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#51 2010-09-16 15:31:22
- D. Adams
- Member
- Posts: 113
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Highly personal as you stated. Newman doesn't leave me cold in the way he wore it, neither does Evans. I'm a little younger I imagine than most posting, and American. I like jazz but I like all music and jazz is not my intro to clothes. Nowadays I personally try to wear it in a way that simultaneously avoids the square store-bought preppy look and the hipster fashion prep recent trends, with varying degrees of success. Neither is what I'm going for. Duality like you said, a hard and clean look that is transportable and comfortable and you personally feel good whatever type of environment you are in. That's what attracts me to the look and I grew up with it but learned a lot about the counter-culture/nuance aspect of it from reading English posters on the topic. Cool Ivy exists in the US but it's a rarer bird, more likely trad-prep or standard IT polo-khaki or slim-fit fashion Ivy, though it still is out there.
Last edited by D. Adams (2010-09-16 15:32:13)
#52 2010-09-16 15:43:45
- farrago
- Ambassador Of Ivy
- From: Now in SFO
- Posts: 1087
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
The look may be conservative. The person inside the togs (me) is anything but. Given my own background and ethnicity, I can't and don't want to belong to what some (not on FNB) view as the proper class to wear these goods. It's a cop out, but Toffeeman, Big Tony, and D. Adams all make good points that seemingly clash against one another, but all of these only serve to point out the elusive nature of the definition.
And that's the beauty of Russell's main point: it means different things to the gents who have adopted the style.
My point: why bind yourself to strict definitions? Life is one big paradox ultimately. We know who we are, what we enjoy, and how we express it. Perhaps this is the philosophical blessing of being from the Left Coast and from America's most arguably wacky city.
It's a portrait of cognitive dissonance for some. Imagine me dressed in my kit while lighting up a joint. Music? Jazz, ska, punk, lounge. Surely bound to rattle someone's nerves, the nerves of the most uptight, those whose idea of the world at large is limited. Highly suspect? Criminal tendencies? My lack of felony convictions testifies otherwise.
#53 2010-09-16 15:57:31
- D. Adams
- Member
- Posts: 113
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Cool observation farrago. I'm an east coaster but love LA (just got back), not sure which city is arguably America's wackiest haha, but thats got to be a contender.
"We know who we are, what we enjoy, and how we express it."
I'm working on the "how we express it" part myself now. I never thought about this too much but now that it is on the radar it has been an enjoyable pursuit. Cheers.
disclosure- I like rock, jazz, pop, honky tonk country, hip hop, reggae, tropicalia, punk, etc so long as its good. I like American football, futbol, and basketball.
Last edited by D. Adams (2010-09-16 16:05:00)
#55 2010-09-16 16:33:32
- ParsonOban
- Member
- Posts: 74
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Well, you do know the Radio Erevan joke about Nikita Khrushchev and abstract expressionism ... 
#58 2010-09-17 00:19:49
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Interesting posting. I was reading a very bad book about Rosa Parks while I was on holiday. The area in which she lived and worked had been neat and respectable in the 1940s and 50s - and this was according to the pinko shithead author - but had descended into a war zone by the 70s and 80s. Blame Reaganomics if you must (or are still a fan of Simply Red), but it still begs the question: what became of all that Great Society largesse? I'm indebted to US members for their input on this one.
#60 2010-09-17 01:48:54
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Fascinating how some of these threads seem to twist and turn away from their original intention. I was thinking, more or less, of Graham Marsh's mate who wouldn't be satisfied until he owned a shirt just like the one etc. etc. and applying that to myself: not only in terms of one or two of the looks in The Book, but also in more general terms. Then Big Tony made his extremely reasonable comments and all hell seemed to break loose thereafter. A good, stimulating thread.
#62 2010-09-17 02:04:06
- shamrockmonkey
- Member
- From: chicago
- Posts: 1418
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
done getting dragged into these political affrays. finito. my slaves keep escaping while im tied up with this crap.
