why repost it? There is a larger argument, which is that failure to credit a secondary source might well be symptomatic of general shoddy procedure and, moreover, deliberate obfuscation. Those who oppose this whole line of argument ultimatley make that opposition right, however. The most meaning one can draw from this affair is it’s pointless to pursue it. Neither faction will enjoy it, yet both will continue to attack each other with a gleeful guise.
@Camford: I would agree about the fit, except for when I take into consideration argument that the current Brooks collar is lined and some would say “has nothing to with tradition”. Is a traditional fit shirt with an untraditional collar still traditional? Moreover, which of these ostensibly non-traditional shirts is MORE traditional: A slim fit with an unlined proper Brooks collar (as the 1980s slim model had), or a traditional fit with the contemporary lined collar? Or do you find the current Brooks collar acceptable, and thus the shirt a reasonable continuation of tradition? I myself don’t mind the current collar at all.
@Ray: I wasn’t trying to make sense of this. I fear I would be unable to. I was just saying that one side considers this post an ethical transgression while the other considers a catalog photo to be in the public domain.
One of the interesting things to come up here is a sort of stylist versus proscriptivist debate. There are some who say if you’re a fan of this clothing genre, then you should dress to a platonic ideal of what is correct. You can see this point of view in many in the menswear community, regardless of their genre of dressing.
The stylists, on the other hand, are more interested in taking the components of the genre and then using them in the way that works best for them individually.
And of course there are different levels on each side. The undeniably prep types break all sorts of rules in order to make fashion statements, while others are simply inclined to eschew platonic ideals in favor of shirts that best fit their bodies.
“I was just saying that one side considers this post an ethical transgression while the other considers a catalog photo to be in the public domain.”
I wonder if that one “side” also considers vicious anonymous lies and blatant slander to be any “ethical transgression”. My guess is that, in true sociopathic style, they justify/rationalize/explain away their own nasty anti-social behavior towards others while simultaneously obsessing over the tiniest slight (real or imagined) towards themselves.
Step up everyone to custom made shirts! When Gatsby showed Daisy his shirts, he wasn’t describing them as full cut or slim! It was a given that men of taste have their shirts made exclusively for their body size and personal preferences. No over the counter stuff!!
P.S. If you must buy ready made, Thomas Pink, in my humble opinion, does it best.
A quick look at this comment thread serves as a nice reminder that if the majority of you had not discovered tweed you’d most likely still be that chubby goth kid you all actually were in high school; rather thank arguing over slim vs. full-cut, it’d be about the merits of 1″ vs. 2″ spikes on your dog collar. (Seriously, how many of you actually went to an Ivy League school? No one I know who has would be arguing over this shit).
Just purchase what-the-fuck fits you best. Then ask the salesperson if their spring line-up includes a life, as the majority of you could really use one.
I’ve always enjoyed this site for some of the historical insight it provides as well as its entertainment value, but it should certainly not be looked to as some sort of style hadith for guys who wish they attended better universities and could be transported back to the 1950’s. Seriously, do all you numb-nuts sit around berating the guy in the next cubicle at work because he wears spread collars? Or snickering at a guy on the subway who wears a darted jacket? I’m guessing that it’s more likely you who is the object of your co-workers’ derision.
Oh, does this happen to be the same J Press that collaborated with Urban Outfitters to create clothing with 50 percent polyester, radically slim cuts, and sourced from third world countries
The danger is that by reacting to these things you only encourage them and reinforce the unfortunate perception that these tactics work. When I first encountered Russell Street, as he was then, he was touting himself as a “guerrila viralist”, a typically Russell Street job title. To my eternal shame he was employed as a consultant in that role until it was apparent that 99% of what he had to offer was completely illegal let alone unethical.
He knows clothes, his current engagement with us, but beyond that he is an absolute stranger to the ten commandments. Don’t feed the trolls is the only advice I can offer.
The real beef is you(cc), sighted an 80’s catalogue to defend the wearing of slim-fit, where as anyone with any knowledge of the subject knows that they started doing them about 20 years prior to that.
You really know jack-shit , that is why people get pissed.
I am sorely tempted to buy the catalogue from James and give it to Christian. What then?
My advice is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This blog has great potential, whatever Christan’s plans for its future may be. It is well established, well read and does indeed benefit from a little touch of infamy. Never a bad thing.
As for James, he also has much of worth to be extracted.
Does Christian actually need to be an Ivy obsessive as well as a journalist and businessman? It would seem to be a waste of his time when there are so many other Ivy obsessives out there who could be joining in with him, or whoever might run this website in the future, to present their knowledge in a positive way to promote this subject. Only the beginnings of a thought.
Rather than pick a fight in the comments section why not submit an article on slimline Ivy to get your point across?
The problem with snipers is that sooner or later they too all get shot in the head by their own kind.
“You really know jack-shit , that is why people get pissed.”
Those people seriously need to get the aforementioned “life” outside of Ivy. It seems to me that your attacks only increase traffic to this site , which in turn attracts more advertisers/buzz, which in turn infuriates you more.
