Mythical clothing from the United States (part 2/3): the sources of the Ivy League look, born from American campuses

No! I'm not nostalgic.

First, to feel nostalgia, one must have experienced what one regrets. Can one be nostalgic for the future?

And then, let's say that I prefer the way in which, nowadays, fashion is no longer so peremptory: in the street, I see aggressive sportswear alongside ultra-classic suits bordering on a total stylistic let-go. Well, especially the latter.

However, the good news is that it has become possible to mix influences. Fashion is on the street and no longer in tailors who are kept on the sidelines, on the sidelines of our clothing habits.

In short, it is now between the man and his mirror.

But wouldn't we have lost something?

Where have the American fashion icons gone in cinema? When was the last time we had a sartorial moment worthy of being inscribed in the collective imagination? Do authentic outfits still exist? Have we diluted style in the test tube of our individualities?

I will answer all these questions and many more including: is there life after death?

Step into my time machine, there's room for everyone. Back to the days of movie icons, back to the Ivy League Look.

What is the Ivy League Look?

An inventive way to dress

I'll get straight to the point.

It is the invention of the casual chic style by students on American Ivy League campuses.

When we talk about the Ivy League Look, which according to some sources peaked in the 1930s and according to others rather after World War II, we are really talking about the archi-cool of actors like James Dean, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Brando and others. It is the natural and affected nonchalance that everyone seeks and that few people find.

But not only that

As Christian Chensvold of the blog Ivy-Style.com puts it:

“In 1964, when a brash young woman meets a handsome, shy, very American man, the clean-cut type who buys his clothes at Brooks Brothers and finds herself both attracted to him and repelled, she calls him "Ivy League" to tease him.

The Ivy League Look, between attraction and repulsion.

It's good that this one expresses more than just a way of arranging one's clothes. Well seen Christian Chensvold!

In fact, it is a social marker, the manifestation of an adherence to the values ​​of a privileged, educated and erudite Eastern America, which can be repulsive because then it is like a wall of flannel and cotton, a club into which one is admitted or not by the very fact of one's birth.

But it is also a vibrant and violent rupture, marked by the chic relaxation of the look, a break with the austere authority of the fathers and a claim of a creative youth , whose energy launches itself into the assault of the world.

And then, while we might think that this style is the preserve of the WASP, we also find it worn by the jazzman Miles Davis, the actor Sidney Poitier and the boxer Muhammad Ali.

Well, it's more complicated than it seems.

Did you receive the Ivy League Look birth announcement?

No? Well here it is.

Where was he born?

Tell me, can we always determine the exact location of a fire ?

No, not always. Although it is true that the Ivy arsonists have left some clues.

The most serious lead is New Haven. This port city north of New York seems like an excellent candidate to be the stylistic home of the Ivy Look. For two main reasons:

1. This is where suits with natural shoulders were made.
2. It's right next to Yale (better known for its stylistic stances than Harvard, for example).
3. This is a bonus reason, I did say two, but I am where I am not expected. Reason 3, then: this is also where Gant set up in 1949. And even if we could say that they arrived after the war, literally and figuratively, it still shows that it is fertile ground for the life of the Ivy.
4. REASON 4, because I am truly full of surprises: Richard J. Press, founder of the eponymous brand, confirms this theory.

When was the Ivy League Look born?

April 22, 1932 at 7:34 a.m.

It weighed about 3.5 kg.

Yes, that's wrong. I lied.

What I have learned through my reading is that this style is an unconscious construction named a posteriori and shaped by instinct. In fact, it is like a mountain formed by the meeting of several tectonic plates. At first, it was nothing very visible, no one cared about it and then one day it was big enough to be given a name.

For Charlie Davidson, creator of The Andover Shop , an Ivy League institution, "it had been in the works for 30 or 40 years without anyone knowing it would be called the Ivy League look."

