No Room for Squares

From JazzWax, Marc Myers' blog on "jazz legends and legendary jazz recordings":

In Part 2 of my interview with Roy Haynes yesterday, the drummer referred to a September 1960 Esquire article on best-dressed men in which he and Miles Davis were included. So I did a little research.

The Esquire article was called The Art of Wearing Clothes and was written by George Frazier, a debonair magazine writer and jazz critic who died in 1974. This was Esquire's first shot at a list of best-dressed men, which the magazine introduced apprehensively with a publisher's letter. Conservative tailoring was still cool—provided you brought a big personality to your look.

Here are the small blurbs that accompanied the three jazz entries:

MILES DAVIS—The thirty-four-year-old genius of "progressive jazz" trumpet is an individualist who favors skin-tight trousers, Italian-cut jackets. His seersucker coats, which have side vents, are custom made. His tailor: Emsley (New York), which charges $185 a suit.

AHMET M. ERTEGUN—A jazz authority and president of prospering Atlantic Records, Ertegun was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1923 and was educated abroad and at St. John's College in Annapolis. Dedicated to chic living, he has a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. He buys ready-made suits at J. Press (around $100 each and has them recut for around $50) by Martin Kalaydjian, the legendary valet of the Algonquin Hotel in New York.

ROY HAYNES—The thirty-five-year-old jazz percussionist belongs on any best-dressed list if only because of his taste in selecting clothes that flatter his short stature (five feet, three and a half inches). His suits are custom made (around $125 each) by the Andover Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Source:

JazzWax, No Room for Squares - 7/9/08

From Myself Among Others: A Memoir by George Wein with Nate Chenin, this recollection of the Andover Shop's relationship with jazz musicians in the mid- to late-1950s:

...Charlie's greatest contribution to the jazz world was sartorial. He was friendly with Charlie Davidson, the proprietor of the Andover Shop on Holyoke Street in Cambridge, and during the day he accompanied Desmond (note: Paul Desmond, alto saxophonist for Dave Brubeck) to the shop. Under Mr. Bourgeois's guidance, jazz musicians soon resembled the denizens of Harvard Square. Brubeck and Desmond were hardly the only musicians to benefit from this service; Charlie Davidson's tailoring also fit right in to the Modern Jazz Quartet's image. Miles Davis was known to visit the shop when he was in town. Roy Hanes became a customer, and before long he had been cited by George Frazier in Esquire magazine's "Best-Dressed American Performers," alongside the likes of Cary Grant and Fred Astaire.

And more from Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies:

In the mid-fifties, Miles took to the Ivy League look in fashion, having his clothes made at the epicenter of preppy fashion, the Andover Shop in Cambridge's Harvard Square, where tailor Charlie Davidson dressed him in jackets of English tweed or madras with narrow lapels and natural shoulder, woolen or chino trousers, broadcloath shirts with button-down collars, thin knit or rep ties, and Bass Weejun loafers. It was a look that redefined cool and shook those who thought they were in the know. Some like Boston Herald columnist George Frazier, reacted badly. Calling him "the Whilom War Lord of the Weejuns," he accused Davis of no longer being cool, but of merely showing off...in fact, of having become a "fink."


Want more insight on the Jazz-Ivy connection? See the following article:

RL Magazine - Ivy League Jazz, Christian M. Chensvold, Fall 2008

Dubious claims

(click to enlarge)

Ithaca is a leading style center for college clothing and starts style trends long before other cities "know what it's all about." Trends of ladies apparel started in Ithaca include jeans, weejun loafers, turtle neck sweaters, and pea jackets. Men's trends started here would be C.P.O. shirts, imported Shetland crew sweaters, 3 inch rep ties, and bold plaid sport jackets.

Source:

Cornell Daily Sun - 9/6/67

The Yale Man

The Yale man dressed impeccably in the preppy uniform of the day, though ''preppy'' wasn't in wide use then. ''Natural shoulder'' was what men's magazines called the Yale look, and for decades the clothing stores near campus at Elm and York Streets in New Haven were the natural-shoulder capital of the universe. Its bulwarks were Fenn-Feinstein and J. Press. In New York, not far from the Yale Club, there was Haberdasher's Row, commencing at 44th Street and Madison Avenue: Brooks Brothers, known as just ''the Brothers''; J. Press (there was also one in Cambridge, Mass.); and Chipp, which had a retail store but also did big business in custom tailoring. (We have Chipp to thank for, among other innovations, jackets and trousers of patchwork madras.)

