Tommy, I'll try to answer the question based on my experience.   

I went to an 80s comp and beyond a couple of teachers encouraging I had no route to a traditional university.   It just wasn't done.   I went to college and there it still wasn't introduced.   I was top of school and college, had an option to go to a top private school but there was no money for it - but it just wasn't part of the society I was in.   When I got a job at the Treasury then in a company, my mother thought that was me set for life as a respectable working class person and was scared when I wanted to push further.   Her whole upbringing had been 'know your place and be grateful'.   Well f--k that I thought in a haze of youthful fervour.

I went to a former poly, just made into a university but paid for it myself in the late 80s to mid-90s over six years at night school three nights a week and did a couple of post-grad things after.  It was three grand a year even then that I paid for from salary (until the last year when National Grid kindly chipped in where I was working).  Twenty years later I'm now a Fellow at the same uni helping advise on employability, skills application in work and international business.

Uni for me was part of the aspirant social progression that the working classes had in a tradition going right back to the unions and company education schemes.  My father had a strong socialist-improvement ethos and believed we should all seek to better ourselves and contribute more which he tried to make real for his kids.   This kind of thinking now seems largely to have gone in society - where worth is measured publicly in money and status.  To 'progress' into acceptable middle class society in UK took effort, commitment and time. Eventually it didn't matter and society is now very different.  However I always feel I have to make the effort more than others, it wasn't born in me so Ivy style is definitely part of that. 

I was a dedicated Mod as a teen as I've written before but once being part of a scene with a tribal look went away I kept the sense of progression and modernism and explored that more over time, not just in music or clothing but writing, design, art, architecture, furniture.  It seemed there was a whole world emerging in the 20th century that was optimistic and stylish (before the ghastly post Modern, garish end of things emerged in the 1970s).   Without scene aspects mattering any more, there was a modern, positive set of things to explore that seemed to resonate with my own personal development.   It's only now I see that in retrospect but it's what I was reaching for I think.

While Ivy style for me has more to do about to evolve as a modernist (again whatever that means) into middle age and beyond it is a connected part of the social impulse that was instilled into me by my parents.   My parents were poor unskilled working class British and even poorer Irish immigrant, so their hopes for social progression were with their children and they tried to give us the support they could.   So my upbringing was a mixture of Protestant work ethic with Methodist church added in, Irish republican socialist with a sense of injustice and a desire for social mobility all mixed up.  For example they paid for extra maths and English tuition and speech elocution so that I wouldn't have any social barriers.  I don't know how they did it because looking back I can see there were times when there really wasn't much money.    I'd love to say I pushed on to repay the efforts of my parents but I didn't, I did it because I could and didn't like feeling inferior to middle class people who got treated differently, they seemed so at ease and with a clear path to success.   I would go to the houses of friends and marvel at their central heating and through lounges!   We never had a car, a phone etc in the 1970s but this was usual for the working classes at that time on new council estates where everyone was at the same status.   It's difficult now to remember how fast society and expectations changed in the Thatcher era.   

I'm glad I went to university the way I did, I met loads of older business people, got more experience, took time to learn more.   It was also a real effort of time and money to do it, so I took it seriously.  I wasn't prepared to accept my lot or be some social inferior.  There always is a glass ceiling to class, but I don't care.   It is the upper classes now who are unseen, still monied, just mixed in more and less obvious.   Apart from good fortune and guidance along the way I know that what our family has achieved is substantially due to our efforts.  The clothing is part of that, smart, acceptable, unseen but with a slight edge of unconformity (hence my forum name).   Getting my kids who are inherently more middle class to try and keep the same ethos of progression is an interesting separate topic.

So I'm as far away as can be in educational linkage to Ivy, but for me it's all part of the same thinking.   I tried to answer fully as I think there's something in your original question which feels wrapped up in my life too.

Hope that helps.

Last edited by An Unseen Scene (2015-02-26 14:23:29)

Haha!

The de-industiralisation thing chimes with me. Both my parents worked in the Westland Helicopers factory, and they were made redundant the year I went away to college. One of my best friends, and fellow Mod, was one of the last intake of apprentices there and had to leave before finishing his apprenticeship.

I was always encouraged in education though - my parents coming from that Welsh valleys, non-conformist background where learning was always seen as the route to a better life, and where lots of people from working class backgrounds had gone on to be successful through education. Also, in those days, higher education was free and you got a subsistence grant you could live on. To be honest, I always found school work and exams pretty easy and got into University without really having to try too hard. But I had a great time there, not so much the course (again - pretty easy, just had to do enough) but the social scene and particularly music and bands, etc.  Also, I ended up going to a beautiful and pretty special part of the world, which is hard to explain unless you've been there. So it was of great benefit to me and my horizons, really.

None of which had any influence on my style whatsoever, students in the main looked shit, like they do everywhere. That comes 100% from Mod and friends frm before I left the crappy, small seaside town of my upbringing.

That book your lecturer wrote sounds pretty interesting to me, actually. Isaac Walton features, no doubt.

It seems the military crops up a lot here.
My old man was in the army for 13 years.
He brought me up ironing my trousers, tucking in my shirts and combing my hair.
In some ways the Ivy style is a rebellion, yes I have a leniency for neat clothing... but I like it creased and slouchy as opposed to sharp and starched.

Last edited by ZarJazz (2015-02-27 10:37:47)

Allow me to put a word in for the messier bastards amongst us..