Take Ivy

I know something is gold (gold, Jerry, gold!) when two or more friends e-mail me a link about it just for kicks.

This time, it's about the NYT Style Section article "The All-American Back From Japan" by David Colman, another well-written piece on the burgeoning Ivy-League prep look, as Fay referenced earlier in yet another NYT article. The point of interest in this article is how the All-American look is, like most American things, derivated and perpetuated by non-Americans who want a piece of the American pie. (It does look so delicious, doesn't it? Especially the mile-high apple pie at Lou's Bakery in Hanover, NH.) I know you can read the article yourself so I won't deluge you with exerpts, but I do think the quotability of an article is an indication of its readability and interest, so here's the drift, as quoted:

"Take Ivy" is a collection of photographs taken in 1965 by Teruyoshi Hayashida on Eastern college campuses ... as 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."

“It’s funny — this authentic Americana, people in the States didn’t care about it at all,” Mr. Suzuki said. “But I would take it back [to Japan], and everybody would say, ‘Wow, this is really great, what is this?’ Now it’s different. People here like it now.”

American designer Thom Browne continues: “It’s amazing,” he said. “The Japanese get the whole perfect American thing better than Americans. They understand that it’s an identifiable style around the world, this American look. We think we appreciate it, but we really don’t, not like they do.”

But that’s changing. Not long ago, men scoffed at dress shorts, let alone wore them to work. Now, they are a summer norm, along with seersucker suits, ribbon belts and horn-rimmed glasses. While some men still prefer it low-key — plain boat shoes, a faded Lacoste shirt with jeans or a khaki suit with a madras tie — even full-on Japanese prep — blue blazer, button-down, bermudas, loafers — can look good if you have the attitude to carry it off.

André Benjamin, a k a André 3000, the designer of the bright Ivy-inspired Benjamin Bixby line (perhaps the only celebrity line with a truly fresh viewpoint), comments:

“Like a lot of things, the myth is greater than the actual thing. The WASPy lifestyle, with the parents and traditions, it looks great, but appreciating it from the outside brings a whole different perspective. Ralph didn’t come from it, either. It’s all about having your own twist.”

To Mr. Benjamin, the most appealing part of the old prep look was not its WASPiness but its suggestion of an easy, well-dressed freedom from anxiety, the same entitled naïveté of Oliver Barrett IV, the WASPy Romeo of “Love Story.”

“This golden age of Ivy League style we’re talking about — the blue blazers, the chinos, the sweatshirts, the tweed jackets — what I like is that it’s a look without looking like you thought about it. It looks like you care, but you don’t care.”

Of course, as one of the world’s best and most colorfully dressed men, Mr. Benjamin cares deeply, and it shows in his clothes, as it does in all the new prep gear. And so what if it does? It may not be true of love, but as any boarding-school student can tell you, preppy means never having to say you’re sorry.

Oh lordy. That's a good one, David Colman. Well done. The best part, though, are the scans from the book that have cropped up on the internet. I can't fit them all here, but there are a HUGE amount from Dartmouth. And MANY of the photos look extremely timely. They're also just beautiful photos. I wish I were back at school so I could print them out in color at Thayer Engineering and then laminate them at ORL, haha. I want these on my wall.