“Take Ivy” has always been extremely rare in the United States, a treasure of fashion insiders that can fetch more than $1,000 on eBay and in vintage-book stores. But scanned images from the book have been turning up online in recent months. Ricocheting around the network of sartorially obsessed Web sites and blogs (like acontinuouslean.com and thetrad .blogspot.com), it has aroused renewed interest for its apparent prescience of preppy style. (In the United States, the word preppy came into popular use only in 1970, thanks to the best-selling book and top-grossing movie “Love Story”; and the full flowering of preppy style would not arrive until 1980 with the best-selling “Official Preppy Handbook.”)
But “Take Ivy” was not prescient; it was totally timely, having been commissioned by Kensuke Ishizu, who was the founder of Van Jacket, an Ivy Leagueobsessed clothing line that was a sensation among Japanese teenagers and young men in the early 1960s. Mr. Ishizu was a kind of Ralph Lauren avant la lettre.
“You could have called it a Van look,” recalled Daiki Suzuki, the designer and founder of Engineered Garments (channeling vintage workwear) and the designer of the revamped Woolrich Woolen Mills line (channeling 1950s New England). He remembers “Take Ivy” from his childhood in Japan and how the Ivy look, as it is generally called there, became basic in the ’70s and ’80s, as the craze for American things like Levi’s and Red Wing boots accelerated. In 1989, Mr. Suzuki moved to the United States to work for a large Japanese store scouting for new American designers and obscure brands to import, like White’s Boots from Washington, Russell Moccasin from Wisconsin and Duluth Pack backpacks from Minnesota.
I can only laugh at all this.
ill just begin with your probably too young to remember this but...
in the pre-hippie but contemporaneous with mod and the surf look, the ivy league look was self enforced very strictly in south miami elementary school. burlington gold cup socks (or no socks), tan or navy chinos or levi cord jeans and an oxford shirt (preferably gant). bass wejun penny loafers or tassel version and a cantabury leather belt. or you were ridiculed untill you died. the gants were from mississippi but were following the back east ivy league look too. that book nail it for sure. we didnt wear our madras shorts that damn tight though i assure you. and fyi: the beachboys were originally named the pendletones after the wool shirts.
Gant dress shirts were de rigueur for American male students in the early and mid 1960s.[citation needed] The shirts were worn open-collar and without necktie, with the top button open to reveal the roll of the collar, except when the formality of an occasion demanded otherwise. The front of the shirt buttoned along a double-truck hem, a feature that became absolutely requisite for any brand targeted at adolescents and young men. Other manufacturers offered similar product, but only Sero, another premium-priced line, matched the Gant style, differentiating its shirts from the former solely by omission of the distinctive Gant loop at the top of the back pleat, and sometimes dispensing with the double pleat down the center back in favor of single pleats on the back shoulders. Sero was considered to be the only alternative truly equivalent in prestige to Gant in the youth market. All other brands, for whatever reason, clearly identified themselves as knockoffs by failing to precisely conform to the Gant cut. Beginning in the spring of 1964, Gant participated in the Madras craze, offering shirts in both the proprietary Gant cut and other styles. The Gant-cut Madras cloth shirts were the most prized.
I'm 46 years old and a graduate of York Preparatory School in NYC (the Anti-Dalton Gang)....
This whole Preppy Revival thing is some o' the silliest shit I've ever seen.
ok then. i dont thinks its ever left. just remarketed.
Bah.
Were you into the 80's preppy thing Bill?
70's-80's-90's i had to have work clothes so i went pretty regular with the khakis and oxford or pinstripe shirt. and thats what i been wearing to dress up functions ever since. only lately its dickeys brand (k-mart) khakis and not banana republic. i get my oxford shirts from marshals. sos.
J Press
English language reprint on the way.
Taken.
|
- bill 6-18-2009 1:33 pm
I can only laugh at all this.
- Justin (guest) 6-18-2009 5:13 pm [add a comment]
ill just begin with your probably too young to remember this but...
in the pre-hippie but contemporaneous with mod and the surf look, the ivy league look was self enforced very strictly in south miami elementary school. burlington gold cup socks (or no socks), tan or navy chinos or levi cord jeans and an oxford shirt (preferably gant). bass wejun penny loafers or tassel version and a cantabury leather belt. or you were ridiculed untill you died. the gants were from mississippi but were following the back east ivy league look too. that book nail it for sure. we didnt wear our madras shorts that damn tight though i assure you. and fyi: the beachboys were originally named the pendletones after the wool shirts.
- bill 6-18-2009 6:40 pm [add a comment]
Gant dress shirts were de rigueur for American male students in the early and mid 1960s.[citation needed] The shirts were worn open-collar and without necktie, with the top button open to reveal the roll of the collar, except when the formality of an occasion demanded otherwise. The front of the shirt buttoned along a double-truck hem, a feature that became absolutely requisite for any brand targeted at adolescents and young men. Other manufacturers offered similar product, but only Sero, another premium-priced line, matched the Gant style, differentiating its shirts from the former solely by omission of the distinctive Gant loop at the top of the back pleat, and sometimes dispensing with the double pleat down the center back in favor of single pleats on the back shoulders. Sero was considered to be the only alternative truly equivalent in prestige to Gant in the youth market. All other brands, for whatever reason, clearly identified themselves as knockoffs by failing to precisely conform to the Gant cut. Beginning in the spring of 1964, Gant participated in the Madras craze, offering shirts in both the proprietary Gant cut and other styles. The Gant-cut Madras cloth shirts were the most prized.
- bill 6-18-2009 6:49 pm [add a comment]
I'm 46 years old and a graduate of York Preparatory School in NYC (the Anti-Dalton Gang)....
This whole Preppy Revival thing is some o' the silliest shit I've ever seen.
- Justin (guest) 6-18-2009 6:49 pm [add a comment]
ok then. i dont thinks its ever left. just remarketed.
- bill 6-18-2009 6:50 pm [add a comment]
Bah.
- Justin (guest) 6-18-2009 8:59 pm [add a comment]
Were you into the 80's preppy thing Bill?
- steve 6-19-2009 3:18 pm [add a comment]
70's-80's-90's i had to have work clothes so i went pretty regular with the khakis and oxford or pinstripe shirt. and thats what i been wearing to dress up functions ever since. only lately its dickeys brand (k-mart) khakis and not banana republic. i get my oxford shirts from marshals. sos.
- bill 6-19-2009 3:24 pm [add a comment]
J Press
- anonymous (guest) 6-24-2009 9:35 pm [add a comment]
English language reprint on the way.
- alex 3-08-2010 12:43 pm [add a comment]
Taken.
- alex 10-26-2010 7:09 pm [add a comment]