The internet is your oyster. Start your own blog. Try talking about what you LIKE instead of who/what you don’t like. You may sleep better and live longer as a result.
It’s called common sense. Something you seem to be lacking. Pull that stick out of your ass. The amount of anger, bitterness and hatred in your posts is just ridiculous. You seriously need to get some psychotherapy before you hurt yourself or someone else.
I am a businessman, Christian is a journalist and Ivy obsessives are Ivy obsessives. A waste not to try to make that triumvirate work for all concerned. Where there’s a will there’s a way. If you are willing.
Disputation has never really suited me, but I do admire your fervour. Yours is the energy that I would love to see channelled into something more creative. Can I assume you know “Jimmy”? Or that you are him? No skin off my nose. I can work with anyone. It’s the secret of success.
You’d have to be pretty dense to think that an “Indignant Fat Guy” would actually call himself that, while simultaneously dissing balloon shirts. I thought Brits were supposed to get sarcasm and irony. But ironically,…no.
I’d bet big money you’re not “young”, but in fact probably the sociopathic headcase James Frost Mellor himself. Or one of his boot-licking trainspotter toadies.
I have no doubt you’ll keep getting your panties wound up in a twist over nothing. It seems to give you a (sad) purpose to your “life”.
Rather like a zombie film where one infects ten and those ten then infect another twenty and so forth.
The unfortunate thing is that all this notoriety is just making my little James even more of a valuable asset. I’m toying with the idea of exhibiting him on tour next as a kind of cyber John Merrick. Behind bars, naturally.
I can assure anyone in the UK that billowy, blousy, “full-cut” tent-like, button-down shirts are available in abundance in the USA, and will be for a very long time.
Not so ironically, Americans don’t know, or care a hoot, about British ivy-adherents.
It is a symptom of the British education system at both ends of the spectrum: The public school pupil is actively encouraged to question everything just as much as the comprehensive school pupil has a natural inclination to disbelieve others without proof. High and low debate is therefore a national pastime. Everything passes through an ingrained ctitical filter.
I am aware of the “baggy is trad” mantra, but I must admit I’ve never actually seen in it real life. Perhaps they’re not truly “trad”, but the wasps and preps I know all wear properly fitting clothes. To wear a button-up that billows and sags around the midsection is seen as the equivalent of a child raiding daddy’s closet. People who wear dress shirts or a suit that has not been tailored by a professional (not those morons at Men’s Wearhouse) are seen as impostors — lower class fools who want to look classy but don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Maybe I’m just too young to understand how things used to be, but it seems to me like it would be more trad to wear nice clothes that look like they were made for the wearer, as opposed to nice clothes that were picked up for a few quarters at Goodwill.
Sure, if one is slim. But they make them slim in the chest, shoulders, and arms, not just the waste. Slim fit does not mean athletic cut. If given a choice I would buy the man-fit, and if necessary have a seamstress in the mall take ’em in a lttle bit. It’s just not that nece$$ary.
I don’t think I ever noticed slim cut shirts at the BB store on L Street in Washington where I first began shopping in the mid 80s, but I probably would have tried them if I had. The regular Brooks OCBDs in those days were absolutely huge.
I can well understand wanting a slimmed down version, but I wonder whether they were as snug as the current Milano fit or other slim offerings. With no evidence or personal knowledge whatsoever, my bet would be that the 80s slim cut may have been something closer to the Madison cut today, which fits me just fine, with a bit of extra room for comfort, but no giant folds to be tucked in.
Today’s Traditional model is closer to the voluminous OCBDs that I wore back then, and in fact I am wearing one of those billowy shirts today under a BB seersucker suit from roughly the same era. My wife told me how nice I looked this morning, and my dentist and her young assistant told me I looked like I should be in an ad (which I think/hope they meant as a complement), and noted their love of seersucker as well as of my Liberty of London tie. Some people do still notice, apparently.
Charlottesville- In my younger days I always wore the Madison BB shirt. Currently, I go back and forth between the Madison model and the Regent model. The Regent is only slightly fitted, not anything like the Milano.
White, college-educated men employed in the corporate world started trimming down two or three or four pounds a month the summer before The Election. They kept at it until they were by any definition, Trim. They started wearing shirts more closely tailored across the shoulders and chest, and pants/trouser with higher inseams and “pouches” a bit up. . . . Historically, men have been peacocks, women the brown-feathered birds hiding in the bushes. EXCEPTIONS for times of war when young men were in the military far, far, far away. AND when Baby Boomer girls started junior high school and found out there were precious few “older” boys in high school. The Baby Boomer Girl/Older Boy imbalance, which exists to this day in that age group, caused BB girls to change tactics dramatically.. . . Gender politics, today, caused white, college-educated men to change tactics. i.e., trim down, down, down and wear more snuggly fitted clothes.. . . Guess what? IF gender interaction is the goal, It works, in today’s world. . . Will it stay working? Who knows? Take a look at the clothing style of young and not-so-young women today, and compare it to women’s clothing style five months ago, pre-coronavirus isolation and lockdown and job losses.