In the 1950's and 60's, an experienced observer could tell where a Yale man shopped just by his shirt: plain pocket meant Fenn-Feinstein; pocket with flap, J. Press; and no pocket at all, the Brothers, which in those days didn't believe in shirt pockets, perhaps because almost all their suits still came with vests. Vest aside, to determine the origin of a suit might take closer observation; if it had a lining of bright red silk (like several of the suits of one of my classmates, a guy so Cole Porter-ish that, like Porter, he kept a piano in his room), it was most likely a custom job from Chipp; if it had a button fly, it was probably from the Brothers, which still sold such garments up on the geezers' floor, where you could also get voluminous high-waisted boxers of the kind sometimes on display in the Yale Club locker room. They had three buttons at the top and came up almost to the nipples, as if made with a built-in cummerbund.

All the sartorial niceties of the Yale style began to erode, as I've suggested, with the enrollment of what became the class of 1968 -- my class, as it happens, and also the class of George W. Bush. I seem to recall the president-to-be going sockless and wearing corduroys and cable-knit sweaters, but that could describe any number of us. He did not cut the figure of, say, Strobe Talbott, another classmate, who became deputy secretary of state during the Clinton administration. Strobe was a full-fledged intellectual, so he could carry off the affectation of wearing plaid Bermudas well into November.

Article source:

The Yale Man - NYT - 9/19/04

Photo source:

A Restless Transplant - Brian Kupke and his Yale Sweater

Inspiration:

Old School (Thanks!)

Ivy Leaguer Casts Wary Eye at Fads, 1957

In which a product of Princeton explodes the theory that 1957's male children are blue-blooded Ivy Leaguers.

By J. B. Underhill

If there's anything that gets bigger laughs in the Ivy League than Ivy League fashions it's a dunning notice from Brooks Brothers.

For like that famous New York clothing store which put its first suit together in 1818 and hasn't changed the cut since, Ivy League dress is the product of age, tradition, studied casualness and the economic effects of a couple of wars and depression.

Fashion a la Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell or even Columbia just "growed" like Topsy. And all the attempts at imitation put out by the Grand Rapids type of clothing manufacturers can't fake it.

Take the "pear shape," for example. That's the no-padding, no-pleats effect that makes any Ivy Leaguer (he'd never be caught dead using the term) look like a bag of potatoes. He's gathered on top like a barley sack, flares at the waist, then narrows at the ankle like an Edwardian dude.

DISTINCTIVE SHAPE

The distinctive Ivy shape, of course, is accented by a tweed jacket and gray flannel trousers. The shirt, of course, is Oxford cloth, with a button-down collar. They have been worn by Ivy idlers since Scott Fitzgerald's campus hey-day.

The button-down stemmed from the polo shirt. Kept the points from slapping the rider's eye, the fashion tradition says. For a while such prominent clothing establishments as Brooks in New York, J. Press, Chipp, Langrock and Fenn-Feinstein, which are scattered in the Ivy metropolises, put a button in the back. But this decoration atrophied during World War II. Hasn't come back either, except in imitation shirts.

Want to tell an authentic Ivy League Oxford button-down? Look at the breast pocket. It won't have one. The well-dressed casual Yalie caries (a) his father's cigarette case (b) a crushed pack in his hip pocket (c) a pipe.

THREE BUTTONS

The jacket must have three buttons, setting up a constant war between the Ivy dresser and the pressing establishment which irons his clothes. Pressers think all sports jackets should have that be-bop, two-button drape effect. They press them that way. Joe Ivy takes most of this press out by buttoning up three button and hanging the garment in a steamy bathroom. Mildew sometimes sets in, but the purity of the three-button line is preserved.

Jackets skirts are cut long out of deference to the horsey set from Baltimore, Philadelphia, a few Connecticut provinces and the Myopia Hunt near Boston which each year assimilates any number of "Yoicks" -shouting Harvards. The swirl also conceals the hip flask needed for dry weekends at Vassar.

"Look, Jack, if i wanted pleats in my trousers I'd wear a double-breasted suit, too." With this rapier-sharp jab, a classmate of mine pinioned a "boldlook" men's store salesman in Dubuque, Iowa, several years ago. He since has bought all his clothes by mail from New York, adding inches to his carefully calculated measurements in the Manhattan store's files as the years go by.