In my opinion, the first stone of the Ivy building was laid in 1901 by Brooks Brothers and its No. 1 Sack Suit . As I tell in my previous article, the birth of this sack suit is linked to a tense economic and social context resulting in the production of suits thanks to the working method called Taylorism.

This is the first stone because its style already gives an idea of ​​the pieces that the students will favor.

In fact, to help the production of its suits, Brooks Brothers simplified their characteristics: natural shoulders, no bending, no sewing on the sides of the jacket, a single back slit in particular. Which gives it a surprising and new style.

This No. 1 Sack Suit was slowly adopted by Ivy League students in the 1920s because the style suited them and the price was affordable. It was indeed a suit that could be roughed up and, because it was less formal, suited the campus lifestyle.

How did Ivy spread?

There is one thing that must be understood:

At Ivy League universities, students are educated to become the nation's future champions. Campuses are teeming with a crazy creative energy that is expressed in studies of course, but also through sports and music.

Jazz, the Ivy League's Zealot

I already talked about it in the previous article, but the spread of this Ivy fire was also thanks to jazz!

Jazz was truly the soundtrack of choice for these students; and jazz musicians came to play on campuses that were almost cities (but in the countryside). And, like bees that poetically work to pollinate plants, these musicians were the makers of this Ivy rumor, made sure that it was fertile, by going from campus to campus, like apostles of cool : the jazz musicians dressed Ivy League.

And this was the case of Bill Evans, whom I have already mentioned, also of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk or Dizzy Gillespie. But not only.

Besides music, sports, and the practice of it, have helped shape the Ivy style. In our collective imagination, Ivy League universities are still intimately linked with sports and the fervor of stadiums (how many movies have we seen?).

Sport crystallizes the Ivy style

The young champions grew up to the rhythm of inter-school and international clashes: this was perhaps the entry point for British influence on the way Americans dressed at that time.

The first rowing competition took place between Harvard (the oldest university) and Oxford in 1869. Since then, a long tradition of meetings around the sport has followed.

These sporting exchanges are, in our opinion, at the origin of a certain curiosity among Americans for their dashing cousins ​​from the Old Continent.

Let's say it right away: many pieces of English style are a permanent part of the typical Ivy Leaguer wardrobe, such as the button-down Oxford shirt, the round-neck Shetland wool sweater, the polo shirt, club ties, and tartan socks, for example.

How do these English coins find their way to them?

It was Brooks Brothers who imported them at the beginning of the 20th century, with the support on the campuses of J.Press (installed at Yale and Harvard) and these pieces in question were tinged with the colors of American universities and internal clubs. The competitive spirit of the champions gradually found aesthetic relays on sweaters, ties and blazers.

Yes but.

Reading me, you might think that this is the biggest stylistic robbery in the history of men's fashion! But not at all.

If Brooks Brothers imported in droves, inflated its clothing offering to the maximum of its capacities and had dollar-shaped eyes, the Ivy student, for his part, had a cool head: only the pieces that, by instinct or use, pleased him entered the campuses.

Student becomes 'fashion thought leader'

In a 1933 article in the fashion magazine Apparel Arts, it was stated: “Today the student has become a fashion opinion leader, dressing discreetly and properly for every occasion, thanks to the leadership of the fashionable Eastern Universities.”

That's interesting! The student becomes a trend setter, he has the power to decree that this or that garment is now fashionable. The Ivy Leaguer, in the end, was Karl Lagerfeld.

Take the moccasin as an example: adopted around 1936, the penny loafer on the Yale campus was “taken by storm” (as the Yale Daily News wrote at the time).

Well, it's simple: it becomes a classic of the student wardrobe in the blink of an eye. It doesn't belong to any fashion, it's a bit weird, and yet students decide to wear the loafer everywhere and all the time, so much so that it becomes fashionable. It is they, not the manufacturers, who make the decision to make it a fashion item.

While, I insist, these loafers are really more like aliens with soles at that time.

