Dress Codes

By LAURA JACOBS

New York

In 1954 the term "Ivy League" became an official designation for the Northeastern athletic conference that included Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Cornell—eight of the oldest and most prestigious all-male academic institutions in America. The term had already been in use for decades, though its origin remains covered in ivy. In the 1930s, for instance, comparing the football teams of Princeton and Columbia to Fordham University's ferocious squad, a newspaper reporter disparaged the pair as "only Ivy League." Yet there is evidence that the term is rooted in the Roman numeral IV—pronounced "I-V"—which was how an earlier conference of four teams (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia) was referred to back in the 1800s. One thing is certain: The initial usage had to do with sports—not with the Social Register, secret societies or the "best and brightest" status we today associate with the term.

"Ivy Style," a new exhibition at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology, looks at the code of dress that has long been associated with the Ivy League. A thought-provoking show with a light touch, it is laid out not chronologically but thematically. This allows curator Patricia Mears to set fin de siècle, Jazz Age and postwar pieces side by side with more recent clothes from Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Thom Browne—an approach that demonstrates how these archetypal silhouettes are not only going strong but have evolved little, despite instances of postmodern and millennial tweaking.

The space is laid out like a college quad with wide paths. Along the walls, like dioramas, are the rooms in which Ivy males lived their cosseted lives: dorm, class, locker room, common room, the local university shop. Crests, shields and school colors are much in abundance, as well as blazers striped and piped. One immediately recognizes that Ivy style is a nexus of converging influences, all of which reinforce an unspoken ideal of ruling-class privilege. "God is an Englishman" tweeds and tails meet the letter-sweater sporting life of America's monied elite. The glib, candy-colored wit of Eton and Oxbridge pair up with plain old chinos, brought to campus by soldiers returning on the G.I. Bill. Footwear shows a predominance of slip-ons: Weejuns ("All Weejuns are loafers but not all loafers are Weejuns"), tuxedo flats, Top-Siders (Sperry, of course), and the embroidered whimsies of Stubbs & Wootton. Presumably, the man who wears these slippers will glide or sail through life.

The show begins at Princeton because, as the wall text says, "No university played a greater role in the development of Ivy style during the interwar years." This was due to Princeton's "relatively rural location, the homogeneity of its student population—nearly 85% white Protestant men, graduates of elite private schools from wealthy families—and its reliance on a unique student-regulated society, typified by its stratified and ostentatious 'eating clubs.'" Princeton contains the word 'prince,' and Ivy elegance is unquestionably the closest this country comes to a style deemed aristocratic. The crested blazer and modern sport jacket trace back to Princeton, as well as the emergence of white flannel trousers and buckskin shoes. Not as lasting was the Princeton "Beer Suit"—workmen's overalls in white cotton with matching jacket.

The Museum at FIT

A Brooks Uniform Co. blazer with the 1923 Princeton University insignia

Brooks Brothers, J. Press, Arrow, Hathaway and Gant—these are Ivy eternals. Chipp, an offshoot of J. Press, would expand and popularize the "Go to Hell" look, a mix of bright colors normally considered outside the masculine palette—coral, yellow, mint—and constituting a casual smack at the status quo. Ivy-style clothes need not come at great expense; they need not be new; but they must hit the ineffable balance between carefree, careless and correct. I have never forgotten the scorn of a young man commenting on Nantucket Reds that weren't bought at Murray's in Nantucket. They would never fade to the proper shade of shrimp pink and so they were impostors—"not our sort of people" pants. Getting the uniform wrong locks you out of the tribe.

But getting it right can lock you in. Of all the outfits in the show, the one with the most resonance is the gray flannel suit. "It was arguably the most important Ivy style look," we are told, "worn by men not only during college but also after, in business." The suit is surrounded by ebullient patchwork and madras blazers, which makes it all the more poignant, profound. Immortalized in Sloan Wilson's novel "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," a 1955 classic that tore into the postwar corporate culture, the dark-gray suit became a symbol of conformist striving, of life tamped down on its way to the top. There is almost always a point at which the owner of privileges becomes owned by those privileges.

Near the end of his life, I interviewed Bill Blass about his experience designing stewardess uniforms for American Airlines. It was not a fond memory for him. Blass found it hard to get the committee of women to agree on anything because, he felt, women don't really want to wear uniforms. Men were different. "It's always been my contention," he said, "that men are happiest in uniforms." The uniforms of Ivy style are very happy indeed, tailored for the sheltered pleasures of young adulthood: competing, winning, drinking. No wonder they have such staying power. The gray flannel suit, however, is a different kind of uniform. Suddenly the world is borne in—companies, agencies, governments—and the soul is at risk. It shadows and deepens the show.

Ms. Jacobs is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, where she has written extensively on fashion history.