Very nice jacket on Charlie.

Our cab driving Ivy associate, still a passionate devotee of the look, ventures out onto the London highways every day in beautiful Oxford BDs, tweed waistcoat, Bill's Khakis and suede loafers. What a beautiful thought. And why do I always end up with the racist bore who won't shut up all the way from W1 to N16?

LOL!

When has Mick ever not been funny?

I remember that Ian at the Ivy Shop said that 'The Auberge' (sp? Too lazy to check...) just down The Hill in Richmond was very quickly a very un-sharp place to go when it filled out with 'Stones' types...

Ahhh, London Ivy - Always moving on!

American author & journalist, Calvin Trillin with his (stunning) wife. The caption at the bottom of the photo reads: "The Trillins leaving the London registry office where they were married on August 23, 1965".

Sack suit, button-down shirt, cuffed trousers, and black full-brogues.
What better illustration of an American sack suit could there be?
And on the streets of London, no less!

Toffeeman wrote:

Our cab driving Ivy associate, still a passionate devotee of the look, ventures out onto the London highways every day in beautiful Oxford BDs, tweed waistcoat, Bill's Khakis and suede loafers. What a beautiful thought.

Good man.  There's some interesting cab ettiquette in London, isn't there?  Like a fare or potential fare doesn't get into the cab until he's asked the driver if he'll take him to such and such.  The cabbies also actually know the streets.  Which is nice.

Short reference to Ivy from the National Park Service (lost the link).

An Historic Theme Study of the New Jersey Heritage Trail Route: Chapter 2

Bay Head managed to attract the genteel clientele desired (Princeton University faculty and founding bankers) with lots sold under deeds prohibiting everything from beer to slaughterhouses. Evidence of this exclusivity is still visible today, both in street names remembering Princeton professors and rows of well-preserved houses. "Houses at Deal and Elberon or Margate may be bigger and brighter and more costly," says one Jersey Shore chronicler, "but the Bay Head-Mantoloking homes, set comfortably in reasonably well-preserved dunes, are like the etchings of seaside 'cottages' in Harper's Magazine. There is unshowey evidence of wealth, of conservativism—the expensive 'natural' look, the 'Ivy League' look, so to speak."

Tony Ventresca wrote:

From our discussions here we know that the "Ivy League look" of the 1950s and 1960s was a mass style.

However, I ran across an interesting reference that illustrates how widespread it actually was: in Engel's book The 24-Hour Dress Code For Men (link), originally a German publication, there is reproduced on page 24 an advertisement showing three men in sack suits. The ad is dated from the 1960s. The suits are clearly high-buttoning 3-button sacks. The accompanying text reads "WITT -- Qualitatsanzuge in erstklassigen paBform".

Sack suits in Germany in the 1960s?
It must be a mass style...

Ivy for everyone.

(By the way, I don't recommend the book to anyone. But if you see it in a bookstore, flip to page 24 and have a look at the ad.)

I know from talking to an old German guy in London that in pre-Beatles Hamburg (When? '61? '62?) there was a modern Jazz scene with guys who wore Ivy. I thought all the clothes would have been imports or black-market stuff from GIs. No idea that the Germans were actually manufacturing the American style.

Fantastic work as always, Tony.

I've no proof yet but there MUST have been Ivy in Rome just like there was in Paris & London post-WWII...
Not just imports & black market items but Italian shops selling The Look. The quest goes on...

t.

Last edited by Terry Lean (2007-01-17 10:40:09)

From Paul Fussell's book Uniforms (2002). He is talking about the uniformity (and uniforms) of college fraternities.

pages 137-8:

...The brothers in their millions are clad in the obligatory uniform of their decade. It used to comprise, at least in the East, khakis or gray flannel trousers, button-down shirts, tweed jackets, and loafers. Crew neck sweaters and corduroys were also acceptable. Professor Edward Said of Columbia recalls what everyone -- everyone -- looked like at his prep school and at Princeton, where he went next: "My classmates either were or tried to be cut from the same cloth...everyone wore the same clothes (white bucks, button-down shirts, and tweed jackets)." Getting the shirts right was particularly important, and in button-downs, light blue was virtually obligatory. Said testified that he once witnessed two Princetonians at work soliciting the desired worn-out look by applying sandpaper to the collars of new, and of course blue, shirts.

page 138:

Changes in the general student uniform are probably faster in America, and now the once-sacred loafers have been largely replaced by "running shoes" reflecting the current power of the imagery of athleticism and "fitness".

page 138:

For at least the last half-century the college man has owned one suit (dark, for interviews), one sports jacket, khakis, jeans, and a couple of sweaters, and, before the hiking culture took over, a pair of penny loafers.

"We used to try to dress like the GIs... We used to get our band uniforms from Austins because they had the Ivy League look which was a forerunner of the Mod scene. My haircut at the time was the John F. Kennedy thing. And a lot of the GIs would have the razor partings. It was a great scene."

The Great Georgie Fame.

http://georgiefame.absoluteelsewhere.net/



"The thing about being a Mod was that you had to be aware of very specific things. One of them was a rather east-coast American waspishness. A sort of short-haired, checked shirt, Levi's, desert boots, interest in jazz, interest in dancing."

The Great Patrick Uden.

https://sheffdocfest.com/speakers/view/70



Pulled from Paolo Hewitt's 'Soul Stylists' again.

Last edited by Terry Lean (2007-01-20 12:52:25)

Terry Lean wrote:

"We used to try to dress like the GIs... We used to get our band uniforms from Austins because they had the Ivy League look which was a forerunner of the Mod scene. My haircut at the time was the John F. Kennedy thing. And a lot of the GIs would have the razor partings. It was a great scene."

The Great Georgie Fame.


Pulled from Paolo Hewitt's 'Soul Stylists' again.

Georgie Fame dressed in Austins style.

nice to see so many references from The Soul Stylists....it's a great book that really goes into the origins of youth cults and their link with ivy style.  You've inspired me to dust it off and re-read it again!

thanks TL...I'm actually working on something based on 50s ivy undarted natural shoulder sack suit right now, albeit a fitted one as some of us actually have a taper to our bodies and arent built like a sack of potatoes.  My first offering was more of a continental-Roman cut suit that's more typical of "modernists" but this one goes into the archives to try and offer something more original to the first wave of jazz-modernists.

Yes, The Look is a GREAT book, labor of love is a good way to put it.