There are multiple explanations in my opinion:

1. It probably went well with the wardrobe already acquired from J.Press and others.
2. And then, they were easy to put on. Actually, I think that's the simplest explanation: no laces, they're light, they're flexible, you can put them on in no time when you're late for your quantum physics class.

And Charlie Davidson, him again! (the owner of The Andover Shop , I remind you, and enthusiast of the Ivy style and keen observer during his 90-odd years of existence), concludes and asks himself:

It was people who made things classic, not manufacturers. Some were accepted, some were rejected, otherwise how can we explain all that was not retained?

So I wonder, what kind of relationships did the merchants and the students have?

Students and merchants: business partners?

Well, I don't know about you, but I find that remarkable.

As Charlie Davidson says, Brooks Brothers' offering was much broader than what the Ivy League got out of it. While J.Press distilled all of that offering to offer only the heart, the substantial marrow as Rabelais would say. Making J.Press a more authentic player, more Ivy in the end.

And so, special relationships were formed with the Ivy retailers on campus, much more than with Brooks Brothers, which was rather urban and based in New York (editor's note: the campuses were far from the megacities).

Bruce Boyer explains to us:

For those who really understood this look, the details were everything. You didn't just have to have those details, you also had to buy from a certain store. The store was probably more important than the brand.

For example, The Andover Shop was created in '48, taking advantage of a genre that was already well established. And these stores, by targeting campuses, established a proximity with students and fed off their thoughts, observed how they wore clothes, were inspired by them and felt what would really work. This was also the case for Arthur Rosenberg, the head tailor at the time. And J. Press shares this feeling, as do Norman Hilton, Fenn-Feinstein and Chipp.

The close relationship of trust with students and administrations was for them the key to their success.

Bruce Boyer, who can say "I was there," testifies to his feelings as a student at the time:

Some brands rang true: Corbin pants, London Fog raincoats, Gant and Sero shirts. Tom Wolfe pointed out the difference between Brooks Brothers, J. Press, and Chipp shirts—one had no pockets, one had a pocket with a flap, one had no flap—and students knew that stuff. They could tell a Gant shirt from a lesser brand. Weejuns, of course, was an iconic brand. Southwick was huge, perhaps the most famous tailor in the Ivy League stores.

And to think that people think that brand recognition only came when designers started displaying their logos.

Yes, dear Bruce, the students were really connoisseurs, or rather connoisseurs as the Americans say when they want to speak French.

And this knowledge of details led them to tame these clothes until they developed a truly personal style.

A (very) personal way of wearing clothes

Pretend not to pretend to be what you're not

Stroke in 3... 2... 1...

Game Over. I need a pick-me-up.

I'm going to take a thisane detox. Matter of life or death.

Here I am again. How are you? Are you holding up?

After this very relaxing sub-section title, I leave it to Tom Wolfe, the recently deceased writer and author of The Bonfire of the Vanities among others, to clarify the title, thanks to a selected excerpt from his article entitled The Secret Vice, published in the New York Herald Tribune in 1966:

Almost all the powerful men in New York, especially those on Wall Street, the people in investment houses, banks, law firms, politicians, especially the Democrats in Brooklyn, for some reason are fanatical about the paltry differences attached to the measure. These are almost like marks of belonging to a secret group. And yet it is a taboo subject. (...)

At Yale and Harvard, it's perfectly natural for boys to read magazines like Leer, Poke, Feel, Prod, Tickle, Hot Whips, Modern Mammaries in public : sex is not taboo.

But when the catalog comes from Brooks Brothers or J.Press, then they only release it in secret.

It is said.

Students would rather be seen as sexual perverts than fashion geeks.

So why so much secrecy?

Well, it's true that according to virile myths, men are not supposed to worry too much about their aesthetic sensitivity ( I also recommend this very aptly titled podcast which talks about virile guys and Ancient Greece).

Another explanation is that it is always better to be seen as someone who has an innate sense of style rather than as a stickler for detail who spends his time studying himself too seriously. This is still relevant today.

