Last edited by Alex Roest (2010-02-15 12:52:07)

I'd say that Ivy League as an element in youth cult style, be in mod/Rockabilly/whatever, was pretty much nationwide. In fact to be more precise it was more Americana which was the thing. Ivy League was only part of it as for most it was just too subtle. The Northern Soul scene had a thing about Americana - obviously, considering the music, and the rest kind of came with it. But it wasn't at all elegant. I knew a guy from Stoke who wore the whole Ivy harrington/501s/proper wing-tips/OCBD combo in the mid 80s, but he had no style. It was all a bit lumpen. And Zip Code in Manchester was very much a small and inferior (and rather short-lived in my memory) version of Flip. No, the difference between London and the rest of the UK is this - London had the cultural contact with the original source (as a Liverpudlian I have to say I think the Cunard Yanks thing is much overplayed and it certainly left no lasting legacy amongst any of the good folk of that fine, fiesty but shockingly badly dressed city), and this left a mark on a range of people, not just kids dressing up, but musicians, designers, artists, architects, cab drivers, the whole spectrum. These are the people who shopped at Austins, The Ivy Shop, Squire etc etc, and many of these people are still in love with it. In London the style goes deep, it talks to a lot of people. Elsewhere in the UK we are all invisible.

L.L.

^I'd appreciate it if you'd both be willing to expand on that aspect please, gentlemen....