PLEATS BANNED

For by their pleats ye shall know them. A pleat at the belt is to the Ivy Leaguer like the wrong shade of lipstick to the high fashion model. If caught at the Yale, Harvard or Princeton clubs in such attire, he would probably lose seat privileges at a Big Three football game.

Shoes: If he's out of college, cordovans shined - but not too shined - are musts. On the campus white buck shoes still are popular - if they are properly dirtied.

There is a special pit in the Harvard Yard where undergraduates (usually in the dark of the moon, because it would mean automatic disbarment to be caught) rough up their bucks to a proper dullness.

White bucks so caught on in the Ivy League, that "white shoes" or simply "shoe," became a common adjective for "fashionable," or "up-to-date."

But the anti-white buck faction is making spectacular inroads. The group was spearheaded by a group of members of Princeton's most exclusive Ivy club who took to wearing dirty white sneakers with their traditional dark gray flannel slacks.

The ultimate was struck in 1955 by a DKE at Yale named F. Peter Ffost, 3d, who had summered at Cap d'Antibe, soaking up a miraculous Mediterranean tan. He appeared in the fall at New Haven in a gray flannel suit and bare feet which he had protected from the sun with liberal applications of fuel oil. The contrast between his fish-belly-white feet and his Bond Street flannels ended the white shoe madness. Those in the know turned to black shoes, once thought to be extinct except in the cow colleges west of Philadelphia.

"Ties are to be striped; write it 100 times on the blackboard." In the fashionable Eastern prep schools from St. Paul's to Lawrenceville, young men are taught to hold up their places in the Ivy world.

By freshmen year, scarcely a purchaser of ties at the Yale Co-op fails to know what British regiment he is joining when he tucks his rep stripe through his button-down collar points.

"I always go over to the public library before buying a regimental striped tie," one of the youths said the other day at the tie counter. "Make sure that way that it's one of the really good regiments."

When you care that much, brother, you can wear your Ivy League imitations with enough flare to make that Harvard man repeat his classic about Ivy fashions and the way they've taken the hinterlands by storm.

"You know, it's awfully difficult these days," the youth declared while sampling the Amontillado at Locke Ober's in Boston. "There was a time when no one would wear a tweed coat and gray flannels unless he knew he was SUPPOSED to wear a tweed coat and flannels. Now you can't be sure whether he's supposed to, or is just wearing them."

Copyright St. Petersburg Times - 3/21/57

Dull clothes suit them fine

"Brooks Brothers' darkest hour (that's probably a poor choice of words) came in the mid- and late '50s when a terrible thing happened to its line of men's clothing. It became popular.

Even though the economy was booming, men's clothing took a conservative tack that was almost funereal in cut and tone. The Ivy League. Everything was charcoal.

The narrow-lapeled, three-button suit with its unpadded shoulders and a buckle in the back of the trousers. Flaring button-down collars on oxford cloth shirts. Gleaming cordovan shoes and "old school" neckties in paisley prints and regimental stripes. Heavy woolen crew-neck sweaters worn under Shetland sportcoats. Even Chesterfield coats."
...
"Dull. No. Not really. Because I can't remember a time in my life when men's fashions looked any better. Maybe someday the Ivy look will return - maybe in a hundred years or so. In the meantime, I guess we can safely leave it in the custody of Brooks Brothers."

Source:

Tom Hritz, Pittsburgh Post Gazette - p. 3 - 6/30/83

Photo source:

The Trad - 11/16/08

Take Ivy, 1964

"Take Ivy," shot in 1964 and published in 1965, is the result of a month-long tour of select Ivy League campuses by Teruyoshi Hayashida, a young Japanese fashion photographer, and three editors (Kensuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kurosu and Moto Hasegawa).

Source:

The Trad - Take Ivy, Chapter I - 12/19/08

The Trad - Take Ivy, Chapter II - 12/14/08

Clothcraft overcoat, 1955

Cornell Daily Sun, November 4, 1955

...a natural shoulder topcoat that's a perfect companion for your natural shoulder suits.

As with all pictures on this blog, please click for a larger view.

Haspel, 1961

Cornell Daily Sun, April 19, 1961

J. Press, 1954

Haberdashery owners Irving Press (front L) and Paul Press (front R) posing with their store clerks [left to right: George Feen, Sam Kroop, Gabe Giaquinto, Herman Racow]

Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive

The Hotchkiss School, 1954

Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive

"Ivy Today", 1975

Source:

Heavy Tweed Jacket blog - "Ivy Today" - 1975

Deansgate, 1965

The most comfortable natural shoulders you can own.