In reality, for the Ivy student, it is more about making believe in “ careful carelessness ”, that is to say “taking care not to take care of one's appearance”.

And we know that, it is the birth of the idea of ​​nonchalance, the magic word of the Ivy style with obvious repercussions on our contemporary definition of style.

But is this idea of ​​nonchalance, of pretending not to care about one's appearance, ultimately just about clothes?

A naked Ivy man is still an Ivy man

Have you noticed?

We are talking about Ivy League Look and not Ivy League Tailoring or Clothing.

Which means it's more than just an outfit, it's also about a haircut, physical appearance, the way you move, look, behave.

That is to say, even the guys in Ride The Wild Surf (1964) who spend their time in swimsuits smell of Ivy:

Russell Lynes, art historian and editor-in-chief of Harper's Magazine and himself a recent graduate of Yale, discusses the attitude associated with the Ivy League Look in a 1953 article:

Social charm - the bow tie on an American collar - short hair, unexpected and impetuous but slightly jaded smiles. They wear the student uniform, the Ivy League version, but with an air of studied relaxation, at home everywhere.

Social charm.

The Ivy League Look would therefore be a bias of social interactions. A way to have influence, to seduce, to exercise one's charisma and to convince.

"They are at home everywhere," Russell Lynes tells us. That is to say, even off campus, this allure is a passport to the world of the great, the world of the important, with a first-class ticket.

However, whatever one may say, the primary factor in this captivating nonchalance remains clothing, and Bruce Boyer drives the point home:

The Ivy League Look also did something that I really like and that I think is a beautiful way of looking at clothing: mixing formal and casual , which is something that the Italians really learned from us. It's the intentional nonchalance that the Italians call "sprezzatura."

Did Americans invent sprezzatura?

Ouch.

Massacre at Pitti Uomo.

National mourning.

An arrow to the heart for Italy.

We will not enter into the debate.

However, if we take the sports jacket as an example, an American invention, as we will see, in Harris Tweed (or Donegal), that is really the intention: to relax formal outfits and it is quite innovative.

In any case, the use of raw and warm materials for their rusticity but on a formal piece, country clothes but for the city, it is once again very sprezzatura.

Could the Ivy League Look be a cousin of the Italian style, or rather a brother?

The Ivy Leaguer favors what is not too smooth, what is alive, what develops a patina, and we at BonneGueule say yes to this vision of things!

We can therefore see that the Ivy League style induces many possibilities for adapting its degree of formalism and this will become a valuable characteristic of sustainability.

The Ivy League Look plays with its context

Yes, in 1929, the Great Depression turned everything upside down. The Ivy adapted and developed more casual outfits so as not to appear too stiff, in a spirit of respect and non-ostentation.

And this is how, or at least the stock market crash will have accelerated the thing, that anthracite becomes the fashionable color . But it is also, more prosaically, because gray flannels are beautiful and do not betray traces of dirt or too intensive wear. So both aesthetic and practical.

The clothes that students choose to wear should not look too new, too clean, although they should always be impeccable. That is the paradox.

But what exactly are the pieces that make up the Ivy wardrobe?

The typical Ivy style wardrobe

I will once again give the floor to Bruce Boyer who, to the question "You entered the University in 1959, what were the typical clothes you wore?", answers:

A button-down shirt in the traditional colours: white, blue, pink, yellow or striped, a round-neck sweater in Shetland wool, beige chinos and Weejuns. There were also plaid socks and, in the summer, madras galore. For tailoring, the ideal would have been a blue single-breasted blazer, or a Harris Tweed jacket, a grey flannel suit and a beige cotton or seersucker suit. That was the basis.

The button-down collar oxford shirt

This is the essential.

The OCBD, as it is called ( Oxford Cloth Button-Down ), is to the Ivy style what jeans are to the workwear style.

It was introduced to America by John Brooks in 1896, after he attended a polo match in England. At that time, polo players wore this shirt because the button-down collar did not whip their faces. It was a trick.