I brush my teeth with minty paste/I hate when Liquor goes to waste.
#63 2010-09-17 02:09:09
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
It was a good posting nonetheless.
#64 2010-09-17 04:50:36
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
I think Toffeeman must have been on the e numbers yesterday.
It isn't often I ride to the defence of Big Tony, but I did have to make a very large exception. The drugs references are not clever. Heroin fucked up too many good jazz musicians and, most likely, too many neighbourhoods; not all of them exclusively white.
#67 2010-09-17 07:39:57
- Yuca
- Member
- Posts: 8543
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Last edited by Yuca (2010-09-17 07:46:57)
some sort of banal legitimacy
#68 2010-09-17 07:46:32
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
LOL! I don't know Jimmie Walker, but that sure is funny. That book I was reading on Rosa Parks suggested - possibly without meaning to - that life was tolerable during that period of segregation. But I never said anything in my original posting about race relations. The point I was trying to make was perhaps a slightly arty-farty one (with acknowledgements to Linton Kwesi Johnson) about poncing around trying to look like Tony Perkins before he got that Norman Bates-like gleam in his eye (if gleam is the right word).
#69 2010-09-17 07:56:29
- Yuca
- Member
- Posts: 8543
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Last edited by Yuca (2010-09-17 08:06:15)
some sort of banal legitimacy
#70 2010-09-17 07:59:09
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
I agree entirely, Yuca. Rosa Parks lived a modest, very dignified life in an area that is now crime-ridden. Drugs are probably at the bottom of it. Didn't Bill Cosby run into trouble, though, for highlighting these problems?
#71 2010-09-17 08:17:08
- Kingstonian
- Member
- From: sea to shining sea
- Posts: 3205
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
The tendency to look back with nostalgia is not unique to Americans. Britain in the 1950s had Harold MacMillan and 'You have never had it so good.'
Differences in living standards between US and UK seemed greater then. We, mostly, did not have cars. Americans did - great big, meretricious convertibles with pistachio-coloured upholstery and fins.
#73 2010-09-17 08:55:18
- Hard Bop Hank
- Ivy Soul Brother
- From: land of a 1000 dances
- Posts: 4923
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
I'm not comfortable about all this nostalgia, but I'm guilty...
most of the music that I like (or that I search for) is from the 40s/50s/60s or even older... Jazz, R&B, Pop, whatever.... and the new things that I care about are usually inspired by some of the styles of these years...
with clothes it's similar... with the exception that my aim is striving for a timeless classic look, not like I'm stepping out of a time machine... most of my second hand or dead stock stuff is from late 70s to early 90s, I guess...
art, cinema, graphic and industrial design etc.... I'm not as bad in this field as I'm with music, but I'm pretty "nostalgic" in this respect to... yes, especially if I think about car design.... not much good stuff since the 80s I think...
However, no matter how much I love Ivy, I've never felt good about the square 1950s conformism aspect of the look... I do realise that it's the "other side of the coin", as Moose has put it, of the egalitarian aspect that the look developped with the boom, but I was always drawn to the Ivy image because of its hipster/jazz association... call it subversive, if you will... and I never thought that it was a golden age if you think of the society...
...my parents always told me about how square the 50s/60s were, especially growing up in a small town (as if it wasn't the same now)... of course, there was cinema, there was music, and there were even some GIs... still, I am envious about missing that time, but I'm quite happy that I didn't have to grow up with their parents...
...on the other hand, I don't think that 15 year olds really need all those piercings, tattoos, so maybe there's a reactionary side of me, too!
Whatever, let's get back talking about Ivy... just about clothes, I mean...
“No Room For Squares”
”All political art is bad – all good art is political.”
"Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"
#75 2010-09-17 08:59:23
- Rip Rig & Panic
- Member
- Posts: 4697
Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
It was also meant to be a big pat on the back for GM and JG.