Source:

FNB Forum

Ovid in Ossining

It is the peculiar and original genius of Novelist John Cheever to see his chosen subject—the American middle class entering the second decade of the Affluent Society—as figures in an Ovidian netherworld of demons. Commuterland, derided by cartoonists and deplored by sociologists as the preserve of the dull-spirited status seeker, is given by Cheever's fables the dignity of the classical theater.

All this has escaped attention largely because the U.S. bourgeoisie has not been encouraged to think well of itself; indeed, it has been made accustomed to having its very virtues excoriated by the writing classes. More important, Cheever, like a demiurge disguised in street clothes, has hidden the demonic quality in his work under the conventional natural-shoulder style of the realistic story.

Source:

Ovid in Ossining - Time Magazine - 3/27/64

Shoulder Shifts

"Hip," natural-looking shoulders and an easier fit have come to imply sartorial independence and a certain patrician carelessness. Then again, they may signify nothing more than another swing of fashion's pendulum. The rise and fall of men's shoulders, after all, can be seen as the equivalent of women's soaring and dipping hemlines.

A cursory look at the styles of the past several decades confirms the point. Natural-shoulder suits sold by Brooks Brothers, J. Press and other standard-bearers of American style in the 1950's were fine for many men, but unfortunately rendered others pear-shaped.

Source:

NYT - Men's Style: Shoulder Shifts - 2/3/91

Suntans and flat-fronts

Cornell Daily Sun, April 5, 1956

Watching 'The Graduate' (1967) the other night on Turner Classic Movies, I coveted Dustin Hoffman's wardrobe, his preppy button-downs and flat-front chinos. Steve McQueen and Sean Connery's James Bond set off similar pangs of sartorial envy.

Looking for a little historical perspective, I asked John Weitz, the 77-year-old designer, about pleats versus flat-front.

"Obviously, it all goes in circles," he said. "The modern-day circle started after the war, when the men came back wearing what are now unfortunately known as chinos but were then called suntans, because they were a tan pant and they were flat." Until then, Mr. Weitz continued, "the only people who wore flat pants were the upper classes. You saw them in Brooks Brothers and the Ivy League. The rest of the country wore great big pleated pants in a rather bad imitation of the Duke of Windsor."

Source:

NYT - On the Pants Front: The War of the Pleats

The Sport Shop, Ithaca, 1955

This is an advertisement for The Sport Shop in the October 14, 1955 edition of The Cornell Daily Sun.

"The 'Ivy Look' invades campus this fall."

"The 'Ivy Look' enters the shirt field. Take home our new Ivy style shirts - button-down collar and button in the back"

"Ivy chino slacks"

"Repp ties"

Iconic Brooks Brothers items

Source:

Brooks Brothers - Our Heritage

Chipp - Walk Before You Run - 14 East 44th Street

"Chipp opened its doors on April 1, 1945. (My brother insists it was 1947; when I get a few free moments I will research it.) The Brooks Brothers flagship was, and still is, at the corner of 44th and Madison. J Press was on the second floor on the northeast corner of 44th and Madison. The Yale and Harvard clubs were within shouting distance. The Biltmore Hotel, with its famous “Meet me under the clock at the Biltmore”, was around the corner. This was the place to be.

In those days, we rented just the second floor in the brownstone at 14 East 44th Street. A famous watering hole called The Gamecock, which occupied the ground floor, was frequented by the advertising fraternity. (These were the “men in the gray flannel suits.”) Our customer base was primarily the men who Sidney Winston, my father, met when he had traveled the Eastern prep schools for J Press: young boys who had now matured into business leaders, and, in some cases, world leaders. He was the same age as his young prep school customers. As a result, the relationships that developed were very different from relationships that are made when one is older. Many of those customers remained loyal Chipp customers through their entire lives.

The bill of fare was custom clothing and special-order clothing. (Stock clothing on the rack would not be part of Chipp for a few years.) And the key was being where the action was: the infant Chipp’s famous neighbors drew many potential customers onto the street. My father and his partner at the time, Lou Prager, who also earned his spurs at J Press, would go down the narrow flight of stairs to 44th Street and snag the men they recognized. There was no elevator—many famous people trudged up that flight of stairs.