The round neck sweater in Shetland wool

This is the Ivy style's favorite sweater. Why? Only students know, but we can surely say that the rustic look of the brushed wool has something to do with it. And also, you can get very beautiful colors.

As for the crewneck , it is preferred over the V-neck . In Princeton's regulations, students are even strongly advised to wear only crewnecks. Without really explaining why.

The Khakis

It's the beige chino. We had dedicated an article to it on how to choose and wear it . To briefly remind you of the story, I will quote an excerpt from The Eternal Masculine by Josh Sims:

The story of the chino, which began in India in 1845, has two versions. In the first, British soldiers deliberately stained their white uniforms, which made them too visible targets, with dirt, coffee or even curry. In the second, Sir Harry Lumsden, commander of the British forces in the Punjab, replaced the regulation trousers with lighter, looser models, better suited to the heat. He had them dyed with tea leaves and found that they made an excellent camouflage outfit.

So much for the invention of chinos. But how did they make it to American campuses?

In fact, it was in 1898 that the American army adopted these pants and the first Levi's chinos were sold on the market in 1906 and were called Sunset. Then, after an appearance in the marine corps, it became part of the GIs' standard uniform during the Second World War.

With the GI Bill of June 1944, which funded the university education of demobilized American soldiers, GIs joined universities and, with them, their wardrobe. This is how chinos entered the Ivy wardrobe.

The Weejuns

We have already seen that the loafer was integrated into the Ivy wardrobe in 1936, and this quickly and easily.

Back then, they were typically worn with plaid socks in the 30s and white or ecru socks in the 1950s. And then without socks in the 60s.

According to Graham Marsh, author of The Ivy Look: Classic American Clothing :

The original loafer was introduced to America in 1936 by bootmaker George Bass, who made boots for Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expedition and the flying boots worn by Charles Lindburgh on his solo Atlantic crossing. Bass adapted this new shoe from a traditional Norwegian fisherman's slipper, naming it 'Weejuns' in recognition of its Nordic origins. The Weejun quickly became a symbol of American casual style, worn by both men and women. Women would slip a coin into the bib, making the shoe a popular style.

Personally, I had always heard that coins had been slipped into the breastplates of these shoes so that you could always have money on you to make phone calls or take the bus. Well, now we learn that it was women who brought this coquetry.

Either.

I won't comment, I'll just say that I wasn't there at the time.

Plaid socks

Well, the Scottish pattern, I'm not going to draw you a picture, it's another heritage coming to us from the United Kingdom.

What we can say is that, worn with loafers, it is still quite daring. Especially since the colors could be daring.

Madras

Madras is truly the boldest print in the Ivy style and perhaps even in the entire history of the pattern. To wear it as a jacket or pants, you really have to not give a damn about what other people think, there's no denying it.

Its origins are colonial (Madras being a city in India - renamed Chennai in 1996) and this article is long enough that I won't give you a detailed account, but suffice it to say that it is a breathable fabric made of silk and cotton woven in bright colors. Ivy League students discovered it while vacationing in the Bahamas in the 1930s, then controlled by the United Kingdom.

The straight blazer

Students prefer straight blazers to double-breasted ones because they are simpler in approach, look and can be worn more easily open. Blue, they are worn with gray flannel pants or beige chinos, loafers, an oxford shirt and a tie or not.

Very useful for those moments in student life that require a bit of formality.

The Harris Tweed sports jacket

In the 1920s, no one talked about sports coats . In fact, they didn't exist, they were an American invention. Men spent their time in very elegant clothes without ever thinking that others better than the ones they were wearing might have been more comfortable on certain occasions.

After the First World War, Americans increasingly practiced outdoor activities, they wanted to burn life at both ends as we no longer say! And on campus, we increasingly witnessed sports that could be practiced in outdoor stadiums. And, to properly enjoy the spectacle, or even to practice outdoor sports such as hunting for example, it was necessary to adapt the wardrobe of sleeved pieces.

