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#1 2010-09-16 05:01:11
- Rip Rig & Panic
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The Potency Of An Ivy Image
We are into highly subjective and personal territory here. To my way of thinking, it's not unlike looking at a painting, a scene in a movie, an example of design or architecture. No-one, I think, is immune from this. That photograph of Tony Perkins in The Ivy Look, wearing herringbone and gingham, just leaps off the page for me; ditto the images of Bill Evans. Others will, I'm sure, feel hostile or simply shrug their shoulders. But it makes me want to look like them, to wear what they're wearing. This is just a good, fresh example - The Book is on our minds. The image of Paul Newman, on the other hand, leaves me cold, and not only for the reason Big Tony stated. As I said, highly subjective and personal.
#2 2010-09-16 08:07:38
- Big Tony
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
it was originally a comfortable, optimistic American middle class style which I think UK fans might not fully understand, it is impossible for the style to be popular again in today's angry and frenzied American society
it was...
comfortable, large sofa in front of the televison
raking autumn leaves on the front lawn
excitement about going back to school with your new shoos on
dad coming home at 5:30 while mom has something yummy on the stove
going out to the country to visit your uncle's farm
packing up the station wagon for the summer family vacation
fiddling with your tie to get ready for Sunday church
sticking hockey cards in your bicycle spokes to make an "engine" sound
walking that girl home from high school
gettting the date you wanted for the prom
that scary first day when dad drops you off at college
getting back home on Thanksgiving from college to visit family
having your dad's friends start taking you like an adult and asking about college
saving up for your first car, it's a clunker but it's a car dammit
optimism about the future with jobs for everyone who wanted to work
"What sort of post-apocalyptic deathscape is this?"
"I don't want to look like a cock hungry sailor after all !!!"
"When it comes to infidelity, broken families, and reckless fatherhood, the underclass are amateurs."
#3 2010-09-16 08:12:12
- Rip Rig & Panic
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Beautiful, if I may say so. The images I love most - such as the one of two young scholars on their bicycles in 1941, which hangs on my study wall - captured in words. 1941: Ivy before that modern jazz filtering process. Sadly all very different in the UK. Some of us have had to unlearn so much. Yes, unlearn.
#4 2010-09-16 08:14:53
- Toffeeman
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Jeez that sounds awful. Monocultural, reactionary and complacent. Thank God it's gone. I prefer the way contemporary Ivy fits into our fragmented culture. Make of it what you will. Twist it to your lifestyle. As the uniform of a lazy, discredited bourgeoisie it does not interest me in the slightest.
TM
#5 2010-09-16 08:16:33
- Big Tony
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
the true look was only post war, and post Korean War
one common name was "the collegiate look"
earlier and it was an elite ivy league style
"What sort of post-apocalyptic deathscape is this?"
"I don't want to look like a cock hungry sailor after all !!!"
"When it comes to infidelity, broken families, and reckless fatherhood, the underclass are amateurs."
#6 2010-09-16 08:19:09
- Moose Maclennan
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
I suspect a small-town childhood and youth in the UK wasn't all that different.
Apart from the thing about the jobs for everyone that wanted to work, that is...
#7 2010-09-16 08:19:18
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
LOL! But if it's the original version we have to give credit where credit's due, surely? Sorry, John, but you did nail some of the paradoxes yourself once, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, well... Not that I want it to be a uniform, you understand, not a bit... but your own rulebook could tip it over the edge into one... Are they really so lazy and discredited? I should have thought some of them were meat and potatoes Democrats...
#8 2010-09-16 08:20:40
- Toffeeman
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
You boys are wallowing in meaningless, pointless nonsense about the supposed glorious past. I like a bit of cheese as much as the next man, but that's all it is - cheese. Recognise it for what it was. Decidedly not a golden age. Milk and cookies America? Not for me. I'm more into Miles pissing all over that stuff wearing pink seersucker at the Newport Jazz Festival while shooting up backstage.
TM
#9 2010-09-16 08:23:09
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Does not Boom equate to Golden, then? I thought that was - at least in part - what John Simons was supposed to be celebrating.
