Ivy beyond old-money
The elite lifestyle of the upper-crust that became the prototype for generations of creative and individualistic energies
Kensuke Ishizu’s heavily staged campaign for his brand VAN Jacket is a documentation of beautiful, mid-century white boys travelling from lectures to sports practices in their effortlessly stylish attires. (Photo: Teruyoshi Hayashida)
The Fall 2023 men’s runway witnessed Japanese artistic director, Nigo, instilling his own identity in Paris maison Kenzo’s mod-inspired notch lapel blazer, chicly intertwined with Japanese sashiko embroidery and US workwear. The week before, all eyes were on New York designer Thom Browne’s preppy experiments with balloon-shaped cable-knitted sweaters and comically rectangular twill three-pieces as the brand won a copyright lawsuit pertaining to their striped motif similar to that of Adidas. Brands like Kenzo and Thom Browne are distinctly different, but they share a root with a specific style. Indeed, button-down shirts and blazers, arguably, are merely wardrobe staples of the dominant culture. But they are part of a clothing revolution that lasted a century and is still influencing how we dress today.
Ivy style gained its name after students living on Ivy campuses in the 1920s mix-matched sportswear with classic menswear silhouettes through effortless and spontaneous styling as they travel to and from lectures and practices – think sports jacket with cut-off khaki shorts and tennis sweaters layered with blazers and shirts untucked. They transformed what was known as the uniform of the democratic republic and injected a subtly rebellious twist.
The question is, why would people want to dress like old-money WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants) from the last century? The simple answer is - they don’t. The Beat Generation adopted Ivy with a more dishevelled look to protest materialism. Black Americans adopted Ivy not to look White but jazzily improvised it to claim it their own way. Women adopted it not to look like men but embraced a revolutionary comfort in womenswear. “And many of the trends such as hippies and punk were intentional rejections of Ivy League style,” says W. David Marx, cultural historian of American fashion, “fashion is always an ecosystem, and while these designers are not taking direct influence from Ivy, their place in the market is always related to the historical circumstances before them.”
Beat Generation poet Amiri Bakara’s iconic bookish but dishevelled Beat look with garments are essentially Ivy. (Left, Photo: Craig Herndon/Washington Post)
Before the release of the Brooks Brothers women’s pink button-down that made it to the cover of August 1949 Vogue Issue, women wore the smallest sizes the brand offered. (Middle, Photo: Vogue Archive)
Miles Davis on tour in West Germany, 1959 .(Right, Photo: Michael Ochs Archives)
The omnipresence of Ivy may not always be addressed explicitly, but the transformation of the Ivy archetype into a new narrative is a process still seen today. Off fashion runways, there are communities still devoted to the non-conformist practice with the conformist uniform.
Art Comes First is a fashion collective founded by tailors Sam Lambert and Shaka Maidoh. Their brand Avec Ces Frères playfully melds sartorial excellence and subcultural craftsmanship. Their Surf Afrika collection, for example, reimagined Senegalese surf culture with Ivy staples like trench coats and varsity jackets. “We did a collection called Uniform, and the idea of a uniform is not to try and put everyone into one,” said Shaka Maidoh, “It's just to put everyone in a uniform to express themselves differently. Once you can be individualistic in the uniform, you are a leader.”
Paradoxically, conformity and nonconformity are simultaneously in the blood of Ivy. American apparel brand Brook Brothers standardised patterns, outsourced labours, and wholesaled their products which eventually democratised the menswear silhouette by offering what all Americans in the 19th century desired most – affordable quality clothes and conformity. Ivy students ended the latter not by wearing different clothes, but by reinventing them with a sense of identity.
“We are natural nonconformists [and] we also come from a culture where you have to be respectful of traditions. You have to learn the rules before breaking the rules,” said Sam Lambert, “at the end of the day, it's about bringing something from the past to the present so it can last into the future.” Indeed, you have to master the music before you can jazz. Quite literally, Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet embodied Ivy with an elegantly slouchy attitude and redefined what was traditionally reserved for elite white men into a new universal definition of coolness as they toured around America and Europe.
On the opposite side of the globe, WWII veteran-turned-businessman, Kensuke Ishizu, launched his campaign for his brand VAN Jacket. Take Ivy is a film and photo book distillation of his grand tour around Ivy campuses that, though heavily staged, documented not only the clothes but also a detailed view of Ivy culture. The propaganda singlehandedly indoctrinated Japanese youth with the allure of Ivy and enlightened a society that saw western influences and anything other than a uniform as vile. “Ivy garments are the underlying backbone of Japanese style,” explained W. David Marx, “Ivy was the first true youth fashion casual trend in Japan, and everything grew out of that starting point.” Ishizu employed the power of media and published strict styling and purchasing guides, but as Japanese youths learned the basics, they naturally started to break the rules exactly as the Jazz musicians once did.
A 1964 spread of Kensuke Ishizu’s Men’s Club magazine that offered Ivy styling guides. (Photo: Men’s Club)
Ivy is so significant as a starting point of all modern trends, yet so understated for it has never been categorised as a specific trend. It originated from a conformist practice but all iterations of Ivy are escapisms from conformism. “Our tailoring is inspired by 1950s-70s Black Americans, but also African households,” said Lambert, “when I met Shaka, I found out his father [and I] had a similar look. I wasn't aware that these fathers wore pullovers with front-pleated trousers. It was more than coincidence that we are telling the same story our African parents did, but without knowing.”
Maidoh added, “My dad was a sartor and he relied heavily on the tailor to express and represent himself and the family.” This sense of honour that accompanies grooming was reinterpreted by 1960s African youths as “photographers like Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta did street photography and frequented nightclubs, where youths illustrated their latest styles,” explained Lambert, “culturally we've been trained to look apart all the time because there will [always] be a documentation of your attire.”
Sam Lambert (Left) and Shaka Maidoh (Right) of Art Comes First. (Left, Photo: Youngjun Koo)
A dandy in Bamako, Mali photographed by Malian photographer Seydou Keïta, c.1950. (Middle, Photo: Seydou Keïta)
Youth dancing in a Bamako club in 1965. (Right, Photo: Malick Sidibé/Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain)
Youths had transcended location and time to collectively individualise their parents’ wardrobe with an Ivy energy. Bear in mind that Ivy is not a specific style, but a mindset to explore individuality by learning a prototype. Ivy is also a western point of view. Contemporary menswear diffused from Europe and democratised in America but it's a global phenomenon that continues to rewrite the boundaries of the same Oxford button-down shirts and Bermuda shorts that don’t necessarily share a connection with predecessors on Ivy campuses.
“For me it's purely cultural appreciation, once you start travelling, meeting people, finding similarities, it's like learning a new language,” said Lambert, a “Black Gypsy” that practises “sartorial alchemy” to learn subcultural crafts around the world to create new versions of self-expressionism. “The only way of living in the future is actually by learning all the cultures because you only know about the future if you know your past.”
