... And the paradox is that 'pure' Ivy League is actually rather impure!
Never a prescribed style like Preppy with its handbook and the old Trad with its rules.

So roll on reformed Trad...

The one that knows its history & really reflects its tradition.

Feels Mighty Real!

Edit: Admire me! No cheesy music vid link to my last comment ... Lord, it almost killed me not doing that...

Last edited by Terry Lean (2007-06-08 09:17:58)

Ol Chums,

Seems we have all copped-out.

A fashionista critique on the whole WASP/Ivy/Trad/preppy continuum from the NY Times, 2004 follows.  The fashionistas see it as "Yankee conformity" and "past expression".  A touch amusing that J Crew and CZ Guest are both cited as inspirations for "the look".


Colors of the Country Club

Sigourney Weaver rushed onto the stage of the Flea Theater in Manhattan last week, a vision in Easter pink and green straight from the pages of a J. Crew catalog. Ms. Weaver plays the title character in ''Mrs. Farnsworth,'' A. R. Gurney's latest dissection of WASP mores, which runs through May 8. As the play opens, she eulogizes her grandmother, a woman who held firm to the conviction that ''the world worked better when people knew where they stood.''

Marjorie Farnsworth is not always so sure where she stands, but even when she wavers, her lime green raincoat, pink sweater and pearls anchor her soundly to her social milieu, with its reassuring rounds of Miss Porter's School, ski trips to Stowe and family vacations on Fisher Island.

Her costume is a calculated evocation of high WASP culture, the very same culture the fashion world is now embracing. But as Claudia Brown, the play's costume designer, explains, Marc Jacobs and Kate Spade may reissue the WASP uniform with a lacing of irony, but they tend to miss out on the ultimate irony: that fashion, evanescent by its nature, should be referencing a look that has scarcely altered since the Eisenhower years.
Ms. Brown, a Yale graduate who boasts that she has never worn a polo shirt in her life, accessorized Ms. Weaver with a charm bracelet, beige pumps and other totems of Yankee conformity. Her sugary if robotic look was inspired, Ms. Brown said, by the work of the photographer Tina Barney, known for her chilly depictions of WASP family life.

Ms. Weaver's center-parted hair, fastened at the sides with twin barrettes, is a deliberate evocation of C. Z. Guest, the late society doyenne. ''C. Z. Guest had this serenity to the way she looked -- lovely, never over the top, but kind of formidable in a way,'' Ms. Brown said.

And therein lay her charm. The nostalgic appeal of her patrician look ''has a little to do with politics,'' Ms. Brown said. People emulate it because it is ''the expression of a society that has a structure, an established culture.''
Compelling it may be, but fashion's embrace of WASP style ''represents a cop-out,'' Ms. Brown added tartly. ''It's not about self-expression; it's about past expression.''

You might also want to consult the university styles thread on the LL that Etutee posted.  Big caveat, from my perspective and for a lot of reasons, on considering the styles in Esquire/Apparel Arts as "snap shots in time," but might be of interest.

In the so-called pre-WWII elite, you saw beautiful chesterfield coats, double-breasted suits, English shoes, homburgs, silk mufflers, etc.  worn by preps.  I've had a few conversations with people who were there at the time, and this is what they tell me.  As I think I mentioned to you in an e-mail, the 50's Ivy look was considered (as hard for us to imagine now) "hip" for a lack of a better word.  To be sure, I don't discount accounts by guys like Boyer that the GI's influenced a look on post-WWII campuses, what with chinos and whatnot, but there was still nevertheless a hipness to the look. 

Of course my understanding is open to correction.

edit:  it would be also interesting to look at how expensive this stuff was back then, relatively.  Think about the state of the US economy in the 30's.  Even if prep schools were in some senses less expensive then than now, think of how few could afford them.  It took a significant amount of money.  It wasn't like every upper-middle-class American kid could attend these things.  Compare the price of a good car, like a Buick or Chevy, or an immediate post-WWII suburban house to an education?   Which are you going to pick, if you have a relatively good public (state) school available to you, and you live in some Leave it to Beaver suburb.  That, and then there's the social thing.  My guess is there's a lot more of a gulf then than now in that respect.  Today when we say socio-economic, it's really the economic that determines things right?  We've got this veneer of American white-collar professionalism that's supposed to knock down all barriers to other things. 

Just a Ramble in the Leanean Mode,

H.

Last edited by Horace (2007-08-02 22:55:58)

Call me non-discerning, but I don't notice any real difference ^ .   Except more equestrian stuff, but that's standard kit.

Last edited by Coolidge (2008-06-03 13:51:07)

It certainly looks different than Ivy or whatever, of the period. The photo of the boys sitting on the balcony is misleading, since they are looking very middle America. But the rest of the photos are all British warmers, flared hacking jackets, and even a pair of suede laceups, not Ivy or American at all.