too many cups already so wine please.

not an expert on wines so decent valpolicella will do just fine.

salute

A quick bump for this & then I'll read through & see if I can add to it...

Interesting to look back on these early discussions from the early days of TI. Since then, as I think it was Sidewinder put it, every furrow has been ploughed and reploughed, the soil has been tilled, sieved and raked over. But the history of how the style took root (another soil reference) in countries outside the USA continues to fascinate. USA, UK, France and Italy - does anyone else make clothes that are relevant?

Japan counts, certainly.  Edwin, for example, are fairly well thought of.  Paul Simons is offering Japanese footwear and socks; possibly more.  I saw Edwin jeans quite a few years ago in a trendy, clueless shop not a million miles away from where I live and almost wished myself twenty or more years younger.  I'm delighted to look over anything that proclaims itself to have been 'Made In Italy', having worn their desert boots more than once - indeed, one pair until last summer when the 'quality of crepe' finally gave up the ghost.  Paraboot I never quite got on with, although they have their devotees. 
Ivy League can get harder as you get older, I think.  I'm all for Ian Strachan's keeping the old look going, hanging onto that Ivy purity, but I wonder how many are able to manage it.  Still, the mixing of American, continental and English clothing (Baracuta, eh?) has a firm tradition.  And there was plenty of copying, wasn't there?

2RS knows far more about this than I.

I recently received an email from O'Connell's detailing their 'fall' range of clothes and it seems to include a lot of UK stuff. Not sure who their customers are these days. Many of them must have died off, not to be replaced by younger ones.

Florsheim used to do a decent pair of Italian-made desert boots.

So much stuff here to untangle, and my poor exhausted brain can't engage with it. But wanted to say that these days Japan really is the pre-eminent Ivy/Americana clothes country, perhaps more so than it was when this topic started 13 years ago. I've lost track of the names, but there's Beams, Beams Plus, Van Jacket, Edwin, Kamakura, Buzz Rickson, Clutch shop and magazine, Free and Easy magazine (RIP). This is just scratching the surface. What's the name of that Japanese maker of the 5 pocket Bedford cords JS is currently selling? Great stuff. No-one can touch them. So well made, consistently. It's a cultural thing - they do things properly, with integrity.

Perhaps the Japanese story is more compelling than even the Italian.  I've read bits and bobs and seen photographs over the years that suggest they're way out in front in terms of style in its broadest sense.  Ironic that they rejected and resisted American involvement early on.  It was as though, once the invasion and occupation took place in 1945, they came to truly embrace it.  As for their schoolgirls (and this has nothing to do with Ivy) that short skirt/white socks thing they have going on leaves my poor old mind reeling.