Some well heeled fanatic should round up as many of the original students pictured in Take Ivy as possible, and recreate the old shots/poses with them dressed as they do today. The boys are back in town.

I also can't help wondering if some shots of their tutors and other staff might not have proved just as interesting.  My Professor, the late D.K. Adams (Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale) had a style very much of his own: crisp, cream linen suit.  David was a lovely man who was a friend of Tom Wolfe and introduced the discipline of American Studies into the UK.  A specialist on foreign policy and a great admirer of FDR.

There are a few shots of faculty as I recall, plus some of Madison Ave and a Brooks window. But most of it is focused on the students. Presumably because the makers of the book were aiming to sell clothes to a young audience.

Funny how both this book and The Ivy Look were produced by foreigners (to the country that produced the clothes).

Are some of those young guys wearing white lab coats over their clothing?

Chens did an interview with one of them a few years ago. The guy in the cafeteria with a year on his sweater.

Actually I'd give a pound or two to see what the 'non-Ivy' students were wearing at the same time.  Assuming there were any.

Thanks for that, Yuca.  Very interesting.  Just been thinking back to my own university days when lots of the females were wearing thick sweaters, pleated (often tartan) skirts, thick ribbed tights and flat shoes.  Not Ivy, admittedly, but demonstrating that there was a widespread look at that time on campus.  Maybe a little 'Sloane'.  Chaps were often wearing rugby shirts, one of my pet sartorial hates and which I can accept as 'preppy' but nothing else.  I believe the Richmond Ivy shop did quite a trade in this kind of clothing.  TRS will remember.

My mistake.  TRS sounds positively angry.

There's a photo of John Lally & Kevin Kavanagh (?) taken in the Ivy Shop and they're surrounded by Timberland shoe boxes, probably '90's,

'Richmond Ivy Shop definitely did not sell a f***king rugby shirt - no way. I would remember that. And J.Simons neither. I can't imagine The Squire Shops or The Village Gates ever went near that stuff either. The Ivy Shop in the 80s did have to sell stuff to the many affluent bankers and lawyers of Richmond Hill and I can confirm that to a man they were pretty much all  wankers. They wanted - Timberland boat shoes - the sturdy ones with the treaded sole that the Paninari used to wear and have now become hip again I believe (ha!). They wanted sturdy straight knitwear and heavy corduroy trousers. Viyella shirts. Never bought button-downs or Weejuns - maybe a pair of Sebago now and again. They were just boring professional people with no real enthusiasm for clothes. Perhaps something to wear at the rugger at Twickenham or at dinner with Giles and Emma over in Parsons Green.'

There's at least one rugby shirt in Take Ivy (early 1960s) and by the 1970s I think they had become more popular on campus. So, like it or not, they are ivy, albeit hardly as iconic as the likes of OCBDs or sack jackets. I wouldn't be surprised if Brooks sold them back in the day.

As for 'boring professional people with no real enthusiasm for clothes' buying ivy gear - I suspect the majority of ivy wearers in the US back in the boom years would match that description. Some of them were even members of the upper classes. In fact I imagine some of the original owners of the vintage clothes I own held views I would find objectionable. And some didn't. Ivy appeals and appealed to all sorts of people.

Last edited by Yuca (2021-11-21 10:49:19)

Yuca - you miss the point. I write from a purely personal British, Northern perspective and the very different milieu I found myself thrown in to. In this context American Ivy is irrelevant. The British middle classes I served back tended to be of a type - rather supercilious, cold, aloof. The class contrasts were very stark, perhaps more than they are today.

You have to be the owner if you want to handpick the customers. And even then you probably won't be able to do so, for obvious financial reasons.