Ivycise Your Life
Collegiate clothing for everyday pursuits
Ivy style developed to meet the requirements of a life filled with pursuits other than putting clothes on.
As I’ve built up a collegiate wardrobe, I’ve managed to lend a certain amount of Ivy flair to the specialised stuff I wear to do specific things. Today I want to explore the process of aestheticising the everyday.
Welcome to The Prep Club, check last week’s issue of THE RADAR (our fortnightly magazine) here, for thoughts on loafers, branding, anoraks, and more. Also make use of The Directory, new this week:
Workers K&TH - Japanese label producing a mix of replica workwear, sportswear, and Ivy shirting, the standard fare but all done to an excellent level of detail. Highlights include six-button OCBDs and after-hood sweatshirts.
Atkinsons Ties - The quintessential Irish Poplin tie makers, and available for very reasonable prices both new and secondhand.
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Pretentiousness, or, why bother?
Though we’ve previously established that pretentiousness ought not to frighten the well dressed, I’d like to make the case that there is an actual practical reason to aestheticising your specialised garms.
The idea of an isolated wardrobe for a specific activity is a fairly recent development, and one that I think is quite unhelpful. Putting together a collection that’s ready for anything, but also fits into the clothes you just like to wear, means you can own less. Further, though I tend to avoid discussing authenticity (it’s more ephemeral than most discourses treat it and thus isn’t very helpful), I do find there’s a certain level of legit lent to your garms if you actually use them for their intended purpose, AND you quite possibly spend more time dressing for specific activities that you do just putting that shit on. Anyone can fix up, I think a good measure of fashion sense is whether you can get a fit off in any context.
With that case made, here are some collegiate threads for some common settings.
For the office
We’re starting easy, office dress standards seem to be getting more and more casual by the minute, of course this is industry dependent but in most cases I think an Ivy wardrobe is damned well suited to modern white collar work. That’s not really a surprise though, wow! a slightly more casual take on tailoring is suited to a more casual office. Stick on an OCBD, some chinos and a sport coat and call it a day.
We can have a bit of fun with this though, the corporate uniform these days tends not be a suit and tie but a combination of open collar dress shirts, chinos, quarter zips, and techy fleece vests, the finance bro look that you know and hate. Let’s have a go at ivycising that mess.
We’ll swap the poplin dress shirt for a pinpoint Oxford, still plenty formal, especially as we’ll be sticking to solid colours, but with more texture, and better suited to being worn open at the collar. Chinos can go relatively undisturbed, though as a club member you definitely have better chinos. Our quarter zip can be swapped for a brushed shetland crew neck or a knit longsleeve polo/ eton collar sweater, and out Patagonia tech fleece can be traded for deep pile or something like the Drake’s boucle vest. Finally, thinking footwear, a college loafer or boat shoe is still too casual, I think something like a high-walled split toe loafer (like the Weston 180) or an apron derby is a nice pick.
Looking at the result, I’d probably still opt for a sport-coat over the vest, nevertheless I consider this a worthwhile exploration. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the finance bro uniform, it’s just executed very poorly.
For the gym
Ivy has such a rich canon of sportswear, it feels almost like sacrilege to pull up for a workout in lycra. Disclaimer here, I’m basing this on the sort of workout I do, which involves picking stuff up and putting it down again and not a whole lot of running. There’s going to be a line when physical activity is involved where the retro garms no longer cut it, I trust that you can spot that line.
So, we’re ditching the Gymshark and reaching for retro sweats. French Terry (a.k.a. loopback) is our best friend here, 100% cotton, breathable, absorbent, stretchy, and washable. Champion reverse weave, if you can track down 100% cotton examples, is another good choice with the same benefits. Cotton tubular tees and pique polos will serve well, as will a good old pair of white CVOs or GATs. I think the benefits of stylish gym kit become most apparent when travelling, being able to pack one pair of trainers for both exercise and exploration saves a lot of space, the same goes for sweatshirts.
There’s a good chunk of folks who’ve decided ath-leisure wear is suitable day to day attire, the thing is I don’t totally disagree, I’ll stop short of full tracksuit at the grocery store, but a retro hoodie with chinos, or sweatshorts with an untucked OCBD will do you well, especially whilst travelling.
For the trails
Here we encounter our old friend “rugged ivy”, we’ve talked about it plenty before. As such I’ll be a little more sparing with the details. All I really have to say is you’d be surprised how far old-school hiking kit can take you, and it’ll do it without throwing PFCs into the ecosystem. The same applies here as with the sports kit, there’s a line where you probably need Gore-tex, you can judge that yourself.
I love taking my bean boots out on a walk, same with my Sierra Designs mountain parka, of course there’s a little bit of a sacrifice in practicality, but really not that much, and the bean boots have their upsides too. Beyond that, there’s plenty more to explore, some retro leather hikers from Danner, Diemme, Scarpa, or Fracap; some Patagonia Baggies, a Karakoram parka, you can check a full list of the staples here. All of these are garms that you can take into the city without going full gorp.
Going one step further, those loopback sweatshirts we looked at for the gym ought to do quite nicely here too for all the same reasons. There’s a little challenge here in that 100% cotton loopback sweats are usually quite costly (usually, keep an eye out in next weeks RADAR for some steals). You have to get over the precious factor, the new car period, but it’ll pass. I don’t think you really need a “nice” sweatshirt that goes unperturbed, any context in which sweats are appropriate, it’s also appropriate for them to be well loved.
For the home
You’re probably not intending to be be seen in your home clothes except by your nearest and dearest, so this is really just for self gratification. I think we’d all do well to make like Mr Rogers and reach for a cardigan when we get in after a long day, and since we’re talking Ivy, make it a letterman cardigan. Easy to take on and off, and comfortable without necessitating a total change out of whatever you wore that day. I’m personally not a fan of a total outfit change for an evening in, ivy threads are comfortable enough anyway, and I don’t care for cooking in pyjamas.
I do like a house shoe, I think an unlined suede loafer or a grecian slipper fits in with a collegiate wardrobe in a way that something like a Birkenstock or a Croc doesn’t.
Also, I’d stop short of going for a full smoking jacket, but a vintage Brooks Brothers flannel dressing gown, ideally in tartan, is a luxury you deserve in your life.
For the beach
Remember those Patagonia Baggies we picked up for the trails? They’re your swim shorts now too. I love Baggies for this, usually a bathing suit (a cossie as we’d call it this side of the pond) gets used very infrequently but now you have trail shorts, swim shorts, and a pair to rock with an oxford when it’s properly hot, all in one handy, brightly-coloured, and thigh-revealing package.
A cuban collar madras shirt is a nice move as a beach cover, or terry cloth if you can find one, and it’ll run formal enough with chinos to get you into most coastal establishments later in the day. Boat shoes are an obvious pick to bring along here too.
This is all a bit of fun, but I hope it demonstrates that fashion can and should be symbiotic with the other things you do, and, as a fashion enthusiast, finding ways to incorporate cool clothes into other cool things is more fulfilling than just putting that shit on once a week on a Saturday.
Prep Club adjourned, catch you later.
Ruched Loafers / Branded Garms / The Smock Anorak / Judging Books by the Cover
Hello! Welcome back to THE RADAR, The Prep Clubs’s fortnightly mini-magazine for interesting bits and pieces in the sphere of collegiate threads. You can attend last week’s meeting here, for an explanation as to why you should stop checking fits in the mirror.
This was a fun one! I loved the illustrations too.