Thanks from me also, Toffeeman, I was wondering how I would be able to get my hands on the interview content from below the Tropic of Cancer.

By the way, if you are wondering how far afield the tendrils of 'The Ivy look' have been creeping, I placed an order for two copies with a local bookseller in Sydney last weekend who told me Thames and Hudson are handling its distribution in Australia and a shipment is expected in at the end of this month.

I see Shamrockmonkey gets a mention, but not by name.

Why Ivy-Style.com and not the Ivy League Look?

A nice read. I think it comes across well, not snobbish, rather emphasises that 'being sussed' (for want of a better word) is crucial. Detail. Good to see Shamrock Monkey gets recognisition (almost anyway)

The Gospel According to John.

Which one, I can't help wondering?

Masonic handshake ritual.

"By thy loafers thou shalt be known".

I love the book.  I have two copies, in fact, one on the shelf, the other on my bedside table.  I wonder if it might have unforeseen consequences.  An awful lot of leftist bollocks in the subtext of the interview, though.  What if Ronald Reagan had worn Ivy better than Jack Kennedy?  Marsh and Gaul appear to have made their mind up about the world in a kind of manichaean fashion - a kind of Democrats hooray, Republicans boo-hiss duality - that grows increasingly predictable and tedious.  It reminds me of the simplistic views on Vietnam I heard at university.  Gaul, lecturing the working classes on working class values from 'comfy', 'bourgeois' Stoke Newington is like the middle-class Labour politicians I've known my entire adult life.  He probably has a wine rack and a fine collection of pulses in glass jars in the Giant vibrator. 
As to the 'mystique', this strikes me as a very English take on the style.  If I pull on a decent make of polo shirt, a pair of Bean jeans and hammered US made All Stars am I then 'Ivy'?  If I am, well, there then, there was nothing too difficult about that after all, was there?  If I'm not, well, what am I?  'Sussed'?  I'm afraid Big Tony is correct in much of what he says.  Sorry.

Re. the 'mysticism': Guys are flogging a book, a bit of snake-oil will surely do no harm...

That the book is bit 'London-centric' is not a surprise, what else could it be? But what's the worst you can say about it? It's the 'UK' chapter in The Big Book Of Ivy. They certainly don't make any bones about the fact that their take is purely subjective.

ps I only just watched the DVD 'Abigails Party' that I bought with the Ivy book. A very 1970s take on class and suburban bourgeois behaviour. Still very funny. The Beverley character is now apparently a gay icon. Laurence sports a very fine wide lapel suit, moustache and sideburns.

I wish I could buy 'Grown Ups'. That was just as funny. The BBC stuff was far better than Leigh's film work.

RR&P invites polemic but will not receive it. I offer only the following :

1. Graham is a very unpolitical animal. Do not include him in any of this.
2. The journo wrote the article, has her take on things, edits and selects to craft and angle. Even direct quotes are kind of messed around with. Nothing could possibly be a pure reflection of our feelings. I think she did a really good job.
3. Stoke Newington is very mixed. It has gentrified in the last 20/30 years but it remains the typical London combination of wealth and poverty side by side.
4. How the world viewed America when I got into the clothes in 1985 was completely different to how America was perceived and represented in 1960 when Graham was getting into it all. Forget about politics, let's just agree that mid century America produced some magic which so many of us, Ivy fans or not, still hark back to 50/60 years later. Who pines for the visual culture of 1980s America, perhaps hip hop culture aside?
5. This is the internet. None of this really matters. I don't know any of you! We hide behind masks, play games, assume postures. It's like being a teenager again, a glorious release at times. But it has to be seen in its context.

TM