what the fuck are you guys talking about ?

I think the European experience of yer actual proper, barking mad, sister shagging aristocrats means that this little avenue of fantasy is one we really don't want to turn down. Thus our interest in the more democratic idea of the Ivy style - especially as it comes to us, not through priviliged patrician college kids, but through the filter of a marginalised American minority, namely black Jazz musicians......?

In America, however, the fantasy of patrician breeding and some sort of ancient family legitimacy (of the Hamilton Q. Bunkerton the Third variety) is unfettered by the European experience of Proper Nobs - hence the Trad. nonsense.

Am I talking bollocks here?

'Ad a chat with Jeff this PM - Let me get you two in touch again?

Jeff is cool.

Trad IS Southern & MidWest...

It's not East Coast & never was - although it pretended to be for a long while!

But that's OK.

Now we know.

The OPH is Gay & Jewish: Fact! It was an NYC fashion biz bit of snarky fun. Waaaay over the heads of all those neophyte Southerners & MidWesterners... Maybe?

Ripper - Gimme a ring?

Jimbo.

No. Silly boys. America "missing Ivy League?" Don't be daft. Ivy Style as defined here in Talk Ivy Land is a narrow style made possible by voyeurism not by living it. Almost any debate here is "settled" by a reference to or picture from popular media. Which is to say, all the created BS made for export not the genuine article made for the home market.

Now if y'all had grown up in the whole ivy league and been around that set, you'd not find anything missing. But since it's only seen from afar over there, you will always be missing things.

Some things have to be directly experienced to be fully understood and no amount of watching movies, looking at ads or shopping in stores that get their ideas from wily sales people over here can make up for that.

This is not to say there is anything wrong with this narrower interpretation, but just like it's impossible to brew a truly excellent cup of Earl Grey in New York--you have to be in or around London and use local waters and tea blended by fine British tea merchants. You can't be an Ivy League-style man unless you actually lived it. You can try to copy the style but...if created spasms on film and in media are your primary reference, you've been had before you even start.

Now, now, Mr. Quay, please pay attention like you usually do - Your old Uncle Jim said ONLINE America and said that it MAINLY MISSED.

And so I think that my GENERALISED point may still stand. Maybe?

Real life has very little to do with forum land on the whole as you well know... And as my Sainted Pa also used to say to me from behind those 1962 Ben Silver catalogues he used to like to read in the evenings...