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 experience nostalgia, you must have known what you regret. Can we be nostalgic for the future?

And then, let's say that I prefer the way in which, these days, fashion is no longer so peremptory: on the street, I see aggressive sportswear alongside archi-classic suits bordering on total stylistic letting go. Well, especially the last one.

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

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

But wouldn’t we have lost something there?

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

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

Get in my time machine, there's room for everyone. Back to the time when we had icons in cinema, 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 casual chic style by students on American Ivy League campuses.

When we talk about Ivy League Look, whose heyday took place according to some sources in the 1930s and according to others rather after the Second World War, we actually mean the archi-cool of actors like James Dean, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Brando and others. It is the nonchalance both natural and affected that everyone seeks and that few people find.

But not only

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

“In 1964, when an impetuous young woman meets a handsome, shy, very American, clean-cut man who buys her clothes at Brooks Brothers and finds herself both attracted to him and repulsed, she calls him “Ivy League” to tease him.

The Ivy League Look, between attraction and repulsion therefore.

It's good that this one expresses more than a simple way of arranging one's clothes. Well done 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 repel 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 break, marked by the chic relaxation of the look, a break with the austere authority of the fathers and the demand for a creative youth , whose energy launches into an attack on the world .

And then, while one might believe that this style is the prerogative of the WASP, we also discover it worn by the jazzman Miles Davis, the actor Sidney Poitier or even the boxer Muhammad Ali.

Well, it's more complicated than it seems.

Have you received 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 ?

Not always. Although it is true that the Ivy arsonists left some clues.

The most serious track is New Haven. This port city north of New York appears to be 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 positions than Harvard, for example).
3. That's a bonus reason, I actually said two, but I'm where I'm not expected. Reason 3, therefore: this is also where Gant was established in 1949. And even if we could say that they arrived after the war, literally and figuratively, this still shows that it is a breeding ground fertile for the life of the Ivy.
4. REASON 4, because I really am 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.

He weighed around 3kg500.

Yes, that's false. I lied.

What I was able to learn through my readings 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, the creator of The Andover Shop , an Ivy style institution, "it was 30 or 40 years in the making without anyone knowing that it would be called the Ivy League look."

In my opinion, the cornerstone of the Ivy Building was laid in 1901 by Brooks Brothers and their No. 1 Sack Suit . As I tell you 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 using 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.

Indeed, to help the production of its suits, Brooks Brothers simplifies their characteristics: natural shoulders, no bending, no sewing on the sides of the jacket, a single rear 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 is indeed a suit that can be abused and, because it is less formal, corresponds to the campus lifestyle.

How did the Ivy spread?

You have to understand one thing:

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

Jazz, zealot of the Ivy League

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 in the lives of these students; and jazzmen came to play on campuses which were almost towns (but in the countryside). And, like bees who work poetically to pollinate plants, these musicians were the makers of this Ivy rumor, ensuring that it was fruitful, by going from campus to campus, like apostles of cool : c is that jazzmen dressed Ivy League.

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

In addition to music, sport, and the practice of it, helped to shape the Ivy style. In our collective imagination still, the Ivy League Universities are intimately linked with sport and the fervor of the stadiums (how many films have we seen?).

Sport crystallizes Ivy style

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

The first rowing competition took place between Harvard (the oldest of the Universities) 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 lasting part of the typical Ivy Leaguer's wardrobe, such as the button-down collar Oxford shirt, the round-neck Shetland wool sweater, the polo shirt, club ties, Scottish 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 campus of J.Press (based at Yale and Harvard) and these pieces in question were tinged with the colors of American universities and internal clubs. The competitive spirit of champions gradually finds aesthetic relays on sweaters, ties and blazers.

Yes, but.

To read this, you might believe that this is the greatest stylistic heist in the history of men's fashion! But not at all.

If Brooks Brothers imported heavily, inflated its clothing offering to its maximum capacity and had eyes shaped like dollars, the Ivy student had a cool head: only the pieces that entered the campuses were , whether instinct or custom, pleased him.

The student becomes a “fashion opinion leader”

In a 1933 article in the fashion magazine Apparel Arts, we read: “Today the student has become a fashion thought leader, who dresses discreetly and correctly for every occasion, thanks to the leadership of the chic Universities of the East.”

That’s interesting! The student becomes a trendsetter, he has the power to decree that this or that item of clothing now becomes fashionable. The Ivy Leaguer ultimately was Karl Lagerfeld.

