A Princeton Man, 1939

(click to enlarge)

A Princeton Man, yes. You could hardly miss him. Tweeds and a good pipe and that sort of thing. He's handsome in an orthodox manner-- looks a bit like a collegiate clothes-model in Esquire. Fresh, the lady novelists would call him. He likes week-ends and New York, gets sentimental over the Tiger and a glass of beer.

Source:

"You Can't Tell a Harvard Man"  Harvard Crimson - 9/26/39

Image Source:

(Esquire, September 1938) Permanent Style: Big-scale tweeds and the right cap

Princeton, 1962

Seal and Key Club

Source:

The Trad, "Princeton 1962"

Ivy and Oddities, 1962

Princeton's Ivy Club

Newest red fashions

...more red

...and knickers

Source:

LIFE magazine - 9/21/62

Campus Style, Princeton, 1960

Source:

Google's LIFE image archives

John O'Hara, 1962

(click to enlarge)

Source:

Google's LIFE image archive

Princeton, 1960

As always, click on the image to get an enlarged version.

Source:

Google's LIFE image archive

Uniformity in American Higher Learning

...The United States is a nonhistorical environment, and individual identity must be earned.

But the young American male need not hunker down in a group like a fraternity to risk anxiety over being caught out of uniform...Fraternity boys engage in all sorts of levities and pranks, but not a single "brother" would think of appearing in, say, colorful tights. The brothers in their millions are clad in the obligatory uniform of their decade. It used to comprise, at least in the East, khakis or gray flannel trousers, button-down shirts, tweed jackets, and loafers. Crew neck sweaters and corduroys were also acceptable. Professor Edward Said of Columbia recalls what everyone - everyone - looked like at his prep school and at Princeton, where he went next: "My classmates either were or tried to be cut from the same cloth...everyone wore the same clothes (white bucks, button-down shirts, and tweed jackets)." Getting the shirts right was particularly important, and in button-downs, light blue was virtually obligatory. Said testified that he once witnessed two Princetonians at work soliciting the desired worn-out look by applying sandpaper to the collars of new, and of course blue, shirts.

Source:

Paul Fussell, Uniforms: Why We Are What We Wear (2002)

Ralph Nader (was not an Ivy fan)

"Nader was considered by many of his classmates to be a "grind" at Princeton. Not only did he study hard and do well on his assigned courses, but he also audited extra classes just because he loved to learn. This did not endear him to his classmates, but, then again, he was not very happy with them, either. He thought that many of them were too content with the "Gentleman's C" grade average and too preoccupied with what clothes they wore, what cars they drove, and who their friends were. Some of his peers thought his reluctance to join in conversations about such interests meant that he was shy. He wasn't shy, he just didn't care to waste his time talking about matters that were of no importance to him. His friends knew that if he started talking about politics or social issues, he could go on endlessly.

Most of the young men on campus dressed the same way: tweed jackets, white shirts, khaki pants, and white buckskin shoes. This bothered Nader, who thought that this conformity showed a lack of individuality - just the opposite of the "think for yourself" way in which he was raised. One day, to protest the sheep-like dress code, Nader went to class in a bathrobe and slippers."

Source:

Ralph Nader: Man With a Mission, by Nancy Bowen


[It must be mentioned that every time I've seen Nader he's been dressed in a rather conservative suit, button-down or forward point shirt and a rep or foulard tie; he must have relented later in life].

Princeton Band, 1955

Princeton, 1950

Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive

Tiger Rags

A key aspect of student culture that changed with some frequency was personal appearance. Like their college peers elsewhere, young Princetonians were keenly responsive to national fashion trends for both youth and adults, particularly those emanating from New York clothiers, from which many of their fathers took their sartorial cues. But for the first six decades of the last century they also tried to fashion a recognizable "Princeton style," whose distinctiveness some popular magazines were all too ready to certify. In most aspects, however, these various expressions of Tiger fashion were widely shared with - if not borrowed from - other eastern colleges, especially their Big Three competitors in all things. The "Princeton Look" was in reality an "Ivy Look," which in turn was largely traceable to an eastern prep school template. Only when Princeton diversified its student body, when the numerical and social dominance of prep schoolers declined substantially in the 1960s and the attendant "cultural revolution" took adolescent fashion in strange new directions, did Princeton dress drift away from a single stereotype. A partial return to "preppiness" in the late 1970s could not prevent the new-millennial "Princeton Look" from resembling ever so strongly the sartorial heterogeneity of most American campuses.

Source:

The Making of Princeton University, James Axtell, 2006