I like my OCBDs to fit just like Goldilocks likes the temperature of her porridge. “Just right” for me is Regent .
My Regents do not fit like a coat of paint. Nor do they pack enough excess material to make a matching pair of boxer shorts out of.
@John, I think you’re saying some interesting things, but I don’t quite understand them. First, what is “The Election” of which you speak? Second, are you saying that Baby Boomer youth fashions for young women became more sexualized (miniskirts, etc.) in response to increased competition for the smaller number of men in the Silent generation above them? I’m not totally sure I buy it, but it’s an interesting conjecture.
3-4 years ago, I’ve purchased two 18-36 shirts only to find that they were cut to fit guys who weigh maybe 100 pounds less than I do. I knew what size pants to buy. Who knew shirts didn’t fit every body? Then I discovered that Brooks made shirts in 4 body sizes. The Trad shirt is the greatest fashion idea since the zipper.
Sorry, but it still looks goofy. I understand really skinny guys who can’t wear full fit shirts, but seriously? slim fit just looks wrong on most people.
I’m a 33 waist, the regular cut is way too much shirt for me and makes me look heavier. I’m all for being trad, but I don’t want to look stodgy. No disrespect to anyone else thats just what works for me.
Manys the time on thrifting endeavors that I run across vintage 50s-60s era button-down shirts with private labels proclaiming a “University Taper” or, as on Arrow’s Cum Laude line, a “Tapered Fit”. Like Gant’s classic “Hugger” fit (on the vintage shirts not the modern kind) these shirts seem to fit a bit more close, but are not the chest hugging variety we see in the slim fit of a modern brand. The shirt label’s references to academia seem to suggest that they were being marketed as a shirt college kids were wearing, and as certain images from the era prove, this seems to be the case. As a 6′ 2″ 185 pounder, I much prefer this style. Glad this was brought up.
With a 30 inch waist and a 40 inch chest, I prefer to not have a flag flying behind me in the back. Extra slim is my savior.
This is an interesting discussion. I noticed the model in the picture is wearing these double-pleated trousers with his slim fit shirt. I would agree that slim fit shirts are just swell and not anti-tradly, but wearing them with ballooning pants makes me think that B2 might have made a mistake–even if it was a mistake that has benefited from being an old mistake.
The ’80s were a pleated decade, just as the ’70s was plain-front.
Amen! The circus tent/flying squirrel look is like leaving new pants unhemmed. Amen, CC!
Although not referenced in the post, Christian got the Catalogue page from here… http://smokingcatjim.tumblr.com/
There is much more from the BB catalogue to see if you visit Jim’s new tumblr and I’m sure much more excellent content to come from a man who has made the Ivy look his life.
It’s not good to make “Ivy” your life.
I do prefer a some what blousy shirt, but I understand some men don’t need all that material around them. So to each his own!
Also, I have both pairs of those braces in my closet currently. The must be about 22-23 years old and I love them!
I am all for the Trad look, but seriously, some gentleman look like they are simply swimming in their oxford cotton. The claims of something to hide make no sense to me, since those baggy shirts emphasize that extra something some want to cover. I feel the best fit for shirts comes from our English friends, always clean, never too tight, and plenty of slack in the arm so when it goes, the sleeve goes with it.
Am I right in thinking the ‘sack’ name comes from ‘sacque’/’sac’ because the back of the jacket is cut from two pieces of cloth? Rather than it being “like a potato sack”? I thought that name was just a coincidence? Some of the Japanese guys into the ivy style have sack jackets tailored really quite slim.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all the BB’s shirts were still made in the US. In my town, they have to go to the back room to find the few all cotton, untreated shirts still made in the US. And then, they only have 2 or 3 colors. Oh, and the shirts they sell at their outlet stores? Now those are a joke.
Gents, if your Brooks shirts fit like the illustration of the model above, you would do far better with the women than dressing Trad baggy to impress your buddies. No?
An SA explained that the Traditional and Slim Fits were “H” shaped, while the Regular and Extra-Slim Fits were “V” shaped. They complement different body types, and everyone has some leeway in the cut of their shirts.
However, lanky men can pull off blousy shirts better than anyone because the garment balances their physique, so approach that rack of extra-slim fits with a bit of caution. Slim fit clothing can make a skinny man look awkward.
All this shows is that Brooks Brothers decided to increase sales in the 1980s by appealing to narcissistic customers.
@Dutch Uncle
Yes, indeed, the Gigolo Look is not a recent BB creation, it has its roots in the 1980s.
@Dutch Uncle
translation:
“narcissistic” = not fat.
I think the idea that wearing anything but the traditional fit makes one less “trad” is silly. I prefer a shirt that actually fits. For my OCBDs I like a bit more room than broadcloth or pinpoint shirts I wear with suits.
The fitted shirts need to be taken with a grain of salt. Only the most athletic builds will look good in them. At my athletic pinnacle 30 years ago, I looked emasciated rather than sexy in a fitted shirt. Tall men like myself (6′ 3″) will look like escapees from a TB sanitarium.
