A Note about Ivy Style: Blazers, Crests, Colors and the Stories Told

 Two ideas here about Ivy Style.  I have plenty more coming.  Ivy Style is an important part of my narrative.  I love these clothes way more than I liked school.

 

First, I finally listened to the downright wonderful HandCut Radio (RIP) podcast with Rowing Blazer’s Jack Carlson.  Mr Carlson’s history of the blazer and its deep connection to rowing clubs, to traditions and provenance, to what it means to be in a blazer-community (my term, not his) was informative, interesting, spot on.  But there was another thing Carlson noted that caused me to cheer since I had had the same (or nearly) experience.  He talks about going to Ralph Lauren, with whom he has a wonderful relationship.  I would too commend the brand not only for what it has offered to Ivy, Trad, and Preppy but for good taste (sometimes) and quality.  

 

But Carlson noted a blazer with a crest that seemed a little too familiar.  It was a knock-off, variation, ever so slightly different crest from his own or a very familiar rowing club.  To put it less nicely (and not as Carlson did), it was a reasonable attempt to plagiarize and appropriate without the slightest concern.  Carlson noted that Lauren was clearly making a profit on and certainly not sharing the spoils with the club cresters he had so blatantly ripped off.  Then Carlson said the next true thing: who would want to wear the crest of a club that is not your own?  Worse, who would want to wear a blazer with a crest that wasn’t real, meaning just a made up RL crest or something.  It would be sort of cosplay (if I properly understand that word), like wearing a costume.  Is that how you want to dress?  Some how for all the gogotodtaste that RL often represents, something about all of this crest-stuff strikes me as in at-least-questionable taste.

Second, I am a slut for JPress and have been since I shopped in their now-closed Cambridge, Mass shop in the late 70s and 80s.  Yeah, I went to school there, in Cambridge, right around the block from JPress.  It was necessary to study my unusual subject, which is not offered in many other places.  This JPress was where I honed my love of the OCBD, the Shaggy Dog, the Harris Tweed, knit ties, and all that other Ivy style that they helped define.  

 

For this past season I visited JPress on-line and of course toured the Shaggy Dog sweaters again.  I know it’s a tradition to make them in colors that represent the Ivy league schools and I’m pretty sure that they don’t mention which schools go with which colors because they assume we all know (or rather should know) and because they don’t have to pay marketing fee or franchise or whatever those fees are that they would have to pay Yale, Harvard, Princeton, et.al.  Sometimes they come right out and name the school or even the college at Yale---and I would be surprised if JPress could do that without having to give those folks a cut.  That only seems fair, logical, but that too isn’t my point.  So let me land the plane.

My first instinct has always been who would want to wear the school colors who didn’t go to those schools?  I just wouldn’t feel right.  But I can understand how that isn’t a big deal.  I mean these are nice sweaters and the colors are kinda’ cool and Ivy style can be just a style, it doesn’t have to be an endorsement or a bullabulla (much less a Papal seal of approval).  If you like the colors and the sweaters and the style, I say go for t.  In fact, if you are not burdened with having gone to college at one of these places, so much the better---just enjoy the style if you do.

 

But here’s my second point.   Like I said, I attended what JPress calls the “Burgundy University” stripe.  We might call it Crimson, as does the University in question.  My father attended the Light Blue University striped University, and I say Hail Columbia, Queen of the Upper West Side.  I sometimes think about wearing Shaggy Dog Columbia colors----let’s call the dog a dog, okay?---but I. Just. Can’t.  And I could no more wear Yale colors---though I much prefer their navy blues to crimson any day, than I could any other of these schools I did not attend.  It is not out of loyalty to Harvard that would prevent me.  But it would just feel awkward to be wearing any colors that I didn’t somehow “own.”

I don’t think this sense of awkwardness need apply to anyone else.  If you like the colors, go for it.  If none of this would bother you then I think that’s actually a very good thing.

 

But I take this a step further.  I don’t wear the Burgundy University colors either, even though that is my old school.  As Steely Dan put it, “I’m never going back to my old school” and at this point in my life wearing colors or logos or even club associations strikes me as, well, not something I would any longer do.  Like those fellas in the rowing clubs that Carlson talks about who inherit old blazers from previous generations, that’s how I feel about wearing my University colors.  Those times are gone for me.  

 

I still very much dig Ivy style.  It's not the only style I dig.  And I mix up with Ivy because when you know the rules you get to keep them, care about them, not care about, stretch them, or break them as you please. Why?  Because who cares and they are just clothes and it’s your style to do with as you please.  Ivy isn’t about rules or codes.  It’s about sensibilities and choices and stories you want to tell about yourself.  But I do hope that if you like Ivy style, you just go for it the way you like.  For my part, I must make peace with the stories I tell myself.