How crude ! 

Well it's a step up from when they just used to use sacks of potatoes as models. With Leeks for arms.

Oh yes... I just have the idea on my mind today that to make Ivy overly-sophisticated is to kill a certain aspect of it.

Reverse snobbery ?  Probably.

It's like Oxford Cloth compared to Pinpoint or 'Royal' Oxford -

The wool tie compared to the silk tie ...

Oo Bop Sh'bam wrote:

Royal oxford cloth looks like normal oxford cloth, but as though it had been made in the future.

If we're not careful in the future we will all be wearing Royal Oxford and eating only Royal Jelly, Shooman knows what I mean.


Simon. Please don't tell me you advocate reading or even worse actually read The Sun?

I'd rather listen to a coven of angry malnourished vegan feminists (and I've been there) all day than have to read that garbage.


Jimmy, I know exactly what you're talking about. I wouldn't say it's a matter of crudity for me but just a love of the basics. The cheaper or more ordinary materials like lambswool are sometimes far more interesting than cashmere. Maybe?

Take a look at H on the ILSFT thread. What made that work for me was that everything was basic, essential Ivy. Nothing added nothing taken away. I don't think it needed anymore. ivy perfection in it's basic/crudest form.

Sometimes I read the Sun, if its the only UK paper left in the shop. I just fucking hate it Liam..."don't read the Sun, don't read the Mail, don't read the Express"..."Don't vote Tory, don't buy things made it China"..."are those tea bags fair trade?" I fucking hate those type of right on pricks, normally from some middle class background. With their mobile phone that some hoho in the Congo has been bull whipped to make work. And munching on their choc bar that some child slave has picked a coco pod for. Those fuckers are all putting gas in their hippie cars from some desspot country in the middle east ain't they? Where women are treated like shit and no one gets the vote. Tossers. The worlds mental. Deal with it.

Goodyear welt wrote:

Sometimes I read the Sun, if its the only UK paper left in the shop. I just fucking hate it Liam..."don't read the Sun, don't read the Mail, don't read the Express"..."Don't vote Tory, don't buy things made it China"..."are those tea bags fair trade?" I fucking hate those type of right on pricks, normally from some middle class background. With their mobile phone that some hoho in the Congo has been bull whipped to make work. And munching on their choc bar that some child slave has picked a coco pod for. Those fuckers are all putting gas in their hippie cars from some desspot country in the middle east ain't they? Where women are treated like shit and no one gets the vote. Tossers. The worlds mental. Deal with it.

Bit of a flaw there GW? You have a choice with clothes, but not phones, etc?

What I mean is Gen; unless your 100% sure your gas hasn't come from Saudi and your chocolate didn't originate from East Africa and you don't own a mobile phone, don't be telling me not to buy a pair of socks made in Bangladesh or read the Sun. You don't have the right. Get your own consumerism in order before having a pop at mine.

Yes it does, which is why I only buy free range eggs.

Mr. James wrote:

The wool tie compared to the silk tie ...

To return to the theme..........

The Weejun compared to the Alden?

Mr. James wrote:

Yes... That's long been an objection of mine to the LHS - It's overly-sophisticated, like a European or, especially, an English loafer. Of course Anglo is a big part of Ivy as we all know, I just like my Ivy a bit less polished.

One of my great objections to the new Brooks Brothers is that everything is so shiny in there. All 'luxe' and Euro-trash styled - I liked the old matte world better:

Regular Oxford cloth.
Wool Challis.
Shetlands.
Tweed.
Unpolished cotton Chinos or 'drab' Cords.
Leather goods with a deep brooding polish, not a shiny surface gloss.


'Dull' is the new exciting the harder it becomes to get !

Strangely I'm with you jimbo.

I dont like spit polished shoes, no iron shirts, thin shiney things, except sharkskin suits, but I do like my corduroy to be soft and shiney.

Funny stuff...

Ivy, especially later via Preppy, got picked up on by so many newbies who bought into the marketing so deeply...

- If cotton is good, silk must be better ?  Richer, yes ?  More Upper Class, yes ?

... And not just that - If Oxford Cloth is kinda heavy then a REALLY heavy Oxford Cloth must be even better, yes ?

... And if the shirts are kinda baggy then REALLY baggy must be even better, yes ?

So much bad taste followed. Pure cartoonery. Hanna-Barbera Ivy.

Every style has a core integrity, a classicism which is its bedrock. A geometry. After that comes baroque decadence as certain people grow bored and superficially experiment instead of digging deeper.

I see nothing but bad taste in Ben Silver, Preppy, Trad, the list might go on for a while now I've started....

Remember some of the old Ivy names - "The Purist", "Puritain" ?  Marketing names to be sure, but the marketing was about selling the notion of integrity back when it was still based on something.