Frank O'Hara, American Poet

Photograph of Frank O'Hara in his office at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1965. Photo copyright © Renate Ponsold Motherwell 1965, 1999.

O'Hara with John Ashbery at a taping for Daisy Aldan's poetry magazine. [source: wpi.edu]

with artist Larry Rivers

Frank O'Hara, 1926-1966

A Princeton Man, 1939

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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

Ivy League Guide to New York, 1960

Source:

LIFE Magazine - 11/7/60

Conformists, WASPs and Preppies, 1968

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Source:

New York Times News Service - November 1968

Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, 1968

Alumni Day, Harvard, 1968

"Stunning the Yale defense with two touchdowns, two two-point conversions, and an onside kick, the Crimson played its way back into the game and into the annals of history. The final score may have been a tie, but the celebratory home crowd rushing the field indicated that it was anything but, leading The Crimson to print its famed headline “Harvard beats Yale 29-29.” (The Harvard Crimson, 11/21/08)

You could do worse with your time than spend 105 minutes of it watching the documentary "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29", as I did last week. There's not a second devoted to The Ivy League Look, but don't let that stop you. And if you suffer from severe politicophobia, don't worry. While both Al Gore (Harvard '69 and roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, who played offensive guard for Harvard) and George Bush (Yale '68, first cousin of the filmmaker and roommate of Yale tackle Ted Livingston) are mentioned, neither appear in the film.

Harvard Business School, 1970

"The Charles River separates the Business School from the rest of the university, and so do the lifestyles. On the college side, we have the beards and the mustaches and the poor-boy clothes that have become as much a uniform as gray flannels and khaki pants were a generation ago. The Business School types are still coming to class in Brooks Brothers suits and button-down white shirts. They look like sub-assistant secretaries in the Nixon administration, and, as a matter of fact, the student body was heavily for Nixon in 1968."

Source:

New York Magazine - 6/15/70

*photo dates from a few years earlier

Weekend at Harvard, 1959

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Source:

SI - 11/9/59 (50 years ago today)

Posted previously by Tony Ventresca on FNB Talk Ivy

Robert Watson (Harvard), 1946

Robert Watson, Associate Dean of Harvard College, at The Choate School*, October 1946.

Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive

*merged with Rosemary Hall in 1974 to become Choate Rosemary Hall.

The Secret Vice

It's the secret vice! In Europe, all over England, in France, the mass ready-made suit industry is a new thing. All men, great and small, have had tailors make their suits for years, and they tend to talk a little more with each other about what they're getting. But in America it's the secret vice. At Yale and Harvard, boys think nothing of going over and picking up a copy of Leer, Poke, Feel, Prod, Tickle, Hot Whips, Modern Mammaries, and other such magazines, and reading them right out in the open. Sex is not taboo. But when the catalogue comes from Brooks Brothers or J. Press, that's something they whip out only in private. And they can hardly wait. They're in the old room there poring over all that tweedy, thatchy language about "Our Exclusive Shirtings," the "Finest Lairdsmoor Heather Hopsacking," "Clearspun Rocking Druid Worsteds," and searching like detectives for the marginal differences, the shirt with a flap over the breast pocket (J. Press), the shirt with no breast pocket (Brooks), the pants with military pockets, the polo coat with welted seams—and so on and on, through study and disastrous miscalculations, until they learn, at last, the business of marginal differentiations almost as perfectly as those teen-agers who make their mothers buy them button-down shirts and then make the poor old weepies sit up all night punching a buttonhole and sewing on a button in the back of the collar because they bought the wrong damn shirt, one of those hinkty ones without the button in the back.

And after four years of Daddy bleeding to pay the tabs, Yale, Harvard, and the rest of these schools turn out young gentlemen who are confident that they have at last mastered the secret vice, marginal differentiations, and they go right down to Wall Street or wherever and—blam!—they get it like old Ross, right between the eyes. A whole new universe to learn! Buttonholes! A whole new set of clothing firms to know about—places like Bernard Weatherill, probably the New York custom tailor with the biggest reputation, very English, Frank Brothers and Dunhill's, Dunhill's the tailor, which are slightly more—how can one say it?—flamboyant?—places like that, or the even more esoteric world of London tailors, Poole, Hicks, Wells, and God knows how many more, and people knock themselves out to get to London to get to these places, or else they order straight from the men these firms send through New York on regular circuits and put up in hotels, like the Biltmore, with big books of swatches, samples of cloths, piled up on the desk-table.

From "The Secret Vice" by Tom Wolfe, for New York Magazine and published in The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, 1965

"I can't stand preppy boys", 1962

Prettiest Miss Like Boys -- But

It's a fortunate thing that pixie-like Jean Leslie Allen has never depended on boys.

Now that she's won the national junior miss contest, the daughter of a Providence, RI, pediatrician finds shes' getting a stream of phone calls from boys who "just want to go out with a title."

On the other hand, the boys she would enjoy dating don't call because of her sudden fame.

Fortunately, Jean has her feet very much on the ground, and continues to enjoy the houseful of kids ever present in a family of five children. She's noticed that when her brother, a student at Brown University, brings dates over, that she's subjected to more scrutiny than usual, but she remains unconcerned.

Jean knows the kind of boys she likes - and doesn't like. "I can't stand preppy boys. They all look alike. The Harvard haircut, the identical sports clothes. Boys my age try to (sic) hard to conform. That's why I prefer boys a little older."

