We are gently beginning what I dare to modestly call the America Saga. No, this is not a joke.
The principle is to share with you my study of emblematic pieces and styles of the United States (for this format).
The overall objective is to inspire you and tease your brain a bit.
The subject of this first part is American tailoring (if it ever existed).
Then, we attack the Ivy style in detail with:
- the origins of the Ivy League look,
- 8 ways to wear this style well,
- and as a bonus, her secrets deciphered on 5 outfits on video.
Ah yes, for reading this article, I recommend Bill Evans right in your eardrums.
“American tailoring.” * You have to mime the quotation marks with your hands when you read it.*
Talk about an oxymoron. It's almost better than Nerval's "black sun".
Honestly, what does American tailoring mean to you? Yeah meh, not much in the end.
There's no denying it, we can say thank you for their cinema (even if we were the first), for Marilyn Monroe, for June 6, 1944, for the humor of Robin Williams, the electric guitar and Wi-Fi .
On the other hand, we cannot thank them for their tailoring. Objectively, no.
Besides, we can't say thank you for Nicolas Cage either. Yeah, I definitely changed my mind, it's an international treasure.
Italian tailoring is Rubinacci, Kiton etc. ; English tailoring is Savile Row, Huntsman etc., Parisian tailoring is Cifonelli, Camps de Luca, Arnys etc.
But the American?
Well here, we mainly play on clichés but when there is no cliché, it is because there is no universal representation in the collective imagination, right?
What is American tailoring?
The beginning of the history of American tailoring is indeed very… American.
Since it is not so much about creating a style of costume dictated by a certain aesthetic bias or a need to express an American identity but rather a kind of capitalist reaction to the economic and social context.
It's very simple, you'll see.
In the 19th century, the United States experienced supersonic growth in its GDP, thanks to very strong industrialization.
At the same time, at the beginning of 1900, industrialists monopolized the markets since no law prevented them from doing so.
In addition, migratory flows are intensifying
And that certain progressive voices stand up against frenetic, irrational industrialization and the degradation of the purchasing power of workers and the middle classes.
This is what is said.
The fact remains that the average American, at that time, went to work in a suit and had less and less money to pay for it.
It is in this context that Brooks Brothers had the idea of marketing a suit supposed to suit all body types (with a few very minimal alterations), for a more modest sum than at a tailor. In fact, Brooks Brothers industrialized the production of the suit. And this is the birth of what we call the sack suit and, with it, classic American tailoring.
Just like that.
In fact, it’s ready-to-wear before its time.
Typical silhouettes later adopted by the average American. Except for the crusader who is doing less and less.
The technical characteristics of the jacket are as follows:
- Softer natural shoulders for comfort
- Total absence of bending to suit all stomachs
- Without “darts”: these are the vertical seams on each side panel of the jacket, normally aimed at retaining a value of fabric
- Low armholes to suit all arm and pectoral sizes
- Medium lapels to aesthetically fit all shoulders
- Two or three buttons
- Two buttons to close the sleeve
- Flap pockets (neither too formal nor too casual)
- Single-breasted (straight)
The main feature of the pants:
- No clamps to avoid unnecessary use of material which would increase manufacturing costs and complicate industrialization.
Otherwise, from an aesthetic point of view:
- Flannel...
- ... grey...
- ...and without reason.
Less is more.
This is the birth of the No. 1 Sack Suit from Brooks Brothers in 1901 .
We can of course also cite J.Press which still remains widely associated with this style of costume today.
The No. 1 Sack Suit from Brooks Brothers which "dominated American business clothing for the first sixty years of the 20th century", according to the text of the illustration.
As for the cut, comfort is what is sought after. We are far from English or Italian power suits. The suit is supposed to give an impression of distinguished casualness, dignified but comfortable, cool but financial shark.
