No Fashion Future in Ivy League

New York Times, August 19, 1957

(click on the picture to read the text)

"A man past college age who dresses as though he was on still on the campus reminds me of a sophisticated woman wearing her teen-age daugher's dress"

A Curmudgeon’s Lament

or Musings of an Old Ivy Leaguer...

The Sartorialist - G. Bruce Boyer

The Gilt-Edged Status Symbol

Sports Illustrated, May 1, 1961:

A New York firm called Gemsco has recently discovered, to its surprise, that it is using almost as much gold bullion thread to make blazer crests as it used to make officers' braid during World War II. The reason is shown on the gatefold opposite: the crested blazer, the club button and the old school tie that symbolized "belonging" for the clubmen of Victorian England have been taken up by Americans as status symbols for today. The utilitarian blazer becomes a glamorous garment when emblazoned with the crest of the Bahamas Automobile Club or the Spring Valley Hunt and buttoned with crested gilt buttons instead of ordinary brass ones. Other classics are being fitted into the picture: the necktie firm of Harvale, for instance, suddenly finds itself making not only such longtime stand-bys as Harvard's varsity football tie, but new ties with the symbols or the colors of the Baltimore Colts, Myopia Hunt and the Chicago Racquet Club. Even nonjoiners can now wear symbols, since more than 500 business firms, among them Beech Aircraft and the Bigelow-Sanford Carpet Co., have their own company ties. Hats, too, are laden with symbols, thanks to a new cult that collects hat badges indicating the wearer has skied such resorts as Tremblant or Zermatt. Some hats, like Field Trial Gunner Ernest Burton's Tyrolean, tell a whole history, in badges, of a man's sporting activity. And the symbol-wearer's wardrobe goes from head to toe. Bill Talbert's Peal dress slippers, for example, are not only embroidered with his monogram, but with crossed tennis rackets as well.

The ties, inspired by the Victorian Englishmen in the caricatures, are: at left, Chicago Racquet, Myopia Hunt, Groton School; at right, U.S. Golf Association, New York Yacht, Anglers' Club, Carleton Mitchell's own, Fly Club and, hanging below Yale Fence Club boater, Harvard varsity football.

Americans in Bermuda, 1953

Source:

Google's LIFE magazine image archive.

See also LIFE magazine, 8/3/53 edition, p. 61, article titled "Men Try Shorts for Town."

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Goodbye to Wing Tips

In 1972 the corporation-lawyer look—three-piece Yale-gray suits, white shirts and club ties—got a credibility rating of 81%; this year the figure plummeted to 57%. Meanwhile, the mod suit with wide lapels and nipped waist worn over a pastel-patterned shirt zoomed upward in credibility from 28% to 63%.

Goodbye to Wing Tips - Time Magazine - 11/19/73

A Quasi-Official Yale Man

In my undergraduate years I had passed the storefront many times, and I knew the company's reputation as purveyors of the "Ivy League Look": expensive essentials for discriminating men, including tailored suits, crisp button-down shirts, and eye-catching, perfectly coordinated neckties, as well as quaint accessories like oar-shaped tie bars, polka-dot bow ties, and brightly-colored suspenders with matching two-tone socks.

Life Tales - The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine - 5/9/04

A Brief Guide to Men's Fashions Unravels The Deep Mysteries of All Those 'Looks'

Worn by about nine out of ten Harvard men, the Ivy look is smart and trim. It is supposed to make a man look masculine without the phoniness of padding.

The Harvard Crimson - 11/4/63

With Their Socks Off

At Harvard, going sockless is to the "preppy-clubby" set what the armless sweatshirt is to the athletic crowd.

With Their Socks Off - Time Magazine - 11/11/66

Bass Weejuns

The Bass Weejun is the iconic Ivy shoe and looked great paired with cuffed chinos and white wool socks (the socks were often from Adler and bleached to a muted cream color).

Soothing anonymity

New York Times, September 28, 1958

(click on the picture for the full text)
With thanks to Decline & Fall (FNB Talk Ivy Forum) for finding this.

Clipper Craft Goes to the Roots of Ivy

From an ad in the September 8, 1958 issue of Sports Illustrated. Click on the picture to read the copy.
It satisfies all such criteria as natural shoulders, narrow lapels, lapped seams, stitched edges, hooked vents, pleatless trousers, tapered sleeves and trousers.

Clipper Craft used to sponsor the radio program "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" in the late 1940s. What happened to this company is certainly a mystery to me.

The Ivy League Suit

Here's an excerpt from a January 1959 Sports Illustrated article titled "New Suit Shape" (The Continental suit is a new - and controversial item - at your clothier's).

IVY LEAGUE SUIT, favorite from Madison Avenue to Market Street, has three buttons, unfitted shape, flap pockets, notch lapels, center vent. For many American men it is the only way to dress and has been since their fathers' day. They are not likely to change their minds in the near future.