Ivy Style, the new clothing exhibit at F.I.T., hits close to home because so many of the pieces on display (khakis, oxford shirts, pullover sweaters, duffle coats) are things that even those of us who don’t identify ourselves as preppy have hanging in our closets and don’t consider to be particularly fashionable or innovative.
There are some smart stories about the origins of particular garments. Blazers were originally red jackets for rowers, Weejuns are an adapatation of Norwegian fishing shoes, and saddle shoes began as gym shoes at Princeton. (In decades past Princeton, it seems, was a hotbed for fashion innovation.) While there’s plenty of ivy clothing on display there isn’t a whole lot of bracing ivy style. Most of the mannequins were dressed not-so-differently from real people you might see at the mall. My companion observed that we take this kind of clothing for granted, and don’t appreciate how innovative it really is to dress in unprecious, unironed, mix-and-match pieces. But preppy clothing, with its enthusiastic layering and color-mixing, might lend itself to its own kind of high fashion. There are some sophisticated ensembles by Thomas Browne on display, like a woman’s stewart plaid jacket work over a contrasting campbell plaid shirtdress. But there’s not much of the pizzazz that's evident in the joyously multicolored madras jacket on the catalog cover. I wanted more of this; I wanted to see how preppy could turn its old-fashioned image inside out.
Chipp, madras jacket, circa 1970.