It even seems that we hardly feel it weighing on our shoulders. And it’s G. Bruce Boyer who says it:
The line of the jacket is flowing, more natural and loose than European clothing, which is generally more fitted and streamlined. A Brooks Brothers jacket is said to be unfeelable, since it falls gracefully from the shoulders and has as little padding as a jacket can have while still maintaining a structured look. This silhouette was consolidated in the 1940s and Brooks stuck to it and defended it during the ups and downs of men's trends.
G. Bruce Boyer, journalist and true authority on men's fashion.
But actually, why this sweet name “sack suit”?
You'll never Gess.
Some sources subtly point out the similarities between the cut of this suit and... a bag. Yes, yes, a bag.
“Dress like a sack.” All that.
Good.
Other sources mention the sack coat , a 19th century coat from France, made using a technique called "sacque" - unless this is the name given to the coat benefiting from this technique, it is not clear. This technique in question would be characterized by the presence of a single central seam, in the back of the jacket, and therefore only two panels in total (and not four as on the jackets in your wardrobe).
It is also this easily duplicable construction technique that allowed mass production of the sack suit . The absence of padding and trouser clips also helps a lot. A higher level of detail would not have been possible and we can therefore say that the technique induced the aesthetics.
The sack suit becomes the costume of everyman
Walter Nelson of the blog "Mass Histeria" says:
The sack suit was leisure clothing for the richest men and the Sunday suit (editor's note the most chic!) for the vast majority of Americans. A banker wore a sack suit to a picnic, while a cowboy or farmer wore it to church.
But the sack suit has not yet reached its golden age.
Students from Ivy League universities also began to take an interest in it during the Roaring Twenties
This is also the first step towards the Ivy League Look to which I will dedicate the second part of this America Saga. And I can't wait to look at it over the next few days and nights, in the flickering light of my kerosene lamp and my own creative energy. Anyway!
Marc Chevalier, who is an amateur historian, collector of vintage clothing and contributor to the excellent blog ivy-style.com , mentions this unverifiable story according to which it was probably Princeton students who were the first to have, in the 1920s, started rolling the lapels of their jackets to hide the third button (the top one) in order to show off more of their ties. This is how they would have invented the 2 and a half button suit and the manufacturers would then have followed this empirical practice.
The sack suit becomes popular thanks to two elements
Students leave campuses
When students left their campus, they took their sack suits with them to Madison Avenue (in Manhattan). And they intend to embody a certain renewal. And this is how this fashion is gaining ground, it is the Old Money look (the sack suit in gray flannel) symbolizing the values of the East Establishment , of the old wealthy families of the East Coast (where the Ivy League Universities).
The young worker could even swap the black Oxford shoes for Gucci moccasins or tassel loafers.
Cinema establishes the Old Money look
In cinema, the references that I remember are "The Man with the Gray Flannel Suit" with Gregory Peck (1956).
Gregory Peck in his suit.
And it's also Paul Newman in "The Young Philadelphians" in 1959.
And later, to finish, I would quote Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night" (1968).
Rod Steiger, Sidney Poitier
The sack follows and the music
It is interesting to see that the sack suit (and more broadly the Ivy style) has gone beyond the walls of campuses to settle in more cosmopolitan environments such as jazz in particular.
To begin with, I'm thinking of Bill Evans (whom I listened to throughout the writing of this article and whom I highly recommend). We could also have taken the example of Miles Davis who appropriated clothes from a white elite from the eastern United States to distill his jazz to the flow.
In fact, the reason is quite simple: jazz musicians came to play on campus.
Porosity of styles.
Met.
“Fire” emoji; “wow” emoji; emoji "the cry of Edvard Munch" // Natural shoulders, seersucker and without "darts".
I was able to read a captivating article on the blog “Die, Workwear” reporting a survey published in the New York Times in 1953, right in the golden age of the sack suit , asking college graduates about Ivy style . The result was that men liked him when women didn't, because the latter had the feeling of having clones in front of them, clones of the world of finance, of banks. .