Complete article:

The Free-Lance Star - 5/1/62

Notes from the Prep School Underground, 1968

George W. Bush at Andover, 1964

Notes From the Prep School Underground: Drugs and Love Ethic at Exeter, Andover

Prep schools follow the colleges--especially Exeter and Andover, which feed more people into Harvard each year than any other school. Now the slack on the cultural lag has pulled tight for those two schools; and while they glimpse the development of political activism on their campuses, their students are trying out the tragi-comic scene of dropping, blowing, and shooting pot, acid, hash, speed, belladonna, sunflower seeds, airplane glue, freon, Benzedrex Inhaler tubes, Paragoric Pall Malls, Romilar, and Dr. Schein's Asmador Powder.
...

The faculty finally gave in on long hair last winter. And the president of the senior class, Alan Oniskor, wears his very long. The whole student body looks different. Their hair is long. They wear corduroy jackets instead of madras, work shirts instead of Arrow, and boots instead of loafers.

Complete article:

Harvard Crimson - 5/29/68

College Credit, Esquire, 1959

College spirit is still as high-key as crimson, as fresh as Esquire's Burnished Browns. And memories are sill as golden: the 'mum on her shoulder: the thrill of the first by-line and the smell of fresh ink on college newsprint - to haunt your psyche for years. Above, in the social Great Hall above the Lampoon offices near the Harvard Yard, serious conversation, camera-captive, reflects today's students' scholarly awareness. Fashion is in sharp focus in the Great Hall atmosphere where we spot an acceptance of the whole civilized bit. Detailed views of those prerequisite sports jackets are shown in close-ups this page.

Fall's most significant fabric is all-wool hopsacking, here in an even-larger -than-usual weave. Burnished Espresso accented with black gives it a checked effect; figured-cotton lining and crown-embossed metal buttons score high on examination; at Whitehouse & Hardy, N. Y. C. Basic as a class schedule are traditional grey flannels and rep tie, currently in Burnished Bronze stripes.

The corduroy jacket registers with new impact in its shaped, continental styling. Class notes: burnished Bronze pin-waling, foulard lining, cutaway front; at Bullock's Wynbrier Shop, Los Angeles. Trousered in madras-plaided wool, you'll cheer the classic b.d. oxford shirt, the new paisley wool challis tie.

Our close-up emphasizes the wool crow's foot tweed, specially translated for Brooks Brothers in Esquire's Burnished Browns. The one shown is Burnished Amber, a combination of black with amber. Another Brooks Brothers tradition is the matching vest and, of course, the button-down oxford shirt and striped rep tie, both in co-ordinated tones. You'll find these, naturally, at Brooks Brothers stores in New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco.

No doubt about it, today's student takes a more dressed-up approach to college life. And he learns something from every occasion. For example (below). the meticulous attention to the fit of his clothes that Esquire editors are proud to help instill is as important as Chem Lab lectures or once-a-week afternoon tea - with stimulating conversation, please. Here, tailoring knowledge is applied to the important back-to-school suit, traditionally cut, and today's lecture is on " the proper cuffed line."

Source:

Esquire, September 1959, from Gypsy Wear Vintage

Robert McNamara, 1968

Robert S. McNamara, 1916-2009

Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive

McNamara with John F. Kennedy, Hyannis Port, MA, 1961Source:

The Washington Post

Harvard Boy in Bermuda, 1948

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Source:

Google's LIFE photo archive (click link for more related images)

Circling the Square, 1940

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Tweedy Trio

"Chipp, Press and Ross, Cambridge custom clothing's big three, have a unique business technique. The three-button-natural-shoulder-loose-fitting long coats which they produce are, in their eyes, works of art, and they should be sold as such. The ordinary good tailor won't sell a suit unless it fits well; he's a piker compared with the Mount A. Street trio. They won't sell a suit unless it fits the personality of the buyer. Every piece of clothing that goes out of the little brick shops is designed to fill a definite function in the wordrobe of its owner."

Read the entire article here:

The Harvard Crimson - 11/20/40

Image source:

Bulldog: J. Press 1940 and 1941

Note: You might notice that the ad shown above is taken from the Yale Daily News. Same year, different Press location, but more than likely the same copy.

...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

The Harvards And The Yales

Sports Illustrated, December 17, 1962.

The preppies, the wonks and clubbies have their own curious ways of celebrating the weekend when they play The Game with those nasty—and, naturally, inferior—boys from New Haven

Nowadays, the Harvard-Yale game is no longer of importance as far as college football standings are concerned, and much of the ferocity has departed. Nonetheless, the game remains the focal point for all sorts of curious folk practices. For instance, whenever it is played at Harvard, as it was November 24 last, representatives of the New Haven tailoring establishments—J. Press, Fenn-Feinstein, Chipp, Arthur Rosenberg, et al.—entrain for Cambridge to render biennial obeisance and to see what the young gentlemen are wearing. The tailors themselves wear velour Alpine hats, double-breasted, tweed topcoats and blue oxford shirts to offset their sallow complexions. By custom they do not speak to one another, and, upon arrival, each goes his separate way. Following tradition, Paul Press descends into the basement of J. Press, where he stands his Cambridge branch employees to a buffet luncheon of cream soda and hot pastrami imported from New Haven.

The Harvards and the Yales - SI - 12/17/62

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