As the business grew, the third and then the fourth floor were rented. In the mid 1960’s (I think it was 1965), we bought the entire building, opening the ground floor storefront. The fifth floor became a true retail specialty operation.

In about 1985, when a lot of New York City properties were being bought by Japanese interests, we sold our building. After a brief incarnation on the second floor of 342 Madison Avenue (we occupied the space at the corner of 43rd Street), we moved to our present address, 11 East 44th Street, right across the street from where we began.

We have come full circle. Again we do custom and made-to-measure (special order) clothing. No clothing on the rack. I am sure my father on high is amused."

- Paul Winston

Source:

Chipp 2 / Winston Tailors Blog

High noon - Bermuda, 1958

High noon - At Bermuda's Coral Beach Club the blaze of day discloses many tips for the southbound man. Note again the sports slacks,this time checked- a real trend that will become established this winter. Note also the knit bathing suits, the palm-frond "Tyroleans", the trim Panama, and the return of seersucker. Remember that, within the bounds of good taste, one can dress more colorfully beneath the southern sun. Remember, as well, that many native sports clothes you'll be tempted to buy are like some Italian wines - they travel badly.

Source:

Sporting Look - SI - 11/24/58

Saks Fifth Avenue - The University Shop

"Our on-campus shops at Yale, Harvard and Princeton have made us experts in college clothing."

Southwick, 1958

setting the standard...naturally

By anticipating the natural look twenty years ago Southwick inspired the important trend to soft construction in clothes for men.

Today, with acknowledged leadership in this highly specialized type of tailoring, Southwick sets the standard for ease of line, meticulous detailing and devotion to good taste.

"...well bred, understated, but not fussy."

Ivy League and Preppy Look

New England is home to four colleges that comprise the Ivy League athletic conference: Harvard, Yale, Brown and Dartmouth. The other colleges - Princeton, Cornell, University of Pennsylvania and Columbia - are also in the Northeast...

In the conformist 1950s, students at these colleges popularized the Ivy League look, which had its roots in the conservative styles of New England.

For men, the Ivy League look consisted of a suit with a narrow-shouldered unfitted jacket, worn with a button-down shirt, skinny tie, and penny loafers (preferably Bass Weejuns). Charcoal gray and olive were the preferred colors. Chinos and tweed blazers offered a casual alternative. The look spread beyond campuses to young men in all parts of suburban America where details such as buckle straps from Ivy trousers were transplanted to caps, shirts, and shoes. High school students wore a more extreme four-button jacket bearing the name "Jivey Ivy."

By 1960, most men sported modified Ivy models that incorporated unpadded shoulders, narrow lapels, and tapered trousers. Brooks Brothers, a citadel of conservatism, came to the forefront as the Ivy League style became popular. When the young John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a senator from Massachusetts, became the president of the United States, the Ivy League look reached the White House.

Ivy League women wore cashmere twin sets, Shetland sweaters, or blazers with kilts or tweed skirts. In the summer, blouses with peter pan collars were worn with Bermuda shorts. A pearl necklace set off any outfit.

The Ivy look is well bred, understated, but not fussy. Many New England men and women held to the conservative, classic styles that compromised the Ivy League look during the sartorial upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. In the late 1970s, conservative styles once again seemed right for the times, and the Ivy League look resurfaced as the preppy look.

The essential ingredients for the male preppy wardrobe included a conservative gray flannel suit, preferably made by Brooks Brothers, a long-time favorite label of New Englanders. For less formal wear, button-down oxford shirts or Lacoste polo shirts worn with khakis or corduroys sufficed. Other favorites included Harris Tweed jackets, down vests, Burberry tench coasts, L.L. Bean field coats, and camel hair Polo coats.

Preppy women wore female versions of masculine styles: khaki, flannel, or corduroy slacks; a kilt or plaid skirt, a blazer or tweed jacket; and a Shetland or Fair-Isle sweater over a ruffle-necked white blouse or cotton turtleneck.

Preppy styles for women were rather androgynous: female versions of the men's styles produced by the same companies. Both genders wore clothes of Indian madras, a cotton plaid fabric that had first become popular in the early 1960s. Shoes common to both men and women were loafers or Sperry Top-Siders (boat shoes). Socks were optional. Men donned wing tips for dressy affairs while women wore simple pumps.

