Style Highlight: Prep/Ivy - Topic of the day 12/10/23
Is this your style or your style at times? How do you feel about this style? Inspo pics would be greatly appreciated too.
34 Replies
Paraphrasing Avery Trufelman, you really can’t escape it. Yeah, I wear button down shirts. And cotton pants.
Oh boy my time to shine.
What is there to say that hasn’t been said already? Ivy/ prep is my go to pretty much everyday. As a college student it makes for an amazing capsule wardrobe that can serve me year round, from 115 degree summers to bitterly cold winters. I don’t own many clothes, but everything goes together under one language of American Ivy. This makes it easy to wear every shirt with every jacket, every sweater with every pair of pants etc. An Ivy wardrobe leaves lot of room for creative expression and colorful outfits whilst not having to buy a ton of clothes.
What originally drew me to Ivy was my family. My grandfather was a Columbia university professor in the 60s, and my mom grew up in NYC, attending Columbia in the 80s. When looking at old family photos, Ivy is everywhere. In a sense, the style feels like coming home.
The fall wardrobe (some sweaters and shirts not pictured)
Ivy's a pretty unexplored style for me, I think I'd like to try gravitating toward it in the next year and experiment. And some of y'all are putting out amazing inspo for it in #waywt
As BanCars mentioned, Avery Trufelman has really said everything there is to say about this on her Articles of Interest podcast, which is great. Check that 10 episode series out for a really deep look into the history of Ivy and Prep.
Prep has had a huge influence on my fashion journey. One of my favorite styles, but I'm mostly interested these days in its intersection with streetwear. ALD is one of the brands that has got a chokehold on me in large part because of how well they do this intersection.
I love the barbour jacket in the 9th picutre
For me, I came to the US at 17 and had massive self esteem issues. Part of how I worked on it was by trying to be the best dressed in the room, and to me that was the Ivy style. It doesn't help that the first store I worked at in the US was Banana republic
Lol fellow BR worker checking in
it's been interesting trying to branch out from both Ivy and BR in general (and very hard too)
I think it can sometimes be difficult for me because I currently have no interest in having two separate styles. I'm very deliberate with my purchases and want everything to go together. Once grad school is completed I think I'll have more time and money to explore other ideas more.
That's super fair, I'm trying to have both a capsule wardrobe and like an ivy but also a more relaxed fit going on at times
I'd disagree with this. Ivy/Prep has influenced so many different styles that I think its one of the easier styles to branch out from. Workwear and streetwear are both directly adjacent styles to Ivy/Prep that are easy to integrate with an Ivy wardrobe.
I do own fatigues and a denim jacket so I have definitely dipped into workwear. Streetwear, personally not for me at all but if that's your thing more power to you. The obsession with trends and higher likelihood of not using natural textiles has always turned me off of streetwear (and this is coming from someone who used to work at Vans).
Prep/Ivy has been the most alluring style to me as I begin my style journey post-college due to its prominence in a lot of old Hollywood movies and — even more importantly for me — it often seems to be full of color which I try to prioritize; perhaps this will lead to my downfall one day as this means I’m more drawn to Brooks Brothers fun shirts (and anything else in that vein) than the more “essential” plain white or blue OCBDs but I’m sure colorblocked clown outfits let everyone know I take myself very seriously.
On a more historical note, before finding this discord I browsed a few of the fashion subreddits, including r/NavyBlazer, and could usually see some jokes about coastal elitism or being able to trace your family to the Mayflower which I found funny because on my mother’s side my family can be traced to Cotton and Increase Mather who were ministers and an early president of Harvard respectively. Unfortunately for me, this was during the Salem Witch Trials and they were unrepentant in their role during that horror which as far as I’ve been able to tell from looking into my family after that moment in history and trying to find out why we didn’t remain Harvard legacy babies who could coast through life on a C-grade average for generations or at least own a boat until the eventual dialectical collapse of capitalism’s contradictions forced them to move at some point to the midwest and become nameless farmers. So I like to joke that trying to dress in this style is getting back to my family’s elitist and colonial roots (as someone’s whose idea of fun is reading critical theory), but actually it’s because Rushmore is my favorite Wes Anderson movie and because I saw Paul Newman in a striped OCBD in Harper and realized I literally need to be him.
Definitely second the idea that prep/ ivy is appealing due to how colorful and fun it is. Also great to see Risky Business in here, great inspo in that film!
If I could have a wardrobe full of every fit Tom Cruise has in that movie I would, but for now I have to settle with it having influenced me to get a pair of prescription Wayfarers lol
I hadn't considered it interesting before this year but this summer/fall I've really gotten into Ivy
I really enjoy it, only issue is some stuff is really hard to find here in Europe unless you can spend a lot of money on really expensive stuff
Ivy is not for me at all but it's hard to be into fashion and not see references to it everywhere, maybe the most influential style
Ivy is cool because it’s an easy way to look rich, smart, and subversive all at once
interesting, what do you think is subversive about ivy? i really would've said the opposite.
I actually love the idea of ivy being subversive. Like I certainly have privilege but I like passing for someone who could belong to a country club even though I look down upon a lot of the classic ideals that many associate with ivy/prep style. Plus I think you can have a lil fun with it - subtly breaking "rules" here and there associated with what is and isn't ivy or prep.
Yeah idk saying ivy isn’t subversive at all is kinda a big claim lol
i'm interested in thoughts as to why it's subversive
It's subversive depending on who wears it
Not sure its inherently subversive but it CAN be subversive because its so universal / relatively obtainable
As a brown person who certainly doesn’t belong in the “country club” so to speak, it feels pretty subversive when I wear it. Additionally, it has a long history of being used by marginalized communities as a sort of “fuck you” to the privileged elite
So I don’t think it’s inherently subversive, but it can be quite easily depending on who/how you wear it
I think it’s also important to recognize how casual it was back in the 60s
ah of course! thanks for the clarification, i can understand that
Yeah I was being very succinct initially for no reason besides laziness
I mean the history of the style has all these elements too - we just think of it as being WASPy because of present day cultural connotations but its gone through so many different iterations that were subversive to those very ideas
Basically exactly what upsetti said
I like the bear
I would really love a Polo Bear sweater but no way I'm spending as much as they cost even used..
The strat is just to copy the bears fit
man I need a blazer
i love ivy
i heard that it helps that im a POC so i dont look like a college republican
and honestly thats true
i know a fewpeople who have some apprehensions about ivy but for me its easy to just put on