Meeting #19: Identifying (Post) Modern Ivy
On Authenticity, streetwear, and finding the boundary lines
I am fairly comfortable stating that we are experiencing another Ivy/ prep revival, of some sort. The rails in vintage stores dedicated to Polo button-downs suggest as such. The manner in which this revival has manifested, or actually the manners plural, has gotten me thinking about where we lay the boundaries of collegiate fashion. Join me on a journey through Ivy, streetwear, authenticity, and postmodernism, get ready for a dense one, my friends.
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It is generally in my vested interest to have clear definitions for collegiate fashion, such that I might better understand what exactly it is I write about, and what the fine company who attend these meetings care to read about. Unfortunately its not within the nature of culture of any sort to be easily defined. Style, as we are discussing here, is first and foremost immensely personal, it is also subjected to a sort of bleeding at the edges. Take Ivy style, heavy-duty, and the resultant rugged Ivy style between them, we’re always dealing with spectrums. Yet, whilst we are dealing with spectrums we are also dealing with component parts, any one of which can be lifted up from its origin point, and placed into a different style.
As a great example of this, take a look at the recent adoption of a poplin shirt and black tie as a part of New York streetwear, more on that scene later.
Genre, generally speaking, is falling out of fashion as a tool for distinction across media, today I would like to explore some of the ways that Ivy has disintegrated into its component parts and drifted its way into the twenty-twenties.
Part One: Concurrent modern Ivies
We are not experiencing a prep revival, not a single one, rather I would posit that there are a great many developments on classic American dress happening as we speak, in different places, in different ways. This is important to understand if we are to continue into the depths of authenticity, there is not one single timeline to which one can refer and decide whether a given engagement with a culture is authentic.
Here we start thinking in terms of the postmodern, the poststructuralist in particular. Where perhaps sixty years ago we could quite easily identify Ivy style as the clothes worn by Ivy League students, we cannot do the same today. Now we have a set of component parts and simultaneous pedigrees from which engagements with the style could be drawing from. Further, as much as individuals online might try, there are no central gatekeepers for this stuff anymore, no individuals who, if they were to change something about their dress, it would impact the definition of the style as a whole, we are simply past the point of that happening.
The idea of what is an authentic engagement with collegiate fashion immediately calls into question how we define authenticity. Returning to the postmodern, we are at a point where we think of authenticity as entirely subjective.
The result of simultaneous pedigrees and subjective authenticity is that, when I refer to a prep/ivy/collegiate revival, I am actually alluding to several concurrent developments in the style. Let’s take a brief look at some that I’ve identified.
The heritage Ivy revival
The most explicitly collegiate first, this is an engagement with Ivy as it existed in bygone eras, as facilitated by increased access to information, references, and apparel through late-stage centralised internet usage.
That last bit makes it a little different to the same sort of revival that we saw about ten years ago. We don’t really use forums anymore, we’re generally looking towards influencers to give centralised information as opposed to the relative anarchy of internet usage up until the mid twenty-tens.
We’re. looking here at cuts replicating looks of old, focus on use of genuine vintage articles, often entirely, or using very high quality heritage makers. For some good examples please refer to this previous meeting.
We might even refer to this as the most “authentic” revival, if we take authentic to mean most in keeping with tradition. Yet, if we consider the somewhat cosplay nature of this particular movement one might also posit it as fundamentally inauthentic, the performance of a wholly separate identity to the wearer.
“Old money”
We tend not to be very kind to “old money” as a genre/aesthetic. I will admit it is not without just cause. The outfits tend not to be too inspiring, for any given collegiate Americana obsessive.
What is of note though is the crossover in brand choice, and iconography. There is, innately, common themes between that which we see to be “old money” and that which we perceive as “Ivy League”, as a result of the longstanding relationship between wealth and prohibitive educational establishments. Particularly the visual language of Polo and J. Crew. Tennis matches, yacht clubs, country estates.
Ivy meets streetwear
Meanwhile, there are elements of prep and Ivy sneaking into streetwear. The most obvious being the widespread adoption of loafers, especially as footwear is moving to be slimmer too. I’ve also seen a lot of rugby shirts, shaggy-dog knits (coming in to replace mohair), and casual shirting.
It’s hard to ignore the influence that Aime Leon Dore has had in relation to these adoptions. They sit as a clear cornerstone of this revival, I’d say alongside Blackstock and Weber. These new-school hype-brands (that isn’t meant to be derogatory I should add), show a lot of determination to be timeless, relying on heritage silhouettes and garments is a nice way to do so
Take a look at some of these looks, the Ivy infusion is clear. Particularly of note is the style of content maker Drew Joiner, who explicitly states efforts to infuse Ivy into his looks.
What I also find interesting is that these infusions seem to descend from all different Ivy pedigrees, particularly black and French Ivy. Keep an eye out for other developments in this direction, my money is on Bean boots come autumn. I’m seeing a sort of coming together of retro and gorpcore as core twenty-twenties trends to result in a boom for old-school outdoors looks.
Part Two: Is That Ivy?
A little game now, I have three looks that I put together which are debatably ivy, I wanted to take a look at why that is the case.
Look 1:
This should be an ivy look, by almost all metrics: khakis, tweed, Oxford, ballcap. Yet, there’s something about untucking the shirt, and the yankees cap, that positions it somewhere in between a heritage look and something more modern. I was looking to emphasise the bagginess of these pieces, lean into a nineties sort of thing.
Somewhat esoteric, but I look at this outfit and feel as though I am representing a modern Ivy interpretation.
Look 2:
Again, given the component parts this ought to be perceived as an Ivy look, fifties inspired denim, Oxford, tie, varsity jacket. Here though I had my mind on current streetwear silhouettes, cropped jackets with wide pants especially, and pairing with the beret, ideally for this look it would have been a Kangol example
.If you lose the jacket and the hat, you’re left with pretty much business casual attire, besides the rips in the jeans.
This feels like modern Ivy, as a gut instinct.
Look 3:
Different approach here, question is whether going for wide leg cords adds enough of a collegiate infusion to an otherwise militaria forward look for it to sit in this discussion. Maybe it too needs the Oxford to get that immediate recognition.
Conclusions
Strap yourselves in folks, cause there’s a moral to this story. Ultimately its consensus which defines what is and what isn't authentic, of course it is, but this should a be a point of note, that no single individual arguably is equipped to communicate that consensus. With centralised modes of information diffusion being out primary reference points, I think we are inclined to expect the information itself to come from centralised perspectives as well, but its my opinion that we should be looking at peer to peer stuff too.
My other point, its a very good thing that collegiate fashion is finding its way into streetwear, that there are new expressions of this time-tested style that still can be found. Timelessness is not always about being unchangingly evergreen, rather its about adaptation. Finding ways to modernise looks is a favourite practice of mine.
Collegiate fashion is here to stay, just perhaps not in the way you know it.