A nice discussion point indeed, Jim, and much as I love Italy I yearn to return to Paris, where there's a Vietnamese bar opposite Gare du Nord with the old-fashioned zinc counter and everything... 
How does one explain a response to this thing or to that thing?  French or Italian, they have a style only rarely to be found in England, no matter how hard we try, because our outlook is so different.  (And Spain we have not yet touched upon).  As we know, there are continental nooks in Soho and elsewhere and we have to try and recreate as best we can.  But one basis of our culture might be defined as Princeton + Soho + Paris + Rome = ...  JS has brought together all of that: J.Keydge; Paraboot; the desert boot that now seems firmly Italian; the roll on the collar.  Paul Stuart has his Italian style: baggy, pleated green cords, that look well with a slack jacket and Playboy-style boots. 
One thing we do have in common when we're out and about, Jim, we're there to enjoy, to learn, to feel, not to chant, smash or defy.
Best, Chet.

Right!  So un-English!  I had to work really hard to replace just about every English item in my wardrobe with American made Ivy, but, socks aside, I can now go out, whatever the weather, in USA made, union-approved gear, from the tie-clip to the wingtips.  Staceyboy is very hip about this, too, although he is a true stylist, whereas I now go for seasonal/functional, i.e. cord jackets for early or late summer, pea coat for late autumn and winter, madras and chinos for the dog days. 
A point, considering Big John's homage to the Italian male, how Ivy aware are they?  The minets, sure, but the Italians?  I bought my best pair of dessies down in Brindisi - very 'mod' in a kind of Hemmings/'Blow Up' kind of way - and the guys around Ostuni were nice but really more into Oasis than, say, Horace Silver or Little Anthony and the Imperials.  Maybe in Rome it's different?

Thanks for the CWKWIA" compliment, but I only know what I know. If you get my drift. I learn every day from this Forum.
Diego Della Valle, the owner of Tod's started a brand called FEYi. Ivy Leagueish. I first saw it late 90's in Italy. Never seen it outide Italy.
Diego Della Valle is an Italian with a liking for Ivy League. For many year he had the Italian importing licence for Brooks Brothers.
RH

Very sharp.

Straight ahead US style can be rather dry for some.

Soak it in Soho with a pinch of Paris or Rome & then you have something else again.

I kinda like that dry stick US style myself. But then I relish all that rectitude as the perfect cover for all my wrong doing...

Am currently pondering myself to what extent the Ivy scene was a separate one within the wider scale of Modernism ( including sussed Skins etc ), in the early days that is.

I'm thinking those individuals again that were happily coexisting with those involved into a certain form of subculture that didn't consider themselves to be a part of that sort of thing ( perhaps they thought it all a bit too obvious ). Numbers must have been small IMHO....

Maybe a subtle and harmless elitist approach, then again places like Austins and The Ivy shop were never cheap if you get my drift....

Worth a thought ?

A

'Continental' seems right on the money.  Additionally, without stirring up too much of a hornet's nest, the link between the modernist and the mod seems to be to be fairly tenuous - but something came in the middle, in the Feld/Town interview period - that seems to me to have been different again.  Now, in order to have been there you've got to be John's age, agreed?  I was 18/19 when the revival happened, all down to 'Quadrophenia' where I lived, and it just revitalised the old punk-ted skirmishes of 76-77.  Fringe punks pulled on a Fred Perry, and, hey presto! they were mods, all digging Secret Affair.  I thought it sucked and kept out of it.  The more sussed kids were already well into Montgomery Clift and pondering what Brooks Brothers might have to offer; also reading French existentialist literature, Kerouac and the Beats and Salinger.  We were beginning to listen to blues - Robert Johnson etc. - and Coltrane a little, Parker a little - and get seriously into movies. 
'Modernist' strikes me as being London, 'mod' as widespread, with a more Stax/Motown emphasis; not jazz.  My father was listening to Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in the mid-50s and was probably the only jazz fan in his little mining town, travelling to Nottingham to see the MJQ etc. 
You wander into town wearing your Burberrys' mac, Rodex lambswool jacket and desert boots, you see a moddie boy wearing his parka with badges stuck all over it, you just know there's no common ground!  Sussed rockabillies have more style, wearing plaid coats and Weejuns.  Take a look at the pictures in the Barnes book - the mods look a bunch of scruffs really (at the seaside anyway), and this is where Hewitt, Weller and the tribe get it so wrong: if you can link Eddie Harvey to a Girls Ball games hooligan, you can link anything to anything.  The casual of today is only a chav with an expensive coat on.  Style Councillors' 'smack rats and scrubbers'.  That guy knows the score!

http://www.liverpool2007.org.uk/cunardyanks/cunardyanks.htm

"Their dress sense reflected their tastes in music. Whilst in Britain, Army and Navy de-mob suits and army coats were the norm, for them the effusive and elegant Billy Eckstine was the role model. So it was midnight blue tonic mohair suits, slip-on shoes, button-down or tab-collar shirts. A mode of dress that pre-dated "MOD" by six or seven years."