And what would you say?

Just interested.

OK, you definitely would not bring up those issues as a nice little conversation at a business dinner with a new client...

That would be rude! However, this is another situation here. A public forum, internet, anonymity... So, it is not rude... "style" and "class", even politics to some extent are related...

Americans tend to be a little hypocritical about the subject of "class"... even the word makes them shiver... the British on the other hand love to talk about it (Queen's English, the Oxford stutter, the upper class lisp being just some example of how much it matters in every day conversation)...


It is a bit of a paradoxon that even the biggest snobs in the USAmerican upper class (Old Money, not aristocracy, of course) tend to talk of their society as a classless one... the American Dream... from rags to riches... no boundaries...everything is possible....

I like this idea, yes I do... but I 'm afraid this is not the reality... it is ideology... just like the Marxist ideology...

What does this have to do with Ivy League style? A lot!

Just think about how many clothes manufacturers have placed their production in 3rd world countries... So many that the USA have almost become a 3rd World coutry themselves... global competition>>> cheap labour everywhere...

no place for quality RTW clothes anymore>>> the style gets watered down...

Sooner or later we will have to go bespoke for an Ivy League suit!!! But that is not what the style was all about... quality for everyone! Power to the people...

Of course, selling clothes has always been about making money, but you know where I am heading...

Word, Brownshoe! I am wondering if you wouldn't get a a laugh for a snob/ trad attitude on an Ivy League campus today, just like you definitely would get one for a bow-tie or whale tie conservative trad look.... you also probably would be ridiculed for the "fashionable" Thom Browne look... but who cares, nowadays, people don't even dig the most subtle cool...you are only safe with RL Polo and similar...yawn...

http://www.filmnoirbuff.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1601    - WASP Style.

From Trip

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.''


I loved this view. Sorta helps to explain the diff between modern interpretations of the look, and the reality of the actual look.

An interesting subject, with endless discussion a possibility. My guess is that Tom 22 has about said it all. Something like, if you aspire to it, you will never achieve it.

The original essay on this is the Paul Fussell book, that was somewhat tongue in cheek satire, and a touch of realism.

The Fussell book, is a bit out of date. Also it was written on the US genre, and things may be vastly different on the Continent, now.

In the US, may be big geographical differences, I don't know about the US West Coast.

In the US, brands like RL have flourished by letting people fantasize about elevating themselves by wearing a brand.

Fussell makes an interesting point that I didn't realize at the time, but have seen it in action in an academic community. If you are really from the UK, you elevate yourself at least one rung on the social ladder by actually being from the UK.

Also, in the US, there are now a vast number of people that have no interest in aspiring to a higher social class, but seem to aspire to a journey in the opposite direction. Not wrong, but just the way that things seem to be, at the moment.

We just got back from a cross country trip on the airlines. At one time, this called for jacket and tie on a man, and dress for the ladies. Now, denim, white sneakers, t shirts with message of the day, etc. are fairly standard.

On another thread, the comment that US university clubs seem to be on the way out, is another indication of a change. That used to be fairly common, among those in the US of a certain status. Now those clubs seem to be hanging on by a thread.

Finally, the wealth generated by the US financial community over the past decade or so seemed to breed a lot of the "masters of the universe", as Tom Wolfe called them, that tried to demonstrate that they had arrived, by a flagrant display of material possessions. Many of those have taken a rapid trip back to cold reality.

Or so it seems.