Photo Book: Take Ivy

“Way back when in ’67, I was a dandy Gamma Chi…”

For some reason I found myself listening to Steely Dan yesterday as I (finally) flipped through a copy of the much blogged, much adored, much lauded Take Ivy. The precise jazz-rock served as the perfect soundtrack; reflections on years spent in a small Eastern school as seen through the gaze of West Coast hippies. (While Steely Dan didn’t attend an Ivy League school, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker met at Bard College – a small, ivy-covered liberal arts school that certainly must have some Ivy leanings just by dint of geography.) The once-removed perspective of the Steely Dan songs aligns perfectly with that of the creators of Take Ivy – a group of four Japanese men who visited the eight Ivy League schools in the mid-1960s to track the preppy styling of this exclusive lifestyle. Their perspective is of the outsider looking-in. When it comes to the Ivy League, aren’t almost all of us outsiders looking in?

My friend gifted me a copy of this book this past weekend, not knowing that I already knew about it by reputation. In fact, I kinda ruined the surprise…

“It’s a fashion book, but it’s been out of print for ages. They just started reprinting it. It was originally done in Japan, but people buy them on eBay for thousands…”

“Oh…is it Take Ivy?”

Enter the fallen face of one whose fabulous gift just got guessed. Shame on me. But my own foot-in-mouth did not diminish my delight over the book! It's an essential addition to any American fashion library, and one I definitely appreciate.

I’ve been hearing about Take Ivy for years. My blogger colleagues John “Tintin” Tinseth and Michael Williams - both in possession of original Japanese copies of Take Ivy - have been preaching on the book with inches (maybe feet?) of blog space since about 2008 or before. In fact, I’ve found their devotion a bit fanatical, if not obsessive. (Looking at Tintin’s archives, there are 19 posts tagged “Take Ivy”. Meanwhile, Michael Williams’ twitter page for his blog, A Continuous Lean was, until recently, wallpapered with the orange Take Ivy cover.)

Really? Preppy? Groundbreaking. Let me roll over and go back to sleep. As someone who went to a prep school (albeit a Catholic west coast one,) I know a thing or two about a young man in a navy blue blazer and striped tie. For me, prep has moved way past its original refinement and into an oddly jarring mix of Lily Pulitzer prints, badly-cut suits, sexless shapes, pearls, and sweater sets. Stifled and old-fashioned, it's become a parody of itself - a bad, WASP-y joke whose punchline never changes. Even today one can see men in madras shorts and Oxford shirts on just about every corner of the Marina district in San Francisco at any time of year, and forget about the yacht clubs. It makes me scorn my fellow city-dwellers.

Even when executed correctly (without a Lily Pulitzer explosion), the look has always been a bit safe for me; therein lays its beauty and its boredom.

I do understand the fascination of the Take Ivy team however. Teruyoshi Hayashida, Shosuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kurosu, and Hajime Hasegawa must have been fascinated by the look of the upper-class American university life of almost 50 years ago. Where the British and Irish counterparts of this education system still enforced academic dress (and still do), the American universities had by the mid-century given way to a uniquely casual wardrobe. A mix of suiting, sport clothes, athletic wear, and school colors, the "Ivy Style" was a huge hit in Japan. Students in the Ginza district began to emulate the look, much as they later took up the styles of punks, mods, Teddy Boys, and baby dolls in Omotesando decades later.

I think the beauty of Take Ivy is in its candid photography. It could be considered the world’s first “street style” publication, and the styles it captured are priceless. A tiny bit of old Americana as the country was about to emerge into a very turbulent time. Looking through the images of green grass and ivy-covered buildings, I’m struck by the refinement and easy simplicity of the style. It’s not dandified or stuffy, nor is it self-conscious in any way. It just works. I will agree though that in the pages of Take Ivy it’s fresh, sweet, and inviting. I do wish the authors had come back to the campuses during the autumn and winter months though - the cooler temperatures would have brought out an entirely new collegiate wardrobe to be celebrated.

Long appreciated and forever imitated, the “Ivy Style” keeps coming back again and again as a fashion trend.  The film Love Story romanticized it, while the film Animal House made fun of it. And today we have the boys of Gossip Girl and thousands of blogs devoted to preppy style alone. It’s appeal is in the quiet elegance, the rarified simplicity that speaks of education, exclusivity and old money – this must be what the lovers of “prep” are seeking. If this could always be the case I’d probably love it more too. I certainly love it in the frozen moments of Take Ivy.

Perhaps I ought to resign myself to always be another outsider looking in.

Read more about the latest prep trend in the New York Times.

Comments

[Fletcher]

I believe that the Take Ivy reissue presents a couple of interesting developments. First, as many have already stated, the English translation has greatly furthered the innocence and (dare I say) naivete of the Ivy set in the late 1960s. It is hard to imagine that the world of fraternity softball tournaments and crew practices was surrounded by the growing clouds of Vietnam and various countercultures. I found this juxtaposition touching and quaint. Second, Take Ivy may represent the pinnacle of the current prep trend. To the dismay of some and the delight of others the current fad may have hit its peak (or nadir, depending on how you look at it). When guys in Etnies and beanies are wearing patchwork madras and scores of high schoolers don boat shoes and rope bracelets on a daily basis, the fad has to be running out of puff. Take Ivy and the near-simultaneous release of Birnbach's "True Prep" could be the final dose of exposure that forces prep to jump its own shark. Trads will always have prep and the look will be "timeless" in American circles, but I can't help but think that we have reached the beginning of the end of its current popularity.

[Ms. P&C]

Fletcher - I totally hear you and it makes me a little sad in a way. I think the appeal of "Take Ivy" is that it shows prep in its purest form, before it got diluted by a million wanna-bes. While it's fantastic that the book got reprinted, the cult status it used to hold in its Japanese format seemed to maintain its purity.