In 1918, the Americans seized the Norfolk jacket (coming from, and this will completely surprise you... England!) which, at that time, had a martingale and pleats in the back. Harris or Donegal tweed was kept and it quickly became, in the 1920s, the ideal leisure jacket.

Ivy League students add it to their list of conquests: it embodies a renewal, its material is authentic, rustic, it facilitates movements and is made for moments of relaxation. It's very Ivy, don't you think?

The gray flannel suit

We saw in the previous article (dedicated to the sack suit) that the gray flannel suit had a nice place in the Ivy wardrobe. We also saw that its status was quite ambiguous because it expresses a certain conformism, even though the Ivy style claims to free itself from it.

Flannel, for the same reasons as tweed, is adopted by students who also wear mismatched trousers. I remind you of the film The Man with the Grey Flannel Suit (1956).

The beige cotton suit

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh but the more I advance in this article the more I am captivated by the accuracy of Ivy's choices. A beige cotton suit has been on my wishlist for ages. And even more so. Anyway.

Obama was seen wearing one during his term. It could have been a little more fitted and the jacket shorter, but I thought it was pretty cool, despite the uproar it generated across the Atlantic.

For the warmer months, this is a great option and in the Ivy era, it was worn for that purpose. The suit, but casual. Nonchalant and sporty chic.

Seersucker

Seersucker, you know, we've already talked about it several times. It's this cotton fabric with a waffle appearance, born in India, which we can see very well on Gregory Peck's shoulders above.

I'll give you what Bruce Boyer, interviewed for Drake's, says about it, because he's a kind of demigod of Ivy clothing:

Around the 1920s, stylish students at elite Eastern universities like Princeton began wearing sport coats and suits made of waffle cotton, following in the footsteps of more adventurous people who had migrated to warmer climates when temperatures began to drop in the north, tasted the joys of the material, and brought it home to New York, Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia to have it tailored into suits for the air-conditioned summers in the concrete jungle high-rises.

By the 1940s, the seersucker suit was no longer considered a college fashion or a vacation outfit, but was so entrenched that the editors of Esquire magazine's Encyclopedia of Men's Fashion refer to a remark written by Damon Runyon, the famous writer and notorious dandy, that: "A man wearing a seersucker suit with aplomb could cash a check anywhere in New York without anyone asking him a single question.

So.

Now I also need a seersucker suit. Is that an expense item, Benoît?

The repp tie

These striped ties are of course variations of those of the English: first there was the regimental tie of the English military which allowed them to indicate their membership in a regiment; then the students of Oxford, Eton or Cambridge took them up on their own to make ties linked to membership in a club (sports, school etc.) hence the term "club tie"; and finally, there is the repp tie (reps being a French word designating a thick fabric generally used for furnishing).

The Americans have the good taste to change the direction of the stripes: the English one starts from the left shoulder and goes down to the right side, the American one starts from the right shoulder and goes down to the left side. Robert's is therefore... American! Bingo.

Warning: if at this point in the article you start seeing little black stars in front of you, it is completely normal. This phase precedes fainting. So I advise you to remedy this imminent blackout by arming yourself with a chocolate bar, a pint of clear water and lying down for a few minutes with your legs in the air. Nobody needs a vagal malaise in their life. Has it passed? Good, let's move on!

The polo coat

The polo coat (the double-breasted, camel hair coat in good French) became very fashionable in the 1920s at Yale and Princeton. And it remained so for decades afterward. At present, it even enjoys great popularity in Lombardy, among the Italians, where it found comfort on the shoulders of Lino Ieluzzi , the playboy with the golden hair.

The reason for its success with Ivy League students is that it was associated with the world of sports. It was worn at the campus stadium and could be worn very informally (thanks to its camel color). For the record, it is the coat of the legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi.

The Harrington Jacket

The Harrington jacket comes to us from the United Kingdom. Yes, again, I know. The most famous is from the Baracuta brand, it's the G9. Let's say it's the most iconic in any case.