Let's take the moccasin as an example: adopted around 1936, the penny loafer on the Yale campus was “taken by storm” (the Yale Daily News wrote about it at that time).

Well, it's simple: it's become a student wardrobe classic in the blink of an eye. It doesn't belong to any fashion, it's a little weird, and yet the 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.

Whereas, I insist, these moccasins are really more like aliens with soles at that time.

There are multiple explanations in my opinion:

1. Probably it should go well with the wardrobe already acquired from J.Press and others.
2. Plus, they were easy to put on. In fact, I think that's the simplest explanation: no laces, it's light, it's flexible, you can put it on in no time when you're late for your physics class. quantum.

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

It's the people who made things classic, not the manufacturers. Some were accepted, others rejected, otherwise how can we explain everything that was not accepted?

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

Students and merchants: commercial partners?

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

As Charlie Davidson says, Brooks Brothers' offer was much more extensive than what the Ivy League got out of it. While J.Press distilled this entire offer to offer only the heart, the essential marrow as Rabelais would say. Making J.Press a more authentic actor, more Ivy ultimately.

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

Bruce Boyer explains:

For those who truly understood this look, the details were everything. You not only had to have these 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 proximity with students and fed off their thoughts, observed how they wore clothes, took inspiration from them and felt what would really work. This was also the case for Arthur Rosenberg the then head tailor. And J.Press shares this sentiment 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 of the time:

Some brands rang true: Corbin pants, London Fog rain coats, Gant and Sero shirts. Tom Wolfe pointed out the difference between the shirts from Brooks Brothers, J.Press and Chipp - one had no pocket, one had a pocket with a flap, one had no flap - and the students knew this kind of stuff. They could make out a Gant shirt from a lesser brand. Weejuns (note the moccasins) 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 creators started exposing their logos.

Yes, dear Bruce, the students were truly 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

Pretending 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 detox herbal tea. Question of life or death.

I'm back. How are you, are you in shock?

After this very relaxing sub-section title, I leave it to Tom Wolfe, recently deceased writer and author of The Bonfire of the Vanities among others, to clarify the title, thanks to a selected extract 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 the securities firms, the banks, the law firms, the politicians, especially the Brooklyn Democrats, for some reason are fanatics of paltry differences attached to the measurement. These are almost like marks of membership in a secret group. And yet, it is a taboo subject. (...)

At Yale and Harvard, it's completely 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 prefer to be seen as sexual perverts rather than fashion geeks.

So why so much secrecy?

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

Another explanation is that it is always better to come across as someone who has an innate sense of style rather than a stickler for details who spends their time studying themselves too seriously. It’s still relevant today.

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

And we know that, it's the birth of the idea of ​​nonchalance, the magic word of 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 an Ivy man

You have noticed ?

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

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

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

Russell Lynes, art historian and editor of Harper's Magazine and himself a recent graduate of Yale, wrote about 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 casualness, at home everywhere.

Social charm.

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

“They are at home everywhere,” Russell Lynes tells us. That is to say, even off campus, this look is a passport to the world of adults, the world of the important, with a first class ticket.

However, whatever one says, the primary element of this captivating nonchalance remains clothing and Bruce Boyer drives the point home:

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

Did the Americans invent sprezzatura?

Ouch.

Massacre at Pitti Uomo.

National mourning.

An arrow in the heart for Italy.

We will not enter into the debate.

However, if we take the sports jacket as an example, an invention of the Americans we will see, in Harris Tweed (or Donegal), that is really the desire: 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's once again very sprezzatura that.

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

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

We therefore see that the Ivy League style gives rise to 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 changed everything. The Ivy adapts and develops more casual outfits so as not to appear too formal, in a spirit of respect and non-ostentation.

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

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

But exactly what are the constituent parts of 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 collar shirt in traditional colors: white, blue, pink, yellow or striped, a round-neck Shetland wool sweater, beige chinos and Weejuns. There were also tartan patterned socks and, in the summer, excessive madras. For tailoring pieces, the ideal would have been a blue straight blazer, or a Harris Tweed jacket, a gray flannel suit and a beige cotton or seersucker suit. That was the basis.

Oxford shirt with buttoned collar

It's 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 didn't whip their faces. It's a trick.

Round-neck Shetland wool sweater

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

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

The Khakis

It's beige chinos. We devoted 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 history of chinos, which began in India in 1845, has two versions. In the first, British soldiers deliberately color their white uniforms which turn them into all-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 and looser models, better suited to the heat. He had them dyed with tea leaves and found that they made excellent camouflage.