A young man around 5′ 10, 160 pounds will look good in a fitted shirt. The girls will love him. Forget the tie, and leave half unbuttoned. Wear a gold chain around the neck and watch the babes crawl all over. Trouble will soon follow.
I’ll stick with full cut OCBDs.
Nothing like sour grapes for breakfast, eh, Mr. Bloggy?
I don’t recall the chronology, but at some time, maybe in the late 70’s or early 80’s, Brooks Brothers discontinued the University Shop or whatever it was called, maybe something else, I don’t recall the exact term. It was about the same time they began to offer the slim-fit shirts, because in effect those shirts filled the gap that used to be filled by the University Shop, in other words shirts not extremely voluminous for younger men who may be slimmer than older men.
I really enjoy looking at old ads, especially those with illustrations.
… And a life long love of Ivy sounds rather swell to me.
Making the Ivy Look one’s life sounds pretty good to me. The look is an outward reflection of dedication to The Best.
Wow…some really sad petty pathetic commenters here.
Basing their lives around fantasy “rules” about shirts.
@ Earl Duke
Does the original post which sparked the above comments not do that itself with its talk of slim fit shirts not being trad or being less tradly? Fantasy rules about shirts indeed.
@Anonymous et al…
The only thing you’re achieving is making yourselves look pathetic, petty and small. Again.
@Bean
Aye…after a brief hiatus of calm, it seems that Jimmy’s starting another episode. It’s like a sine wave with him….up and down, up and down.
He’s just getting wound up now. Hold tight.
The cuckoo is strong with that one.
Don’t worry, most of this inanity will disappear shortly.
As it should.
I really don’t want to read a blog read by people who think that slim-cut shirts anything is Ivy, Trad, whatever.
Gentlemen wear full-cut shirts, jackets, etc.
That’s what Trad is all about.
@ Curmudgeon
But trad is not Ivy League, with the greatest of respect. It is a much later retrospective cliche of the style. Still with a certain online validity but without a genuine tradition in menswear. It’s an attempt to reconnect with classic Ivy League, in my opinion, but still needs to find its way. I hope it will.
Gentlemen wear clothes that fit. I hope.
C.L.
I think that just comes with engaging with the internet, it has its own skewed lingua franca.
Keep on keeping on, Christian.
Christian,
Apparently you don’t realize how seriously some of us take this matter.
The slim cut may be Italian, French, or British, but it is not Traditional American.
I didn’t read all 56 previous comments, but I’m:
5’11
115lbs (50.4kg)
26″ waist
Slim/trim fits? YES PLEASE. As it is, I usually have to wear boys versions of shirts in 18-20. Sorry, but given my hour glass figure, and yes, some males have it, if I don’t get a slim/trim fit in many types of shirts, I have ridiculous amounts of fabric pooling around my waist. Clearly a proper fit trumps any mania for “natural cuts” and what have you.
I think this thread could do with a a soundtrack.
The Steinways – My heart’s not in it any more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEXuqEb1fpo
I am continually amazed by the never-ending vitriolic attacks on this blog by a small group of UK obsessives. OK, we get it. You don’t like CC or this blog. Nobody here thinks you’re clever. They think you’re jealous, obsessive, bitchy, and mentally unstable.
Get a life, move on, and grow up already. Find a new hobby. Train-spotting, gardening, bingo, watching paint dry, military miniatures, masturbation…anything.
Or, maybe start your own blog wherein you can be master of your own small alternate universe.
Yeah, I’m just not buying that excuse as the prime motivation.
There’s always at least a bubbling under of resentment between these two camps. I find it ridiculous that there are two camps. I don’t know the ins and outs of all this – we all have better things to do – but I find Christian often appears unduly vilified and more dignified in his dealing with the predicament. Often the more sinned against, in short. He’s even appeared the more genuinely conciliatory. There again, as I say, I don’t know the ins and outs. The amount of vitriol from Talk Ivy has increased with this post, however, that much is clear and it can’t only be coincidence that this post takes an uncredited found image from the Smoking Cat blog.
Kionin: yes it’s a found image but, as I’m sure you know if you have even a passing acquaintance with journalism, etiquette dictates a credit.
Here’s the exact full page:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lydwzq73Fy1ro8h0co12_r1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1327955902&Signature=mysxruPZpBHQxaLGCaiTPmqBV1o%3D
It’s from this blog:
http://smokingcatjim.tumblr.com/
Anyone fancy a shag?
The Tams – You lied
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf47h7RsH_g
@ Mr. Bean
I am currently in contact with Christian about various things including James. I think you are just fanning flames and feeding trolls here. Again, this detracts from this blog’s potential. Only an opinion and with respect.
@Chris Lloyd
So hinting at “stories you could tell” isn’t fanning flames?
Anyhow, point taken.
No intention to tease. This is Christian’s blog and so I would rather talk to him first. My intention is to get the best from everybody on this subject, James included.
