That's maybe why there wasn't any articles on the Cunard Yanks, I was most disappointed!

"subjective underpants" - the best quote of the thread so far......

Great Analysis Stan,  particularly on the Gunboats,  I have tried to faze them out of daily wear- only coming out with at very least a jacket and smart trousers,  usually with a tie. I do need some brown / burgundy PTBs since my black ones are too smart for regular use. I also like the brown split toes,  they feel slightly less formal for me, wrongly or rightly?  I think Gunboats have become common bon here for casual wear through modern influences?

Aren't GIs (PTBs) classed as gunboats as well as longwings?

http://vintageshoesaddict.com/mens_shoes/gunboat_shoes.htm

Assuming we consider design a part of the retail trade, which it surely is. You may have been referring more to the shopfloor staff, who would also have some interesting stories.

I have some past beef with Jim when the great ranconteur and ring-master had pretensions to become a global svengali figure rearranging perceptions, history and quite a few people's minds to suit his ego-mission, but I share his entryism into Ivy with the jazz cats.

For me it's about the aesthetic of modern jazz and how to live it, along with a spinal injury, I share this with Jim, so I have common ground when it comes to the fetishism of Ivy style interpreted through the prism of elite collegiate style pre-war WWII. My allegiance is with the George Bailey types who never got to college, but got the girl and everthing anyway.

I can only speak from my own experience outside of the capital. I suspect it would probably tally with others experiences in Newcastle, Glasgow, and any of the big UK cities where there was a strong Art School culture.

My own first-hand experience was in Liverpool, early/mid-70s - The Liverpool Art College.

But I'll step back a little...

The jewish community in the city was fairly big, stretching back to the 1700s, though the largest influx was in the early 1900s. A strong local tailoring industry was established. The city was also well served by boutiques and department stores selling imported apparel as well as all of the traditional british brands. Bold St and Dale Street  were places to shop for high-class clothes, London Road in the 40s-50s was an area offering bespoke, North John St was known as the 'Saville Row of the North'. Out in the suburbs there were also many smaller outlets and boutiques.

The jazz boom of the mid 50s was an important time. Ray McFall, the guy who started the Cavern Club was a pivotal figure. The 'Cunard Yanks' myth is mostly just that, a myth. There were plenty of specialist record shops on merseyside and they could import any special items, or, if you were a jazzer you could pick up the latest Contemporary, Prestige or Atlantic LPs as released in the UK by Vogue or  UK Decca's Atlantic label (Blue Note of course never had a UK imprint, it was always expensive imports for that stuff). And of course, for R&B the 'London American' label was pressing tons of amazing stuff for UK fans. Sure, there was a bit of stuff being brought in by merchant seamen but it was a lot easier dropping into the North End Music shops owned by the Epstein family or HMV, Rushworths or any of the independent retailers throughout the city.

As a direct route to NYC, Liverpool certainly had a flow of amercians, both professional and tourists. In the 50s and early 60s there would have been 'Ivy' worn by visiting professors and doctors teaching and studying at the Tropical School of Medcine and other departments at the university.

Really it was the 'Italian Look' that took off and became the default Liverpool style of the 60s. The Cecil Gee, John Ingram tight bum-freezer jackets and winkle pickers. Ingram opened a boutique in Manchester quite early on. The earliest Beatle suits, although quite flashy shark-skin style wool/silk fabric, were pretty trad and made by Walter Smith who'd started at Hyman Jacobs in Birkenhead. The cut wasn't as truncated as the Soho style but did have a pretty sharp taper for the required teddy-boy drainpipe effect. Epsteins own suits made by Walter were pukka Saville Row cut.
As far as I know Walter is still doing hand-made in Liverpool..

Much as Brian Ferry was immersing himself in americana up in Newcastle there was a boom in the collegiate style around about '67-'70. The first wave of pop artists, people like Hockney, Blake, Hamilton et al had a huge influence. They brought back button-downs and cotton jackets with natural shoulders. Amongst the art schools this was a direct style influence and by the late 60s could be seen in polytech departments and art colleges around the country - especially those doing the diplomas and certificates in 'commercial art'.

It was certainly happening in Liverpool. There were a number of lecturers there who went across the pond to NY to visit places like Pushpin Studios and to meet Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser. These were the big names in 'graphic design' as it was starting to be known. You also had the Liverpool painters that were starting to make a name for themselves. Sam Walsh, Adrian Henri, Maurice Cockrill and John Baum.

John Baum was the most iconoclastic 'Ivy' dresser. From the early 70s he was only dressing in the classic items. Button-downs, Seersucker, chinos, lightweight unlined jackets, knit ties, loafers. These guys were big into the Photo-Realist movement and the attraction to american culture was profound. American cars, movies, magazines were highly regarded. Early 70s John was driving a blue and white VW Combi then got a Trans-Am. I have no idea where he got his clothes. He apparently sent away to an address in the US and got all his shirts, many of them were vintage. He would rhapsodise about american button-downs and the way he had seen them in the shops over there in the 60s and how they would be boxed and wrapped.

He worked in the later 70s with a guy called Doug Harker who is an illustrator of some renown specialising in technical illustrations of military and sporting subjects. Doug looked like John Stephen with a splash of James Dean and dressed pretty much like McQueen - chinos, leather bomber or harrington, button-downs and white t-shirts, dessert boots or weejuns. This is back in 1975

The two of them were sharp as fuck.

The americana thing was big. There was a restaurant ('The American Dream') doing diner food and places like the Army and Navy and Greenbergs were doing a roaring trade in US military surplus. It was mostly skinheads and art-school students. The group 'Deaf School' gives you a pretty good idea about the eclectic nature of the city's style around the mid-70s.

As far as I know John and Dougie are still out there flying the Ivy flag.

Anyway, that was my first introduction to the style.

Last edited by Sidewinder (2015-05-28 01:05:15)

Wow! Seems obssessing over the boom years and the fruits of its harvest has been going almost since it ended.