Merging Incommensurate Worlds: Amekaji, Ivy, and Ketsugo Style

Contemporary Amekaji style includes denim and leather, boots, hats, and a whole lotta’ replica love that reaches back to 19^th century cowboys and takes in stride 20^th century styles from WWII, Korea, and even Vietnam eras.  And then there is Ivy, somewhere.  Let's think about that.

Most American work wear brands are not as concerned, I think, with making statements of provenance.  The Carhartts of the world are tying value to practical contemporary needs, no matter how they might market now into other fashion worlds.

On the other side of the Amekaji vintage and work wear equation is Ivy, which has its own strange stories to tell.  There are only stalwarts left in America, like J. Press, Andover, and O’Connells’ and I’ve yet to find current Japaense brands as dedicated to Ivy.  But of course J.Press is now owned by a Japanese company and keeps faith with the Ivy stalwart even as Brooks Brothers continues to stumble after having so plainly lost the plot.


Current Japanese Amekaji, at least from my oceans apart and cultures away perspective, appears dominated by work wear traditions rather than Ivy styles,  though both sustain a dedicated clientele.   Just how much Japanese Amekaji makers want to sell their work abroad remains, I think, an uncapped, still open connection that may take another decade to complete.

Of course, no one has written more authoritatively about “how Japan saved American style” than W. David Marx and anyone into all of these clothes will gather vital historical understanding and an entirely new perspective by taking up his work.  

It seems to me that Ivy and work wear vintage, which includes moto styles, militaria, and nods to the American west, don’t much mix and match in Japan---anymore than they ever have in the States.   And that’s where I’d like to make a few further comments however anecdotal and driven by personal histories.

When my father graduated high school in Jersey City in 1924 he was determined, I think, to work his way out of work wear.  My grandfather, a ship builder from the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, came to the States to do as much, to live The Dream, to “move up” in the world---and he came close to realizing his shameless white-collar aspirations.  The Census of 1910 lists my grandfather as an uneducated journeyman carpenter with six children.  But he would make his move and become a supervisor, Chief Ship in the Manhattan wartime shipyards.

 

My father, the second son, worked hard enough to create a professional life in architecture despite the fact that he never graduated college.  Attending a year or two at Columbia and then night school classes in Jersey, he passed the boards as a Registered Architect in 1931.   He gained his entrée through apprenticeship that didn’t require at that time a completed college degree.  But he always liked to think of himself as Ivy and he would call himself a Columbia man.   He never dissimulated, never claimed he’d completed the degree or belonged to this or that club or fraternity.   He was proud that he’d made his way from working-class worlds to his profession---and my being born in the Jersey ‘burbs in the late 1950s represented at least some his feelings of success.

 

When my brother and I started to wear jeans and boots and leathers in the ‘60s, my father naturally scoffed at our rebellion but also registered our tastes as something closer to a regression, social step backwards.  He’d made a point of turning that blue collar to white; his was an expression of self-identity that dressed to assert his own ascension.  He never wanted to look back  but neither did he feel any need to look down  on others, say my blue-collar uncles.  His gaze was straight ahead, forward, and up.

 

So when my Pop took that Ivy look of the 1920s and naturally evolved it into a Madmen ‘50s, he was telling us that he never had to wear denim or a work shirt again.   His was a self-transformation, not a rebellion; his change took fate and made it into a new destiny.  Clothes represented to the world that his self-making was not to be trifled with, that he was complete.  He was content with his new self-made world.

 

Before his fortunes declined in the late ‘70s I remember how how my dad delighted in having bespoke dress shirts and MTO shoes delivered to the house by a fella carrying neat packages wearing white gloves and a driver's hat.  I’d later buy him a new blue blazer, khaki dress pants, and an OCBD to wear with that Harvard tie from JPress his son gave him.

 

My fatherly rebellion followed the EveryBoy of the ‘60s dream to be The Beatles and when that sadly broke up, we moved on to Led Zeppelin and Bowie to rage with even greater puerile discontent.

And then it all seemed suddenly to end.  The country and my generation in particular forget Vietnam’s harshest, honest lessons and decided instead for the foolish nostalgia of ‘80s, looking back instead of forward.  The world went "conservative" and I wanted nothing to do with that.  But there was something about making a case for change and loving the best of those traditional styles.

It was ’79 when I went deep into Ivy.  I was conflicted because I wanted to “fit in” just enough, that was going to be my own ticket to live a dream.  I imagined a life reading the classics, studying Asian languages, teaching, and left to pursue curiosities.  To get there I only needed the poets and a map.  I’d discovered adventurers, wanderers, intellectuals---Fermor, Hedin, Hesse, Bly---who’d seen the world and returned to quieter lives of contemplation and writing.  I thought I could retreat into a library, a life of imagination, even transcend my past.  

 

For the longest time I didn’t understand that my father’s transformation couldn’t disguise my Jersey immigrant roots.   The blue-bloods for whom Ivy was a birthright weren’t ever going to welcome me into their clubs.  I was in their classes but not never of their class: this they made clear without ever having to say it.  

I assumed a fair bit of the affectation from those years: the OCBDs, knits and bow ties, even the tweeds and a sometimes pipe.  Denied admission to their class, I left realizing their company wasn’t what I’d come for---though I actually did like at least some of their style.  I wanted license to keep dreaming and dress however I damned pleased.

 

When I came into my profession I had another evolution, moving from Ivy to a more tailored elegance.  I was the professor barely older than my graduate students, more Armani than Ivy. It was the ‘90s.  It took a long time to notice that my Weekend Self was again looking more like that rock n’ roller from Jersey: denim, leather, and boots for long days alone on the bike.

 

I look around now on the social media, in the historical magazines documenting Japanese Amekaji, and while I see  both  Ivy and vintage work wear styles, I rarely see a blended flex.  These style worlds still appear to form a disconnect, each living in its own world.  While the vintage Amekaji puts militaria, work wear, and western in one category, Ivy appears still to reside in another column altogether.

For me it’s been important to make a connection, to put together these worlds even if they do not.  That is my style.

 

In certain philosophical schools of Japanese Buddhism---a subject with which I have at least some professional familiarity---the notion of ketsugo (結合) suggests a union but refers to a process of combining, conjoining, making something through a process of connection.  Things can unite into a whole, something coherent and articulated but can still abide the suggestion of juxtaposition. Thus, with the union of ketsugo can also come heichi (併置), a placing side by side.  

 

For me this means I’m going to take the entirety of Amekaji and find a way to blend work wear into Ivy.  Or is it the other way around?  There may be few other references for this ketsugo and heichi style but when I wear denim and leather I usually chose an OCBD and, on a school day, a knit tie.  When I wear engineer boots and denim, I find a way to wear some wool or tweed.

 

Like all of us I’m still just trying to figure out how to live with myself.  That’s no small task when you realize your harmony only arrives when juxtaposition and combination is how you were made. 

 

I’ve realized I’m made less by transformations---as my father would have had it--- than I am by juxtaposition, by a side by side that I can no longer deny and no longer need to reconcile.  So when I go to work these days I put my ever-rebellious work wear self, cast in denim and leather, next to a hard-won Ivy that comes through in Oxford shirts and old school ties.  I would like to think I come by these two disparate worlds honestly. If others' don't dig it, I don't think that will stop me.  I live in my clothes as myself---that's just part of getting through the day.

 

I thank the Japanese Amekaji movement for bringing these possibilities into an apotheosis of style even if they don’t often seek ketsugo between them.  For my part, I know that I still have to wear a tie to class to feel whole though my University has no dress codes.  It’s personal for me.  Because it’s all personal.  Down to the denim and the boots too.