With my best wishes,
Jim owns the actual Catalogue. To my knowledge he didn’t steal it. It was scanned and uploaded to the smoking cat tumblr @ http://smokingcatjim.tumblr.com/ by the man who writes that blog-not Jim incidentally from an actual hard copy catalogue…and when he did that he referenced his source, the BB catalogue itself. He did his part.
Christian should have referenced the Smoking Cat tumblr. That’s the only issue here. Why didn’t he reference it? Why does he time and time again, use material from forums and blogs without saying where he got the material from? Why does he skirt round the issue when it’s raised here?
It would seem to me that he does it all in an attempt to convince his readers, his supporters, his financiers that he is doing something other than skimming the surface of the look. Does it convince most? Probably. It doesn’t mean that Christian isn’t a con man and a hack though. He’s the perennial suckfish.
@ Mr. Bean
However I will conceed that James is a very difficult man to work with when he chooses to be difficult. I have long since delegated talking to him and it works. His knowledge and his archive is the problem. To have those without his sense of humour would be the best of both worlds.
Smoking Cat isn’t Jims work Christian. If you read back the catalogue’s from his archive but the tumblr isn’t his work.
How about linking it so that your members can see more of the catalogue? Go on Christian, you know it’s the right thing to do. For your readers?
http://smokingcatjim.tumblr.com/
Only because this highlights the problem with James. We have all this and potentially so much more but he will not comply with netiquette, etiquette or any reasonable standards of business practice.
I write this from London where it is past midnight in a family home and he has just telephoned yet again. Par for the course, as one golfer to another.
I’ve honestly come from an unbiased perspective and know very little of the larger dispute. Perhaps I’m beginning to get a sense of things, however. It looks as though you took this image without credit in full knowledge of the upset it would cause. There are plenty of examples of found objects for which I hope you’d respect credit. I won’t even talk about the general importance of the principle of objet trouve to the world of vintage-style clothing. The closest related example to this circumstance that I can think of is The Ivy League Look blog. The people behind it curate the most incredible collection of vintage, found advertisements, articles and images. It’s a labour of love and the least anybody could do is reference the blog if they were to use anything from it, implicitly or explicitly. They, in turn, credit sources whether primary or secondary. Here’s an example where they credit the original source, Life, and from where they took it, which happens to be your blog:
http://theivyleaguelook.blogspot.com/2011/06/madras-1949.html
The source from which you took your current post’s centrepiece appears to be Jim from the Talk Ivy forum, which might irritate you, but then you chose to use the image. All you should do, here more than anywhere perhaps in light of ongoing disputes, is credit the Smoking Cat website from which you took the scan.
“Credit”? For the ability to save your old junk mail?
Christ, it’s just a damn 80s Brooks catalog – printed in the thousands. It’s not the Dead Sea Scrolls or something, although some in the UK seem to view it that way.
Jim didn’t create it, write it, or draw it. Did he give credit to those who actually DID create it? Doubt it.
This is exactly what’s wrong with many of the UK lot. They’re more concerned with an imaginary internet “status” that only exists in their heads. So tiresome.
What a laugh! When was blogging supposed to be about originality?
I thought blogging was all about saving readers the time and trouble of surfing the entire Web looking for interesting stuff. If a blog features an illustration that interests me, I don’t care where it came from. Thanks, Christian, for sharing this BB illustration with us.
By the way, I may have modern ideas about supposed “plagiarism” (as if there were such a thing as originality), but I am old-fashioned enough to fully agree that slim-fit shirts should be worn by the baseball cap and flip-flop crowd.
Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.
VOLTAIRE
The difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal; the good one really does.
WILLIAM BLAKE
@Philologue
Unfortunately, my crystal ball tells me that at some time in the future, some supposedly-Ivy enthusiasts will be claiming that flip flops, baseball caps, Crocs, and muscle shirts are part of the Ivy canon, along with extra slim fit OCBD shirts.
Slim Fit works for me; I found that the Extra Slims just bunched up into the armpits and around the chest but were still a tad baggy in the waist. Too bad Brooks is only offering the “fun” shirts in X-slim.
Oh, I mean, something about this site being impure and such.
@ Single Needle
Agreed that the isue of credit seems like a red herring. I suspect that other things are being talked about here under the guise of discussing an old catalogue.
Why should saving your old junk mail be a virtue? It shouldn’t, until you reach some kind of critical mass and an archive creates itself. I think what we are looking at here is an accumulation rather than a conscious collection which has only gained a certain cultural value by the passage of time. That this accumulation lies in the hands of the biggest prick in Ivydom is unfortunate. Although, having said that, I’ve just signed the monster up again for another month’s work.
Christian – Did you get my email OK? I’ve been having a few technical difficulties at my end of late.
Regards.
*Sigh.* When I saw 89 comments I should have known better. I assumed that slim-fit shirts must be the subject of hot debate, in itself an absurdity, but then I click into the comments section and find literally nothing of value. Nothing. Even those that actually deal with the subject at hand (slim-fit shirts) are no better than “I like ’em”; “well, I don’t.” Not a lot of insight there.