#10 2010-09-16 08:24:11
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
(This has all the makings of a good thread).
#11 2010-09-16 08:24:44
- Big Tony
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
"What sort of post-apocalyptic deathscape is this?"
"I don't want to look like a cock hungry sailor after all !!!"
"When it comes to infidelity, broken families, and reckless fatherhood, the underclass are amateurs."
#13 2010-09-16 08:28:38
- Rip Rig & Panic
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Thank God Miles kicked the habit. Even if it did lead to him dressing like some funkateer.
#14 2010-09-16 08:34:28
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
I actually like those silly old advertisments: Pendleton for Christmas etc. I own numbers of them. I love 'Life' and 'Esquire', too. Perhaps Toffeeman is more for the Soho/Mingo modernist side of it.
#15 2010-09-16 08:35:43
- Big Tony
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
"What sort of post-apocalyptic deathscape is this?"
"I don't want to look like a cock hungry sailor after all !!!"
"When it comes to infidelity, broken families, and reckless fatherhood, the underclass are amateurs."
#16 2010-09-16 08:35:55
- Rip Rig & Panic
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
HIGHLY SUBJECTIVE. HIGHLY PERSONAL.
#17 2010-09-16 08:39:18
- Toffeeman
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Norman Rockwell is sweet and charming nonsense. I don't believe in that world any more than I believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. If wearing a tweed jacket and a button-down affiliates you with a yearning for the 'Golden Age' of the hard-working mom and pop world then count me out. If the world is less cuddly and friendly now I say blame that very culture for believing that church and flag and white bread and spending lots of money and cars and fridges were going to ensure universal happiness. One of the joys of 'Mad Men', beyond the amazing visual spectacle of it all, is the way it so delicately dissects these middle class lives with their secrets, their alcoholism, their repressed sexuality, their rigid unfulfilling domesticity, their infidelity, their futile ambition. I shun all that stuff. In that sense I am very much on the progressive wing of Ivyism.
TM
#20 2010-09-16 08:47:42
- Toffeeman
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
The clothes are works of art - put them behind glass. Make of them what you will. We attach meaning to a pair of shoes. My favourite picture in THE IVY LOOK is Coltrane at the Guggenheim. John Simons believes modern jazz and Ivy League clothes are one and the same, forever meant to be linked. They thought they were hipsters. Yes, America had a complex glamour and they sold to guys who wanted to tap into that glamour. But John and Ian Strachan are really rather unconventional guys a million miles away from the homespun crap about warming your toes around the crackling log fire while the black housemaid gets supper ready for you. Don't know about Lou Austin. A businessman I expect?
TM
#22 2010-09-16 08:51:21
- Big Tony
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
"What sort of post-apocalyptic deathscape is this?"
"I don't want to look like a cock hungry sailor after all !!!"
"When it comes to infidelity, broken families, and reckless fatherhood, the underclass are amateurs."
#23 2010-09-16 08:53:13
- Rip Rig & Panic
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
Anyone care to get their boxing gloves on and join in?
#24 2010-09-16 08:55:12
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
The Subjective 'Myth and Reality' thread.
#25 2010-09-16 08:59:30
- Toffeeman
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Re: The Potency Of An Ivy Image
The black maid shit went on! Who made the cars and the fridges and built the detached homes for the wankers in their button-downs? Who worked in the factories in Detroit? The American Dream is built on bullshit. The world Big Tony and yourself get all misty-eyed about was built on the sweat of a workforce blatantly unrepresented in this world view. I embrace the flipside of all that stuff. Where I live in London there are gaps in it all. It's a horrible, glorious mess and we all somehow make it work. I want a messy, ugly, funky multicultural world with everyone in no socks and Weejuns grooving along to Jimmy McGriff. It's a new hippydom based on proper shoulder line, half an inch of oxford cloth at the cuff and real selvedge 501s. I foresee a new Ivy rooted in progressive values. I think I've had one too many espressi.... Fuck the Pope and his reactionary bullshit. They're all discredited. I don't believe in any of that stuff.
TM