The Americans stole it because it was so cool that they couldn't have done otherwise. Quickly, in the 50s, they stuck it on the shoulders of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause , the bright red of his delinquent youth that stings the eye and melts the heart, and even of Elvis Presley and of course Steve McQueen, the King of Cool himself who dubbed it with a simple revolver look. PAW!

It is therefore the jacket of youth, whether adventurous, lost, rebellious or, at least, dynamic.

It is named after actor Rodney Harrington from the 1960s TV series Peyton Place.

The White Bucks

I'm not sure why they wore white suede shoes with red rubber soles. Except that they must have been a lot more comfortable than any of their fathers' shoes. And white must have gone with just about everything. The soles were flexible and probably non-slip when it rained.

I would also say that it would go particularly well with beige chinos, a brown tweed jacket and a white or sky blue or red oxford shirt. But otherwise, I don't see.

Surely also because the ultra-dirty white of the suede shoes was simply one more way of showing a certain irreverence towards political correctness and codes and claiming, once again, that young people were there to make themselves seen by everyone and to play their role in society and in this world which had already experienced two wars.

But maybe I'm getting carried away.

Sneakers

I said at the beginning of this article, it was about ten years ago, that the Ivy League Look was the invention of the casual chic style. Here is a striking legacy: the sneakers that were worn on campus with non-sporty outfits. Unheard of.

We can see it very well in this 1956 film ( Tea and Sympathy ) whose main character perfectly embodies this Ivy League Look. We see that he is wearing white sneakers at the fortieth second of the trailer .

The Saddle Shoes

The Ivy League Look is once again inspired by sport: if saddle shoes were originally created for tennis, it is in golf that they find an echo. The female population of the campuses fights over them and they are worn, mainly on the weekends. No impact in Europe, it has become typically Ivy.

To conclude this inventory, I give the floor to the very honorable Bruce Boyer, the man who said a lot:

I went to a conservative university, the Eastern Establishment values ​​were very strong there. If you wanted to get into one of the fraternities that were a mainstay of campus life, (...) there was a huge pressure on you to look Ivy League. The only ones who had any prestige and didn't wear the Ivy League Look were a bunch of intellectuals who wore black turtlenecks trying to look like Jean-Paul Sartre.

So, not everyone was Ivy...

The moment when we switched from the style of youth to that of reactionary

In the 1950s and 1960s, with cinema, jazz, sport and literature (notably the characters of Francis Scott Fitzgerald - that of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby for example) the Ivy League Look had good press, even if it embodied rather divisive values, those of Old Money (in opposition to the nouveau riche) wearing the gray flannel suit.

What happened?

So here it is!

It was that after the war, the GI Bill brought a lot of ex-military men into the universities. They wanted to imitate the Old Money, or Ivy, style, while also incorporating the clothes of their military uniforms (including the famous khakis ).

And that's how the Old Money look really became popular. For a brief moment, it had become democratized and was to embody the hope of personal accomplishment, the uniform of conquering youth and not just of the privileged. It had also become the uniform of the self-made man , dear to American mythology.

But the popularity of the Ivy League Look quickly faded:

After 1969 [Nixon took office], Bruce Boyer says, so many other styles emerged that could compete: the hippies, the British take-over, Italian fashion. And so new groups challenged the popularity of the Ivy League style, although the real Old Money stuck to it. And then, in the early 1970s, the influence of the fashion designer grew, leading to the beginning of what I would call Postmodern Preppy, where clothing became a disguise. A guy like William F. Buckley dressed that way because it was a heritage, but kids today dress that way because it's fashionable. It's not a conviction anymore, it's a disguise.

If we had to give an end date to the Ivy League style, we could say 1967 with the “Summer of Love”, the summer when the hippie movement took all the light. Coming from California. It was the new incarnation of youth and, as it expressed itself more loudly, it was bound to take the place of the other.

And then Kennedy, President Ivy, had been killed.