I think people should damn well wear what they want, and in any case it seems self evident that at different points of time the pendulum on some items has swung from wide to narrow, fitted to baggy, etc. and back again. However, I would say that citing a Brooks Brothers catalog from the late ’80s is not sufficient evidence for me — too recent in time.
Since Ivy style is largely apprehended with a reference to the past, it would be helpful to have more commenters here who actually lived through its heyday(s).
I have a 1980s slim fit BB oxford in a size 16.5 that measures pit-to-pit 24.5. A traditional fit from the same era in a 16.5 measures 26.5 pit to pit. That’s four inches of differential in ease, which is considerable, but it should also be pointed out that a 49″ chest measurement on a size 16.5 shirt is not “slim” by most conventions of shirtmaking, and is really only so when compared to the traditional fit.
Sorry to derail the debate about whether or not re-posting a blogged photo of originally copywritten material constitutes an egregious breach of journalistic ethics or a failure to throw out ones junk mail.
For the uninitiated:
Brooks Brothers’ dress shirts come in four cuts:
Traditional
Regular
Slim
Extra Slim.
“Traditional” says it all. The other cuts have absolutely nothing to do with tradition.
First-time customers frequently mistakenly buy the “regular”, thinking they will get a classic BB shirt, only to discover that they have bought a tapered parody of the real BB cut.
Zach: your last line is nonsensical. How does reposting a blogged photo constitute either of those things, espeically the latter: failure to throw out one’s junk mail? The person who reblogged it didn’t have it. That’s the point. If the point is petty, if the collecting and posting of the catalog is without value, then why repost it? There is a larger argument, which is that failure to credit a secondary source might well be symptomatic of general shoddy procedure and, moreover, deliberate obfuscation. Those who oppose this whole line of argument ultimatley make that opposition right, however. The most meaning one can draw from this affair is it’s pointless to pursue it. Neither faction will enjoy it, yet both will continue to attack each other with a gleeful guise.
My final, final point is that I feel the idea of slim-fit, although elastic in meaning, is thought of too much as a modern phenomenon!
@Camford: I would agree about the fit, except for when I take into consideration argument that the current Brooks collar is lined and some would say “has nothing to with tradition”. Is a traditional fit shirt with an untraditional collar still traditional? Moreover, which of these ostensibly non-traditional shirts is MORE traditional: A slim fit with an unlined proper Brooks collar (as the 1980s slim model had), or a traditional fit with the contemporary lined collar? Or do you find the current Brooks collar acceptable, and thus the shirt a reasonable continuation of tradition? I myself don’t mind the current collar at all.
@Ray: I wasn’t trying to make sense of this. I fear I would be unable to. I was just saying that one side considers this post an ethical transgression while the other considers a catalog photo to be in the public domain.
@Christian: Don’t forget that a “Trad Girlfriend” should measure 33-24-34. At least they like their shirts full-cut.
One of the interesting things to come up here is a sort of stylist versus proscriptivist debate. There are some who say if you’re a fan of this clothing genre, then you should dress to a platonic ideal of what is correct. You can see this point of view in many in the menswear community, regardless of their genre of dressing.
The stylists, on the other hand, are more interested in taking the components of the genre and then using them in the way that works best for them individually.
And of course there are different levels on each side. The undeniably prep types break all sorts of rules in order to make fashion statements, while others are simply inclined to eschew platonic ideals in favor of shirts that best fit their bodies.
@Zach said
“I was just saying that one side considers this post an ethical transgression while the other considers a catalog photo to be in the public domain.”
I wonder if that one “side” also considers vicious anonymous lies and blatant slander to be any “ethical transgression”. My guess is that, in true sociopathic style, they justify/rationalize/explain away their own nasty anti-social behavior towards others while simultaneously obsessing over the tiniest slight (real or imagined) towards themselves.
Step up everyone to custom made shirts! When Gatsby showed Daisy his shirts, he wasn’t describing them as full cut or slim! It was a given that men of taste have their shirts made exclusively for their body size and personal preferences. No over the counter stuff!!
P.S. If you must buy ready made, Thomas Pink, in my humble opinion, does it best.
A quick look at this comment thread serves as a nice reminder that if the majority of you had not discovered tweed you’d most likely still be that chubby goth kid you all actually were in high school; rather thank arguing over slim vs. full-cut, it’d be about the merits of 1″ vs. 2″ spikes on your dog collar. (Seriously, how many of you actually went to an Ivy League school? No one I know who has would be arguing over this shit).
Just purchase what-the-fuck fits you best. Then ask the salesperson if their spring line-up includes a life, as the majority of you could really use one.
I’ve always enjoyed this site for some of the historical insight it provides as well as its entertainment value, but it should certainly not be looked to as some sort of style hadith for guys who wish they attended better universities and could be transported back to the 1950’s. Seriously, do all you numb-nuts sit around berating the guy in the next cubicle at work because he wears spread collars? Or snickering at a guy on the subway who wears a darted jacket? I’m guessing that it’s more likely you who is the object of your co-workers’ derision.
Slim fit, takes away the fuss, making boring a little more decked out.
@Ben
Those guys in the next cubicles not only like spread collars and darted jackets, but slim fit shirts as well.
