There's perhaps a slight division between the 'American' and the 'Italian'.  I'm far more 'American', others will be, to a greater or lesser degree, 'Italian'.  Daniele provides us, it goes without saying, with a sublime example!, which must be the envy of many an English 'mod'.  But didn't UK Ivy, in the very beginning, mix all of this up to present something - I was going to say 'distinctively English', but I'm not sure that I can - ?  Just look at some of the pictures of John Simons and his friends.  They're having a lovely time of it!  A younger man - let's say Adam - might prefer something slightly 'Italian'.  A slightly older man - such as myself - probably benefits from the sack.  The roads have diverged a little, but only a little, and Gibson Gardens, as we know, is a flag-bearer for the Italian male.  More problematic, from my point of view, is the wearing of, say, DMs.  But, if we're allowing 'work wear' and 'Americana' - which we are - they probably belong.  Thus we begin to turn circles.  Much of it, though - I'm convinced of this - is going to depend upon age and experience.  Adam strikes me as open-minded.

I knew there was a reason I liked you '66.

Some of Adam's outfit pictures were among the best ever featured on this forum.

Dismissing that Stanley Blacker jacket on this forum is akin to a Christian who rejects the Bible. Here we are presented with that weirdly straight almost asexual Ivy style in its absolute most perfect expression at the height of the original Golden Age of Ivy. This is a sacred text upon which we are gazing and I react with Al-Qaeda-like fury and intolerance when the very roots of the look are so nonchalantly dismissed with a few ignorant pokes at a keyboard. Ivy is NOT about wearing a plain Made in China T shirt, some Made in China khakis and a pair of Made in China sneakers. That does not mean you've mastered the look. It means you probably want to fit in, look safe and understated, and attract the interest of the opposite sex by appearing unthreatening and pleasingly casual and youthful. Nothing wrong with this of course, most of us do that in our teens, early twenties. But it is my perhaps rather twisted theory that those who are attracted to the Ivy thing in their youth are a little bit, shall we say, unconventional, a bit odd, definitely left-field, rather on the neurotic side. I know I was and so were my cohorts. At the age of 24 I lived for the Ivy look, I ate, slept and breathed the whole thing. A friend coming back from Brooks in 1987, our first pioneer, was greeted like he'd returned from the Moon. He looked different, his teeth were whiter, his hair glossier, his shoes shinier. He brought us carrier bags full of rare treasures. We studied the sales receipts like they were medieval parchments. We would visit J.Simons when it was closed in the evenings and silently stare in the windows. We were dysfunctional, intense and we didn't get any action with the opposite sex for about 4 years. We were all in our little sack jackets, Linet ones from Simons (fabulous quality - the best?), vintage from Flip, the occasional Brooks or JOS A Banks number. We wore our trousers rather too short, had crew cuts and horn-rim specs. We were a bit freakish, but I thought we looked fantastic and I don't regret a moment of it, in spite of our absolute lack of appeal to women. I feel modern youth is a bit too light about all this. I know it's a generational thing but I miss the mad, intense youngsters I used to know. I don't know where it all came from, this seriousness about clothes, but it felt very important back then, a real expression of self and our collective world view. I still get that way now and again which is why I get a bit punchy when a blatantly perfect expression of the style is so casually written off. I learned through people who knew what was what telling me it straight. Johnny Simons and Ian Strachan and Graham Marsh and others always told us where we were getting it wrong. They were our teachers - kind but clear and consistent. It wasn't just clothes, it was all the other associated ephemera. We were learning a code.

GG

^To be fair to GG the above is the kinda post I've always liked from him. Nothing wrong with being either freakish of neurotic when it spells passion I think. Good post IMO anyway.....

It requires a lot of guts to embrace the kind of freakishness to which Gibson Gardens is referring.  How many times have I taken trousers for alteration and been quizzed on why I want them precisely so?  Un-English, you see.  Then there was GGs defence of Brownshoe's choice of spectacles: the perfect looking Brownshoe, Ivy writ large.  This is a clarion call, a wake up call - you do understand that, don't you?  This is not 'cartoon mod' or 'skinhead', it's Ivy League: narrow and specific and, yes, uninclusive if you like.  I've had to take a step back from it.  If I lived in London I might well be gazing into JSs window by the light of the full moon.  One's mouth waters for the goodies that are no more.  I'm having to be firm with myself, so that I can take that first vital trip to Cape Cod in 2010.

Just some critique on what you just implied Jim, raising my glass to your good self and mr Staceyboy and everyone else reading this in the process. I'm not trying to defend myself here, I'm just not buying the idea that everything "Ivy" online came from just one source.

You may have been the first to surface and play on the 'net but that's not the same as originating all this. Take mr Weejun, he wasn't there with the trolls but he'd been at it regardless. Someone who's been at it for decades may surface online tomorrow, with no relation to what the trolls accomplished.

That's all.
Cheers fellers.

Last edited by 1966 (2009-07-17 13:20:03)