So much for the invention of chinos. But how did it get 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 was part of the regulatory uniform of the GI during the Second World War.

With the GI Bill of June 1944, which financed the university studies of demobilized American soldiers, GIs joined universities and, with them, their locker rooms. This is how chinos enter the Ivy wardrobe.

The Weejuns

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

At the time, they were typically worn with plaid socks in the 1930s and white or ecru socks in the 1950s. And then without socks in the 1960s.

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 flying boots worn by Charles Lindburgh for his Atlantic crossing alone. 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. The latter slipped a coin into the bib, making these shoes a fashionable model.

Personally, I had always heard that coins had been slipped into the fronts of these shoes to always have money with you to make a phone call or take the bus. Well, there we learn that it was the women who brought this coquetry.

Either.

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

Plaid pattern socks

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

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

Madras

Madras is truly the most daring 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 care about the looks of others, there's no denying it.

Its origin is colonial (Madras being a city in India - renamed Chennai in 1996) and this article is long enough as it is that I will spare you a detailed account, but let's just say that it is a breathable fabric made of silk and cotton woven in bright colors. Ivy League students discovered it during their vacation in the Bahamas in the 1930s, then controlled by the United Kingdom.

The straight blazer

Students prefer straight blazers to double-breasted blazers 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, moccasins, an Oxford shirt and a tie or not.

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

The Harris Tweed sports jacket

In the 1920s, no one talked about sports coats . In fact, it doesn't exist, it's an American invention. Men spent their time in clothes of great elegance without ever having in mind that others better than those they wore might perhaps have been more comfortable on certain occasions.

After the First World War, Americans practiced more and more outdoor activities, they wanted to burn out their lives at both ends, as is often said! And on campus, we are seeing more and more sports that can be played in outdoor stadiums. And, to properly enjoy the show, or even to practice outdoor sports like hunting for example, you have to adapt the wardrobe for sleeved pieces.

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

Ivy League students include it in their hunting list: it embodies a renewal, its material is authentic, rustic, it facilitates movement 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 great 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 pants. I remind you of the film The Man with the Gray Flannel Suit (1956).

The beige cotton suit

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

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

For the warmer months, it's a great option and at the Ivy era, it was also worn with this in mind. The suit, but casual. Nonchalance and sporty chic spirit.

Seersucker

You know seersucker, we've already talked to you about it several times. It is this cotton fabric with an embossed appearance, born in India, that we see very well on the shoulders of Gregory Peck above.

I'm telling you what Bruce Boyer, interviewed for Drake's, said about it, because he's a kind of demigod of the Ivy sap:

Around the 1920s, stylish students at elite Eastern universities like Princeton began wearing sports jackets and waffle cotton suits, following more adventurous others who had migrated to warmer climes when temperatures began to drop in the north, had tasted the joys of this material, and brought it home to New York, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia to have costumes made for the airless summers packaged in the buildings of the concrete jungle.

By the 1940s, the seersucker suit was no longer considered college fashion, nor vacation wear, but was so ingrained that the editors of Esquire magazine's Encyclopedia of Men's Fashion referred to a remark written by Damon Runyon, the famous writer and notorious dandy, said: "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. Does that go into your expense report, Benoît?

The repp tie

These striped ties are of course variations of those of the English: first we had the regimental tie of the English soldiers which allowed them to indicate their belonging to 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, it is the repp tie (reps being a French word designating a thick fabric generally used for furnishing).

The Americans have the good taste of changing 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 to see small black stars in front of you, this is completely normal. This phase precedes fainting. I therefore advise you to remedy this imminent blackout by providing yourself with a chocolate bar, a pint of clear water and lying down for a few minutes with your legs in the air. No one needs vagal discomfort in their life. This happened ? Okay, 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 later. At present, he even enjoys great popularity in Lombardy, among the Italians, where he found comfort on the shoulders of Lino Ieluzzi , the playboy with golden hair.

The reason for this success among Ivy League students is that it was associated with the world of sports. We went to the campus stadium with it and could wear it 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 is the G9. Let's say it's the most iconic in any case.

The Americans stole him because he was so cool they wouldn't have had it any other way. 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 which stings the eye and melts the heart, and even Elvis Presley and well sure of Steve McQueen, the King of Cool himself who dubbed him with a simple glare. PAW!

It is therefore the jacket for young people, whether they are adventurous, lost, rebellious or, at least, dynamic.

It takes its name from the actor Rodney Harrington from the TV series Peyton Place in the 1960s.