What does it say on the J.Press website? “All dress shirts are full cut”.
That’s the essence of the matter: If a shirt isn’t full cut, it’s not a dress shirt,
Bro’s, Bro’s! What is going on here? Bickering about clothes. Is it really that serious?
Yes, Simulacrum, it’s that serious. It’s a reflection of declining standards, of the loss of continuity, of betraying tradition.
Yes, it’s virtually the end of civilized society as we know it.
We are mere steps away from a Mad Max anarchy situation with thin people in slim shirts ruling over the rest of us fatties like demonic feudal lords.
@Back Bay
Oh, does this happen to be the same J Press that collaborated with Urban Outfitters to create clothing with 50 percent polyester, radically slim cuts, and sourced from third world countries
@Pride of Boston
J. Press does that so they won’t go bankrupt and can continue to supply gentlemen with proper clothing
@ Single Needle
The danger is that by reacting to these things you only encourage them and reinforce the unfortunate perception that these tactics work. When I first encountered Russell Street, as he was then, he was touting himself as a “guerrila viralist”, a typically Russell Street job title. To my eternal shame he was employed as a consultant in that role until it was apparent that 99% of what he had to offer was completely illegal let alone unethical.
He knows clothes, his current engagement with us, but beyond that he is an absolute stranger to the ten commandments. Don’t feed the trolls is the only advice I can offer.
The real beef is you(cc), sighted an 80’s catalogue to defend the wearing of slim-fit, where as anyone with any knowledge of the subject knows that they started doing them about 20 years prior to that.
You really know jack-shit , that is why people get pissed.
@ Mr. Bloggy
I am sorely tempted to buy the catalogue from James and give it to Christian. What then?
My advice is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This blog has great potential, whatever Christan’s plans for its future may be. It is well established, well read and does indeed benefit from a little touch of infamy. Never a bad thing.
As for James, he also has much of worth to be extracted.
Does Christian actually need to be an Ivy obsessive as well as a journalist and businessman? It would seem to be a waste of his time when there are so many other Ivy obsessives out there who could be joining in with him, or whoever might run this website in the future, to present their knowledge in a positive way to promote this subject. Only the beginnings of a thought.
Rather than pick a fight in the comments section why not submit an article on slimline Ivy to get your point across?
The problem with snipers is that sooner or later they too all get shot in the head by their own kind.
Difference is, I’m doing something I actually like.
@Mr. Bloggy
“You really know jack-shit , that is why people get pissed.”
Those people seriously need to get the aforementioned “life” outside of Ivy. It seems to me that your attacks only increase traffic to this site , which in turn attracts more advertisers/buzz, which in turn infuriates you more.
The internet is your oyster. Start your own blog. Try talking about what you LIKE instead of who/what you don’t like. You may sleep better and live longer as a result.
@Indignant Fat Guy
“You may sleep better and live longer as a result.”
I suspect this may also be advice you’ve heard from your Doctor many times?
@Young Ivy
It’s called common sense. Something you seem to be lacking. Pull that stick out of your ass. The amount of anger, bitterness and hatred in your posts is just ridiculous. You seriously need to get some psychotherapy before you hurt yourself or someone else.
Maybe Yoga would help you?
I am a businessman, Christian is a journalist and Ivy obsessives are Ivy obsessives. A waste not to try to make that triumvirate work for all concerned. Where there’s a will there’s a way. If you are willing.
@Young Ivy …who is probably not young at all but agrees that he does indeed have a stick up his ass that is hurting him.
Either that image is public domain, or James stole it (and all the others) himself. Either way, he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
But we all know that’s not really what your freakout is about.
So give it a rest already.
@ Young Ivy
Disputation has never really suited me, but I do admire your fervour. Yours is the energy that I would love to see channelled into something more creative. Can I assume you know “Jimmy”? Or that you are him? No skin off my nose. I can work with anyone. It’s the secret of success.
I know I am me, and I am fairly certain Christian is Christian. I suspect everyone else is Jim.
@Young Ivy
You’d have to be pretty dense to think that an “Indignant Fat Guy” would actually call himself that, while simultaneously dissing balloon shirts. I thought Brits were supposed to get sarcasm and irony. But ironically,…no.
I’d bet big money you’re not “young”, but in fact probably the sociopathic headcase James Frost Mellor himself. Or one of his boot-licking trainspotter toadies.
I have no doubt you’ll keep getting your panties wound up in a twist over nothing. It seems to give you a (sad) purpose to your “life”.
Ladies, ladies
Get back to the kitchen, where you belong and leave this blog to gentlemen who know how to carry on civilized conversation.
@ Zach De Luca
Rather like a zombie film where one infects ten and those ten then infect another twenty and so forth.
The unfortunate thing is that all this notoriety is just making my little James even more of a valuable asset. I’m toying with the idea of exhibiting him on tour next as a kind of cyber John Merrick. Behind bars, naturally.
Are we done on this subject? I think I shall slip into a made-to-measure shirt by Brooks Brothers with just enough fullness. Try them.