Like the Ivy League look before it, the preppy look emphasized the wearing of classic fabrics from natural fibers. The only departure from conservative dressing was the bright pink and green color combinations seen in preppy ensembles. Preppy clothes were well made, with attention to detail. Brand names were important. The American designer Ralph Lauren has built a financial empire on fashions inspired by this old money New England look.

Source:

Sletcher, Michael. New England - The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures . Greenwood Press, 2004. Pages 156-7.

J. Press, ca. 1958-1963*

Source:

A Continuous Lean - flickr

* dates per the source. The description of the "Contemporary two-button J. Press style" indicates a date later than 1963, in my opinion.

"No one got pleats."

We always had some waist suppression, more than Brooks and Press. We were always slightly more updated than they were. No one is pure anymore, but Brooks was there first with readymade clothing. When readymade came into being, both Brooks and Press were very pure with three buttons and virtually no shaping. My father was greatly influenced by that because he worked for Press. We didn’t have darts, but we had a little more side suppression. But it was a very fine difference.

- Paul Winston, Chipp

Please read the entire interview here:

Ivy Style - Chipp Off the Old Block

...for the nation at large

The phenomenon has been there to be seen for quite some time, no doubt, but it was just the other day that we fell to musing on the triumph of the Ivy League style in fashions for men. Natural shoulders and narrow lapels, somber colors and dignified cut are the now ubiquitous hallmarks of the Ivy mode, and what used to be the special garb of a special breed of northeastern American is now accepted dress of John Doe all over the nation.

What is curious about this fact is that the Ivy look is traditionally the mark of the Harvard type, the intellectual, the sophisticated Easterner. And, as we are assured continuously by writers who claim access to the general will, this type is either an object of fun or a sinister figure in the popular imagination. He is an egg head, probably a "pinko," more than likely a "bleeding heart" internationalist. He is clearly not a one hundred per cent American.

But if the Ivy League egg head is a figure of mixed suspicion and derision, how is that his working clothes have become prestige symbols for the nation at large? Why, if he holds the type in such contempt, does the average citizen now wear his emblematic short haircut and gray flannel suit?

We read too many papers to deny the existence today of anti-intellectualism or the prevalence of the anti-Harvard animus, yet merely to say paradox is to explain nothing. All we can offer is the observation that in cultural values, as in everything else, things are seldom as simple as they seem. Opposing attitudes can and do exist simultaneously in the minds of men, and we think this is the case here. The Ivy Leaguers's place in American life is not to be seen in black or white; it is as darkly gray as his famous flannel suit.

Source:

Commonweal magazine, August 9, 1957, via FNB

Gordon of Philadelphia

Source:

FNB - Talk Ivy Forum

Ivy for the Ladies

Classic campus outfit consists of a pink shirt ($8), Bermuda shorts ($15)
and striped elastic belt ($2.25) [all Brooks Brothers] - LIFE, April 5, 1954

And of course, it is not just a men’s store any longer. In fact, it was something of a sociological event when Brooks, the bastion of masculine conservatism, opened a women’s department back in 1976. Not that women and Brooks discovered each other then for the first time, you understand, since the ladies had been lurking about the store for years, making off with raincoats and Shetland sweaters, ordering Bermuda shorts and polo shirts from the boys’ department. In 1949 Vogue photographed a woman in a pink Brooks Brothers button-down shirt. The decision to start a women’s department simply reflected an awareness of the arrival of the businesswoman and Brooks Brothers’ determination to accommodate her. After all, the firm has dressed her husband since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

G. Bruce Boyer, from Elegance - A Guide to Quality in Menswear, WW Norton & Company, 1985

Chipp - The Beginning

"In 1945 Sidney Winston and Lou Prager opened Chipp of NY, Inc. They had both worked for J Press. The business was financed by Jonas Arnold, who was the proprietore of a men’s shop in Cambridge, MA named Chipp. ( Arnold and the Sill’s brothers were partners in a men’s shop in New Haven, CT. named Chipp. They had a parting of the way and the Sills brothers then called their operation Sills and Arnold moved to Cambridge and continued using the name Chipp.) Arnold suggested that Winston and Prager use the name Chipp for their NYC shop. Through the years many Yale and Harvard men who had traded at the New Haven and Cambridge Chipp shops thought that Chipp of NY, Inc was connected to the shops where they traded during their college years. There never was a business connection between the three shops. This is the answer to the frequently posed question, “Where did the name Chipp come from?”"