To complete the Ivy, the Vietnam War had made a mockery of the American administration that came out of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

Ralph Lauren took over

That's where Ralph Lauren comes in.

Having worked at Brooks Brothers and worn all their clothes, he is a staunch Ivy Leaguer and doesn't want the style to die out. But when he saw that BB was starting to make clothes with polyester, he realized there was a place in the market.

He told New York Magazine on October 21, 1985:

I couldn't see myself doing haute couture, but I believed in individual sophistication, in a more personal way of dressing - which Brooks Brothers had done in the past and which was great. That's what I tried to do, that's what I loved, a lifestyle.

Men with a lot of money would go into Brooks Brothers and say, "Give me three white ones, three blue ones, and three pink ones," and they'd come out. Every year. They didn't care if it was fashionable. I find myself in that mentality.

This is the birth of the preppy, the Ivy's boisterous little brother.

Is Preppy the Next Ivy League Look?

For Bruce Boyer, preppy is the postmodern Ivy League. For him, Ralph Lauren saved the Ivy League Look from extinction by giving it another flavor and another purpose. It was no longer to make it the embodiment of Eastern American values, but to make it a fashion look, emblematic of a lifestyle to which the followers of this trend could relate.

But I want to faithfully translate for you this passage from Boyer's interview by the blog Ivy-Style.com that I quoted several times in this article:

Ivy-Style : The idea of ​​authenticity that surrounds the Ivy style is inescapable (...). But I think it's too easy to say that preppy is the new, conscious form of Ivy and therefore less authentic. When Nelson W. Aldrich Jr. uses the term "preppie," he's not talking about clothes; he's talking about the WASP. So it depends on how you use the term.

It seems there are four categories: those who were born into the Ivy, those who were attached to it later, those who were born into preppy, and those who followed it. You can't say that a 1970s preppy guy who was born into the movement is necessarily less authentic than a poor kid who went to college in the 1950s and attached to the Ivy. "Preppy" shouldn't mean "ersatz," because it depends on what the speaker wants to express.

Bruce Boyer : I see what you mean, and let me add something. When I wrote the Brooks Brothers article in Town & Country in May of 1981, I interviewed the president of Brooks Brothers, whose name was Riley, and he said, "Do me a favor and please don't use the word 'preppy' when referring to Brooks Brothers." I knew that word was in widespread use at that time.

Ivy-Style : "The Official Preppy Handbook" was a commercial success at the time.

Bruce Boyer : That's right. And I told Riley that it's just a buzzword and I wasn't going to use it and he said, "I just wanted you to know that I hate that word."

Ivy-Style : What did he mean by this word and why were you against it?

Bruce Boyer : Yeah, I think to him it meant "ersatz," which is what everybody else was doing, and Brooks was above that. I mention that story because there's something you have to realize when you're buying clothes: we all go into nostalgia mode. No one way of dressing dominates the market anymore, like it used to. And I think what designers are trying to recreate today is a mood around their designs. In other words, a person's style today, especially for young people, doesn't feel natural anymore. There's no authenticity anymore. Everything you wear is, in a way, a disguise.

The final word...

I didn't experience the Ivy League Look, and I can't really say whether or not people dress authentically anymore, as Bruce Boyer says. But I really want to believe that they don't.

Ultimately, perhaps the true way to dress authentically is simply to wear whatever you feel like wearing, whether that's punk, Ivy, hippie or goth ninja.

In my opinion, Japan saved the American style. by imitating the American style has developed something very authentic (but that's another story that I might tell you one day!).

And, to tell you what I really think, it seems to me that more than ever, dressing well is essential. You have to enjoy it, because Bruce Boyer will not be able to say that pleasure is not authentic.

So this concludes this Part II on the iconic clothing of the United States. I hope you enjoyed it.

While waiting for Part III, which will be much less theoretical and infinitely more practical, I'm going to sleep for two days!

1. Part I, on the myths of North American tailoring
2. Part III, on how to rock the Ivy League style