They don’t get the best reports.
Ironic, but it may be thanks to British ivy-adherents that the authentic full-cut OCBD shirt will survive.
I can assure anyone in the UK that billowy, blousy, “full-cut” tent-like, button-down shirts are available in abundance in the USA, and will be for a very long time.
Not so ironically, Americans don’t know, or care a hoot, about British ivy-adherents.
How can you tell when a plane load of brits has landed. You can still hear whining after the jet engines have shut down.
@martin
What you call “whining” is a habitually critical attitude to everything.
It is a symptom of the British education system at both ends of the spectrum: The public school pupil is actively encouraged to question everything just as much as the comprehensive school pupil has a natural inclination to disbelieve others without proof. High and low debate is therefore a national pastime. Everything passes through an ingrained ctitical filter.
I am aware of the “baggy is trad” mantra, but I must admit I’ve never actually seen in it real life. Perhaps they’re not truly “trad”, but the wasps and preps I know all wear properly fitting clothes. To wear a button-up that billows and sags around the midsection is seen as the equivalent of a child raiding daddy’s closet. People who wear dress shirts or a suit that has not been tailored by a professional (not those morons at Men’s Wearhouse) are seen as impostors — lower class fools who want to look classy but don’t have a clue what they’re doing. Maybe I’m just too young to understand how things used to be, but it seems to me like it would be more trad to wear nice clothes that look like they were made for the wearer, as opposed to nice clothes that were picked up for a few quarters at Goodwill.
Sure, if one is slim. But they make them slim in the chest, shoulders, and arms, not just the waste. Slim fit does not mean athletic cut. If given a choice I would buy the man-fit, and if necessary have a seamstress in the mall take ’em in a lttle bit. It’s just not that nece$$ary.
I don’t think I ever noticed slim cut shirts at the BB store on L Street in Washington where I first began shopping in the mid 80s, but I probably would have tried them if I had. The regular Brooks OCBDs in those days were absolutely huge.
I can well understand wanting a slimmed down version, but I wonder whether they were as snug as the current Milano fit or other slim offerings. With no evidence or personal knowledge whatsoever, my bet would be that the 80s slim cut may have been something closer to the Madison cut today, which fits me just fine, with a bit of extra room for comfort, but no giant folds to be tucked in.
Today’s Traditional model is closer to the voluminous OCBDs that I wore back then, and in fact I am wearing one of those billowy shirts today under a BB seersucker suit from roughly the same era. My wife told me how nice I looked this morning, and my dentist and her young assistant told me I looked like I should be in an ad (which I think/hope they meant as a complement), and noted their love of seersucker as well as of my Liberty of London tie. Some people do still notice, apparently.
Charlottesville- In my younger days I always wore the Madison BB shirt. Currently, I go back and forth between the Madison model and the Regent model. The Regent is only slightly fitted, not anything like the Milano.
White, college-educated men employed in the corporate world started trimming down two or three or four pounds a month the summer before The Election. They kept at it until they were by any definition, Trim. They started wearing shirts more closely tailored across the shoulders and chest, and pants/trouser with higher inseams and “pouches” a bit up. . . . Historically, men have been peacocks, women the brown-feathered birds hiding in the bushes. EXCEPTIONS for times of war when young men were in the military far, far, far away. AND when Baby Boomer girls started junior high school and found out there were precious few “older” boys in high school. The Baby Boomer Girl/Older Boy imbalance, which exists to this day in that age group, caused BB girls to change tactics dramatically.. . . Gender politics, today, caused white, college-educated men to change tactics. i.e., trim down, down, down and wear more snuggly fitted clothes.. . . Guess what? IF gender interaction is the goal, It works, in today’s world. . . Will it stay working? Who knows? Take a look at the clothing style of young and not-so-young women today, and compare it to women’s clothing style five months ago, pre-coronavirus isolation and lockdown and job losses.
All that needs to be done is to remove the “?” at the end of the title,
and replace it with a “!”
One of the telling things about this thread is the mention by several posters of ‘Ivy Jim’.
Now, of course, he has droppped out of site and the forum which he once strutted his stuff on has crumpled as badly as an hadly ironed OCBD.
I like my OCBDs to fit just like Goldilocks likes the temperature of her porridge. “Just right” for me is Regent .
My Regents do not fit like a coat of paint. Nor do they pack enough excess material to make a matching pair of boxer shorts out of.
@John, I think you’re saying some interesting things, but I don’t quite understand them. First, what is “The Election” of which you speak? Second, are you saying that Baby Boomer youth fashions for young women became more sexualized (miniskirts, etc.) in response to increased competition for the smaller number of men in the Silent generation above them? I’m not totally sure I buy it, but it’s an interesting conjecture.
3-4 years ago, I’ve purchased two 18-36 shirts only to find that they were cut to fit guys who weigh maybe 100 pounds less than I do. I knew what size pants to buy. Who knew shirts didn’t fit every body? Then I discovered that Brooks made shirts in 4 body sizes. The Trad shirt is the greatest fashion idea since the zipper.