- Paul Winston

Source:

Chipp 2 / Winston Tailors Blog

Country Corduroy

As the population trend shifts from city to suburb, a new way of dress is developing, an amalgamation of the rustic clothes of the country and the more formal clothes of the city. The result is often spoken of as "suburban" and the look of it is seen in brighter shirts, more casual shoes and easier fitting suits than a man would wear in town. These clothes will take a man anywhere that tweeds will go—to stadium and field events and even casual cocktail parties. The best of the suburban suits are those made of corduroy. In fabrics with both wide and narrow ribs, in colors ranging from tans to fall's new greens, they've been trimmed with leather for added wearability and dash. Newest corduroy suit is Brooks Brothers' Dacron-cotton Brookscord. For the first time, a corduroy has been made of a Dacron and cotton blend, giving the fabric lightness and wrinkle resistance. Where to buy? See below.

Brookscord suit (Brooks Bros., $58) of Dacron and cotton is newest corduroy suit. Bill Clune wears it with checked shirt. Jane Ball's long-line corduroy suit is by Claire McCardell ($50).


Huntcord suit ($53.50) of all-cotton corduroy is worn by Norbert Ford on his Lebanon, New Jersey farm. The suit has leather trim on pockets of both jacket and trousers for long wear.

Wide-wale corduroy of Robert Cleary's suit is trimmed with contrasting leather on collar and pocket ($55). His thornproof knit shirt is of Orion and wool (Activair, $15).

Backstrap belt of Cleary's suit eliminates need for other belt, is of leather as is pocket trim.

Backstrap cap matches suit to left, has leather belted back, trim on beak (Bressler, $4).

HUNTCORD SUIT: Abercrombie & Fitch, New York; L. S. Ayres, Indianapolis; Boyd's, St. Louis; Carroll & Co., Beverly Hills; Frank Bros., San Antonio; Halle Bros., Cleveland; Robert Kirk, San Francisco; Jacob Reed's, Philadelphia; Von Lengerke & Antoine, Chicago.

WIDE-WALE SUIT: White-house & Hardy, New York, Detroit; Atkinson's, Los Angeles; B. R. Baker, Cleveland; Boyd's, St. Louis; MacNeil & Moore, Madison; M. O'Neil, Akron; Thalhimer's, Richmond.

Source:

SI - 9/26/55

The Gleam of Gold and the Shine of Silver

TOP ROW: two antique brass English hunt club designs (each set of 7, $13.50), Old Buttons, Inc., New York; authentic shotgun shell (set of 7, $3.50), Abercrombie & Fitch, New York; Stanford University and other school seals (set of 7, $7.50), Neiman-Marcus, Dallas; antique Civil War uniform (set of 7, $59), Old Buttons.

SECOND ROW: gold horsehead (set of 7, $100), Abercombie & Fitch; antique French mayor's guard (set of 8, $15), Dunhill Tailors, New York; sailboat (set of 7, $53), Old Buttons; College of Hard Knocks (set of 7, $9), Ara's, Wellesley, Mass.; gold wood-grain design (set of 8, $256), Cartier, New York.

THIRED ROW: gold-and-blue-enamel ring design (set of 8, $300), Dunhill; gold rope and anchor (set of 7, $130), Car-tier; custom design for Ford Motor Co. (to order), Ben Silver, Inc., New York; gold threaded design (set of 7, $155), Cartier; gold and malachite Greek head (set of 8, $375), Old Buttons.

BOTTOM ROW: Harvard (set of 7, $7.50), Neiman-Marcus; authentic English coin (set of 7, $26), Old Buttons; brass jumping fish (set of 7, $11), Old Buttons; gold basketweave design (set of 7, $243), Tiffany, New York; silver flying geese (set of 7, $25), Old Buttons. The silk blazer fabrics are from Chipp, the twill and hopsacking from J. Press, New York.

The first blazers often were so riotously striped in a "blaze" of club and school colors (hence the name) that cricket and boating contests looked like circus parades. Some of the buttons in the collection opposite are antiques left over from the jacket's earliest days when blazers were also fitted out with pocket crests in gold bullion thread to signify membership in all sorts of organizations, civil and military. In fact, the navy flannel blazer is a carry-over from the British love for a uniform, and ex-military types in England most frequently adorn their blazers with crests or buttons signifying air groups, fleets and regiments.

Source:

SI - 4/3/67

The J. Press Brochure - A sampling

Source:

A Continuous Lean blog