The White Bucks

I'm not sure why they wore white suede shoes with red rubber soles. Except they must have been much more comfortable than any of their fathers'. And that white should go with just about everything. The sole was 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 it.

Surely also because the ultra-dirty white of the suede shoes was simply one more way of showing a certain irreverence towards good thinking and codes and claiming, once again, that youth was indeed there to be seen in the eyes of the public. all and to play their role in society and in this world having already experienced two wars.

But maybe I'm getting carried away.

Sneakers

I said at the start of this article, it was a good ten years ago, that the Ivy League Look was the invention of the casual chic style. Here is a striking heritage: the sneakers that we wore on campus with non-sporty outfits. Never seen.

We 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 .

Saddle Shoes

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

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

I went to a conservative university, the East Establishment values ​​were very strong there. If you wanted to get into one of the fraternities that were one of the pillars of campus life, (...) there was enormous pressure for you to appear Ivy League. The only ones who had any prestige and didn't wear the Ivy League Look were a group of intellectuals who wore black turtlenecks in an attempt to look like Jean-Paul Sartre.

So not everyone was Ivy...

The moment when we switched from the style of youth to that of the 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 s he embodied quite divisive values, those of Old Money (in opposition to the nouveau riche) wearing the gray flannel suit.

What happened ?

So this is it !

It was only after the war that the GI Bill brought a good number of former military personnel into universities. They wanted to imitate the Old Money, or Ivy, style, while also integrating clothing from their military uniforms (including the famous khakis ).

And that's how the Old Money look really became popular. For a short time, it was democratized and must then embody the hope of personal accomplishment, the uniform of conquering youth and no longer just the privileged one. 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's entry into office), says Bruce Boyer, so many other styles likely to compete emerged: hippies, British looks conquering the world, 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 fashion designer's influence grew, leading to the beginning of what I would call Preppy Postmodernism, where clothing became a disguise. A guy like William F. Buckley dressed that way because it was a legacy, but kids today dress that way because it's fashion. It is no longer a conviction but 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 spotlight. From California. She was the new incarnation of youth and, as she expressed herself louder, she inevitably had to take the place of the other.

And then Kennedy, President Ivy, had been killed.

To complete the Ivy, the Viet Nam War had ridiculed the American administration coming out of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

Ralph Lauren took over

This is where Ralph Lauren comes in.

Having worked at Brooks Brothers and worn all their clothes, he's a staunch Ivy Leaguer and doesn't want the style to die. But when he saw that BB was starting to make clothes with polyester, he realized that 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 outfit - which Brooks Brothers had done in the past and which was brilliant. This is what I sought to do, this is what I loved, a lifestyle.

Men who had a lot of money would come into Brooks Brothers and say, "Give me three whites, three blues and three pinks," and they would walk out. Every year. They didn't care if it was fashionable. I find myself in this mentality.

This is the birth of the preppy, the turbulent little brother of the Ivy.

Is preppy the continuation of the Ivy League Look?

For Bruce Boyer, preppy is 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 about making it the embodiment of Eastern American values, but about making it a fashion look, emblematic of a lifestyle to which followers of this trend could relate.

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

Ivy-Style : The idea of ​​authenticity that surrounds the Ivy style is unavoidable (...). 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 WASP So it depends on how we use this term.

It seems that there are four categories: those who were born with the Ivy, those who followed it, those who were born with the 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 stuck with the Ivy. "Preppy" should not 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 1981, I interviewed the president of Brooks Brothers, whose name was Riley, and he said, "Do me a favor, Please don't use the term 'preppy' when referring to Brooks Brothers." I knew this word was widely used at that time.

Ivy-Style : "The Official Preppy Handbook" was a commercial success at this 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 this word mean according to him and why be against it?

Bruce Boyer : Yes, I think for him it meant "ersatz", what everyone was doing and Brooks was above that. I mention this story because there is something you need to realize when you buy clothes: we all go into nostalgia mode. No one way of dressing dominates the market anymore, as it once did. And I think what designers are trying to recreate these days is an atmosphere around their designs. In other words, a person's style today, especially among young people, no longer seems natural. There is no more authenticity. Everything we wear is, in some way, a disguise.

The final word...

I haven't experienced the Ivy League Look and I can't really say if no one dresses authentically anymore today, as Bruce Boyer says. But I really want to believe that it isn't.

Ultimately, perhaps the true way to dress authentically is simply to wear whatever we want, whether it's part of the punk, Ivy, hippie or goth ninja wardrobe.

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

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

So ends this Part II on the emblematic 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 ways to sport Ivy League style