The article quotes a woman who says: “They are so enslaved to conformity that, standing up, one has the impression that they were all generated by the same matrix.” And another: “If we all had to wear the same designs, we would end up as dreary and boring and disappointing as the man in the gray flannel suit.”
And this is precisely what the Ivy League Look wants to avoid. But it's always the same: to develop a style that is in opposition to another that we consider to be conformist is ultimately to subscribe to this same pattern, even though we claim to denounce it.
Like hipsters.
It's ultimately inevitable.
Except that, in the article in question, the field of jazz is taken as an example and moreover as a counter-example to what was said above, namely that the Ivy style would be a new form of conformism.
The article tells us that “Bill Evans dressed Ivy from head to toe” and that on stage, he sometimes wore the famous Brooks Brothers sack suits, with two buttons on the sleeves (signature of the brand ), combined with dark ties and white shirts with cut-away collars. I quote from the article “No pocket squares or flashy designs, just an occasional tie clip. Despite the anonymity induced by this uniform, Evans did not seem like it.”
Bill Evans exuded something very likely due to his physique, his large-framed glasses, his painful shyness, his heroin use and finally his immense talent.
In fact, he was anything but conformist.
The article ends with this sentence - which sums it all up -, borrowed from Christian Chensvold, Ivy style expert:
Two men wearing the same outfit do not produce the same effect. A stuck up guy in trendy clothes will always look stuck up, while a trendy guy in uptight clothes will always look hip.
In fact, the essential question here arises: why do you wear the clothes you wear?
To develop a truly personal style, it is never satisfying to try to adopt a style, but rather let yourself be adopted by it.
Yes, it is the wand that chooses its wizard, Harry.
It is very rare to correspond in every way to an already established style. For example, personally, I would say that I am 75% Ivy and the rest is split between Italian casual chic and workwear.
The sack follows : a cumbersome political symbol
It was John F. Kennedy who began to deal the first blows to the sack suit .
G. Bruce Boyer says:
When Kennedy was elected in 1960, much ink was spilled over the clothing his cabinet members wore. Instead of the dark suit that everyone wore, they showed up in tweed sport jackets and cotton suits and, if I remember correctly, it was mentioned that these people were from Harvard.
And Kennedy did not want to give this image any longer, that is to say that of privileged white America. In fact, the sack suit has truly become the iconic model of conservatives. And JFK is a Democrat.
While in private, he likes to dress Ivy (Shetland wool sweater, khakis (beige chinos with cuffs without pleats), button-down collar Oxford shirts, crewnecks, loafers, etc.), his public image must remain more neutral: he can't afford to wear the sack suit.
As president: not the 3 button Ivy but a 2 button and not an American collar but a French or semi cut-away collar.
It must be said that in the 1960s, he was a sort of arbiter of elegance and in a certain way proclaimed the advent of a new style. Button downs are over. Hats too.
For him, it was a way to camouflage as best he could his privileged origins by striving to resemble as little as possible what was expected of a man belonging to the East Coast elite. But on the contrary, give it an international scope. Erasing belonging, in the spirit of proselytism.
Nowadays, some still defend the Ivy style in politics, or rather traditional (although the sack suit has been abandoned for cutting reasons). We have, on the one hand, Roger Stone ( this charming person ) who uses Ivy emblems to give himself a sort of Republican legitimacy (example of the madras jacket) and Robert Mueller, notorious opponent of Donald Trump and of Roger Stone as a result, which is part of a tradition in all discretion.
We can also note George Bush Sr, described by Castro as a "fascist in a capitalist costume".
G. Bruce Boyer also cites Tucker Carlson, whose intrinsic motivations he doubts by expressing a lack of authenticity, as if he were trying too hard to stick to this style.
Nowadays, American presidents dress at Oxxford and do everything to have the smoothest image possible so that every American can identify with him.
