It hurt me a bit to go up Regent Street and into Brooks.  True modernist business should be conducted up cobbled back streets smelling of kebab meat and urine.  A dark little shop with a few pairs of deadstock Royals, right next door to a shebeen from which old Delroy Wilson sounds are floating and a wizened little man grabs your sleeve and tells you he knows a place off Cable Street hustling Big E Levis...  Brooks is Sainsburys...

Yes, interesting.

I never quite got stuff like George Marshall's 'Skinhead Nation', but the transference of that look to the US is quite fascinating:  Yanks taking back their own style, but their own style subverted by the English.  I'd reckon not many Brits on here have never worn a Fred Perry polo shirt at some time in their lives, even if only to feel relaxed around the house.  The Ben Sherman, of course, was a cheap English copy of an American shirt - English mods wanted Brooks Brothers: the original.  Because they were hard to come by.  We were only just emerging from an age of austerity by 1960.  Modernists like John Simons grew up in a grey age: hence the deep and abiding interest in West Coast jazz and TNSL.

Time to take a step backwards.

Pause for thought and reflect.

I feel a deep sense of responsibility.

That word 'snobbery' - very emotive.  Not that Americans are incapable of it, as you will know if you've read your 'Enry James. 

Let's say it this way: our forefathers were perhaps a bit envious.  The United States, as far as I am concerned, is the finest country in the world.  Too many young Americans died on Omaha beach for me not to defend the United States to kneejerk Brits. 

Okay.

Ivy style is yours.  If you want it.  It originated, if you like, over here but as something lacking in the egalitarian spirit.  Eventually, of course, as we know, it was mass marketed - hence all those lovely magazine adverts some of us are proud to own.  And the UK claimed it.  The East End of London claimed it.  Took it to its heart.  Not too many of them, mind - it was a little bit secretive, a touch exclusive.  The 'mod' was a slightly different kind of creation, and his look and style crossed the Atlantic and was adopted by American youth who dug the Beatles, Stones, Carnaby Street.  There was the 'Carnaby mod' by then: peacock proud: and some of his younger, soul-loving brothers were about to become...

The wearers of Ben Sherman. 

But not the Ivy League guys.  They were real magpies, turning their eyes yearningly to Paris and Rome: collecting, amassing, assimilating, evolving, mixing, matching and moving on - not in a dramatic, obvious sense like John Stephens' boys, but as part of a gradual, never-ending process.  The Look changed, went a little strange for a time, but the essential strictness and firmness of purpose remained.

It remains yet. 

Clothesville, Squire, the Ivy Shop, Village Gate, J. Simons - these have been the magnets.  For almost half a century. 

But Ivy remains American.  It's just that, quite possibly, we love the alien more than our own back yards.

If it's still any good...

Like Northern Rock, yer mean?

Flanagan and Allen...  the Coen Brothers...  we're the deadly duo...

Only if I can be fanny...

(That ought to provoke Cheeky...)...

I'd like to see it, too, Alex - speaking as a non-Londoner.  I don't think, however, that a chap like Gibson Gardens is likely to play ball.  The debate is probably a bit nebbish for his tastes.  I take full responsibility; only wanted to try and put it into some form of sociological context.