Comment by Christian — February 3, 2013 @ 7:55 am

Funny little irony just occurred to me with regards to the Europeans interested in Ivy.

We know from the Talk Ivy forum that the dozen or so active members there hold several things in the highest esteem:

* The Ivy League Look blog, because it presents only period material and nothing from the world of today

* The Newton Street Vintage Etsy shop, because it deals almost exclusively in vintage clothing

* Old photos, advertisements and record albums lionized for their coolness, divorced from the modern world

Coupled with this sort of purist, traditionalist or orthodox stance is a contempt for any kind of updated take on Ivy. In this sense they would seem to validate only the real deal, or “true Ivy.” Yet here’s where the irony comes in.

Coupled with this apparent orthodox stance is their Main Street/boom years/everyman ethos, which is necessary to their point of view on Ivy to keep their conscience clean. There’s no room in their hip Ivy fantasy construct for the world of the campus or the Eastern Establishment, the true wellspring of the Ivy League Look.

So all those midcentury knock-offs that validate their taste for Ivy are of course derivative and faux, if they were to take as hardline a stance on them as they do towards contemporary manufacturers.

So their hardline stance really comes down simply to a point in time, midcentury, rather than a sense of genuine Ivy pedigree. As long as an item of clothing or a photo of a guy looking cool is from the ’50s or ’60s, it’s “authentic,” no matter how derivative or tangential it was at the time.

This is why they so often confuse or at least lump together things that are merely contemporary to the heyday but which have no other relation to the Ivy League Look.

Past = good, present = bad (unless it perfectly mimics the past).

That’s also why they see Ivy as a narrow set of rules to follow, or a platonic ideal that one either succeeds or fails at when getting dressed. There’s little room for individual style when you’re trying to mimic a look from the past.

Of all the Americans I’ve met and corresponded with while doing this site, not a single one of them takes this absurd style-cult approach to getting dressed. Their interest in the Ivy heyday provides inspiration and they find the cultural history interesting. I’ve never met anyone who actually seeks to dress “Ivy.”




Comment by Leitmotif — February 3, 2013 @ 10:17 am
This, for me, this is why the Europeans fascinate: Their yearning for a classicism which online America cares little about because America knows it was all just fashion, forever morphing.

It's really weird that he would go back to that post just to leave a snide comment. Weird.

The big difference 'tween US and UK Ivyists appears to be ( to me anyway):
the US aspire to dress like 'the establishment' figures who went to Ivy League colleges and therefore use it as a shortcut to imply an unearned status/education.
The UK aspire to dress well without that cultural baggage as our 'establishment' figures have their own culture of clothes and 'Ivy' subtly subverts it.

As Mrs Acton always says
" too smart for casual dress and too casual for smart ",
that wobble between two 'codes' of dress makes it a fascinating area to occupy , IMO.

Personally I don't have anything against any kind of updated take on Ivy, but there's no denying that I'm mostly into midcentury style. It's what I like. Some of it is surely Ivy (natural shoulder suits) some perhaps not (White Levi's, Pendletons etc.), but it is a period when, to me, the look reached its pinnacle.

Notions of classicism, tradition or what's real Ivy and what's not, don't really enter into my thinking when I'm dressing myself. I think Jim is right, but I don't really tend to worry about whether I look timeless, current or retro, authentic or inauthentic. It's certainly not about fashion. To me, it's a style. It's an aesthetic, like 66 says. It's about looking cool (C got that right!). Preppy is not a cool look to me, Trad is not a cool look, GTH is mostly not cool, polo coats and cartoon eight panel caps are not cool. The MJQ, Miles, LeRoi Jones, and yes, Steve McQueen were cool. And yes, I still think those campus kids on Take Ivy looked pretty cool too. But so does Jason Jules and Mos Def, hell even Chens manages to look cool every once in awhile. Those knock-offs can look good if they have the right look. So can many contemporary brands. But you can look like a right dick in a 50s Brooks Brothers too. To me it's about style, it's about a certain look. Does this sound childish? Perhaps, but what can I say, you either have it or you don't.

Little room for individual style? Do we have a house style on Talk Ivy? I think most of us share a love for the core look, if you will, but after that, I think there's plenty of room for interpretation. There's not much that you can possibly link to Ivy that hasn't been discussed here at one point or another. From 80's puffy down vests to Playboy Chukkas to Navy Dixie Cups, we've talked about it. Some take bits of these to build on their own style, some are happy with their Brooks and Press.

I am interested in where it came from and how it developed, but this doesn't dictate the way I dress. So which one is more absurd, a style-based approach to getting dressed or one based on ideas of class, ownership, pedigree, heredity, propriety and so on? I think we're not the ones with the rule book.

God Bless America - The louder they shout 'Ivy!' the less they personally actually have to do with an Ivy League college !   

Beyond the US we Talk Ivy because we just love those 'Certain configurations of cloth'.

Last edited by Liam Mac (2013-02-04 04:10:28)

I got called a 'Pixie' on Saturday night...

I'm a magnet for abuse...

Last edited by Liam Mac (2013-02-04 06:45:39)