American tailoring today
Tom Browne
Thom Browne Eyewear Campaign 2014
The designer delivers his interpretation of American tailoring since 2001. He reworks silhouettes, to put it mildly. We would rather say that he unabashedly bulldozes the proportions, he prunes, he cuts with his designer scissors and defaces conformism, to the point of offering an interpretation that is more boy than man, more schoolboy than Madison Avenue.
The objective is precisely to attract customers who have never worn a costume. And it works pretty well. Well, you have to be able to carry around all the time with a minimum minimum wage on your shoulders. It's not exactly what you would call accessible fashion. In every sense of the term.
In fact, it elevates the Old Money look to high fashion. However, it retains:
- Buttons 2 and a half
- Grey color
- Medium tailored lapel
- Pants without cuffed pleats
For the rest, the cut has nothing to do with it (ultra short and slim jacket) and a little more padding on the shoulders.
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren Fall/Winter 2011 collection. A tweed sack suit. Typical.
When G. Bruce Boyer was asked in an interview if Ralph Lauren had somehow saved the Ivy League Look, he responded:
If I had to bet money on it, I probably would, yes. By the 1970s, you could no longer get your hands on the clothes once sold in old campus stores unless you went to Cable Car Clothiers or The Andover Shop. This is one of the reasons why I would give this credit to Ralph Lauren. Because he stuck to it when everyone else was changing course. Ralph was the first in years to make his sports jackets with real Harris Tweed. He helped menswear more than anyone.
What must be said is that in 1967, the student revolutions in California and around the world signaled the end of the sack suit and the Ivy League style.
Brooks Brothers
More Italian you die...
After having been the instigator of this American fashion movement since 1900, Brooks Brothers was bought in 2001 by Luxottica (Ray Ban, Arnette, etc.), an Italian group whose main sector of activity is eyewear. It must also be said that Thom Browne directs the Black Fleece collection.
Under the leadership of the Italian group, BB has structured itself into several ranges, a bit like Ralph Lauren. There are therefore, in these ranges, products on which they save more and which are less interesting to purchase: pay particular attention to the places of manufacture. A very small part of the collections is made in the United States. But this remains generally very acceptable, especially in sales.
Communication hasn't changed that much, however: it still plays on the myth of the Ivy League, while trying to cast as wide a net as possible. It's a shame of course for the purists and at the same time it allows us to democratize American tailoring a little (although slightly diverted from the original codes).
However, we still find sack suits on the Japanese eshop, which has become more Ivy than the American one.
But, what Josh Peskowitz (hyperactive entrepreneur from the wonderful world of #menswear) tells us in an article in Monocle magazine, and which explains Brooks Brothers' development strategy particularly well, is that the new generations of Americans want Italian made :
Although the major Italian brands are very well established in the American market, there is more interest in smaller Italian tailors. The way men dress in America is slowly drifting away from our idea of Americana and tending to return to a focus on tailoring and the use of it in casual contexts - something Italians do the best. The idea of dressing well is becoming more and more important. Their fathers didn't care, but their grandparents did.
A little nod to the Italian influence on Americans in "The Talented Mr Ripley" (1999).
The final word...
Each tailoring school always thinks it is the best compromise, the magnificent in-between that no one had ever thought of.
However, this was not the vocation of Brooks Brothers in creating the No. 1 Sack Suit . It was more of a mercantile bias than an aesthetic one, playing on a gloomy context which called for a profound change in the mode of consumption of a popular product: the costume.
What I particularly like about American tailoring is that it conveys the idea that suits can also be comfortable. Generally speaking, the United States is the home of cool and relaxed and, one way or another, they have managed to convey this even in their tailoring.
If I do not particularly advise you to try the sack suit , I will however have a lot to advise you in the next part of this America Saga ("be careful of the shakes!") which will study in detail the Ivy League Look including the sack follows is only a preliminary element.
Come on, I'll treat myself to a terrace this evening and tomorrow I'll work on it!
