The London Lounge

Why the classic "Ivy league" coat have not the darts?

I am not sure what you are asking.
Are you asking "Why did the dartless coat become popular among the collegiate set and become an icon of 'ivy style'?"
or are you asking "why did the tailors making coats for the ivy set make dartless models?"

In any event, while the dartless, sack coat in a 3 roll 2 model was certainly iconinc of "ivy style", darted models and two button models were also worn. As to why the dartless coat became popular, the answer is little more than "fashion". There is no functional reason.

Why did the tailors making dartless coats for the ivy?
And why dartless coats became an American classic?
was the question.
The your answer is very interesting;
Only fashions and none functional reason?
I thought that was something about the silhouette of the sack suit.

carpu65 wrote:Why did the tailors making dartless coats for the ivy?
And why dartless coats became an American classic?
was the question.
The your answer is very interesting;
Only fashions and none functional reason?
I thought that was something about the silhouette of the sack suit.

The silhouette of the sack suit and also the natural shoulder line (perhaps a more important feature) were significant. But they were not significant because they were superior in some functional sense. Rather, they were significant because they were distinctive and became fashionable within a particular group of people who recognized them and adopted the look as a fashion.

I think you are expecting more of an answer than is likely to be forthcoming. There is some myth about the sack being easier for a place like Brooks Brothers to manufacture and stock because its shapelessness made for a less demanding fit. The popularity of the dartless sack with custom tailors as well as the mass-production of darted coats makes that story a weak explanation. Also, if you have ever had a dartless coat made by a tailor, you will know that a great deal of work still goes into producing shape using the side seams.

Dopey et al., I stand to be corrected but I have always had the impression that the popularity of the "Ivy League" dartless jacket with "natural shoulders " (here meaning lightly padded with sleeve cap seam pressed open) had to do with an ethos of understatement, if not downright asceticism, ultimately deriving from New England Protestant tradition, inflected in the mid-Atlantic states by Quaker plainness, that was inculcated in the northeastern and southern prep schools and some of the Ivies. My impression is that for a long time a shaped jacket or one that emphasized the shoulders was looked upon as not quite the thing, as a bit vain and showy (even effeminate), and certainly not for those who exercised (or expected to exercise) serious prerogatives.

This derivation is admittedly complicated by the AA/Esky illustrations of English-inspired or -tailored collegiate jackets in the '30s and '40s, which as we all know were often draped and waisted with extended and/or built-up shoulders. The editors did say that they paid greatest attention to Princeton and Yale (perhaps not by coincidence both schools that indulged in neo-Gothic anglophile architectural fantasy), while Harvard and Penn were less conspicuous in their discussions of collegiate attire. But certainly in the postwar "pax Americana" years the fashion, as you so rightly characterize it, for the Ivy League look broadened (e.g., see Miles Davis) and its divergence from the traditional SR silhouette made U.S. clothing distinctive. I believe JFK has been credited here with popularizing a hybrid of the two styles with modest shaping and natural shoulder that became the default "American" silhouette for several decades.

As an end user of the dartless 3 button sack I can opine: the usual answer from tailors is that you need the darts for shaping.
I think the real reason is the pattern, cutting, fitting is too much of a departure from default for those tailors, to do it without the darts.

A variant will be, well, if you don't want the darts in front, put them on the side. The same rationale is invoked, that you need it for shaping, etc.

My build is such that I can't get too much shaping anyway, and I dislike the appearance of the darts in front. I've had very capable tailors tell me that they can work just fine without the darts. If I had the build for it, I would probably favor darts. For some reason I didn't mind Chipp using darts on one of my covert coats. I just don't like them in suits/jackets.

couch wrote:Dopey et al., I stand to be corrected but I have always had the impression that the popularity of the "Ivy League" dartless jacket with "natural shoulders " (here meaning lightly padded with sleeve cap seam pressed open) had to do with an ethos of understatement, if not downright asceticism, ultimately deriving from New England Protestant tradition, inflected in the mid-Atlantic states by Quaker plainness, that was inculcated in the northeastern and southern prep schools and some of the Ivies. My impression is that for a long time a shaped jacket or one that emphasized the shoulders was looked upon as not quite the thing, as a bit vain and showy (even effeminate), and certainly not for those who exercised (or expected to exercise) serious prerogatives.

This derivation is admittedly complicated by the AA/Esky illustrations of English-inspired or -tailored collegiate jackets in the '30s and '40s, which as we all know were often draped and waisted with extended and/or built-up shoulders. The editors did say that they paid greatest attention to Princeton and Yale (perhaps not by coincidence both schools that indulged in neo-Gothic anglophile architectural fantasy), while Harvard and Penn were less conspicuous in their discussions of collegiate attire. But certainly in the postwar "pax Americana" years the fashion, as you so rightly characterize it, for the Ivy League look broadened (e.g., see Miles Davis) and its divergence from the traditional SR silhouette made U.S. clothing distinctive. I believe JFK has been credited here with popularizing a hybrid of the two styles with modest shaping and natural shoulder that became the default "American" silhouette for several decades.

For a variety of reasons, including the highlited evidence you gave, contemporary literature and other sources, I find it unlikely that the explanation you suggested in your first paragraph is anything more than an ex-post facto justification, at best. I don't claim to be a real expert on the subject, but I have done bits of amateur research (which means no more than when I come across something relevant, I try to remember it) and it seems clear to me that the people whose clothing tastes were eventually called "ivy-style" wore a variety of styles over time, largely, as you say, imitating the fashions of London and to a lesser degree continental Europe, perhaps with some short time lag. The style they wore in the late 40s and 50s and early 60s is what took the name "Ivy League" and became more widely fashionable among the greater population. But I doubt that the look's popularity, either with the "Ivy Leaguers" themselves or the broader public was ever driven by anything much more sophisticated than evolving tastes and fashion. Certainly, I don't think it was consciously adopted for the social-signifying reasons you first suggested - after all, those same people would likely have been wearing something else a few years earlier. Note also, that while the natural shoulder and soft chest might be described as modest, the cloths in which they were made up often could not be.

By way of illustration, what would your hypothetical Quaker or modest NE WASP make of a modest natural shoulder sportcoat worn under a raccoon stadium coat?


@Teplitz:
I have had more than one tailor tell me he can do what he needs to in terms of shaping in a dartless coat but he needs to use the iron a lot more, which means he can only do it with cloths that can be readily manipulated. I have also had tailors tell me you can get some shape with a dartless coat but not as much as with darts. I suspect the tailor's skill, experience and willingness to wrestle with the cloth make a lot of difference. I recall from the pattern matching on the lapels of your reverse chalkstripe that Corvato is willing to work the cloth pretty hard, and flannel is certainly a good candidate for that sort of thing.

dopey wrote:For a variety of reasons, including the highlited evidence you gave, contemporary literature and other sources, I find it unlikely that the explanation you suggested in your first paragraph is anything more than an ex-post facto justification, at best. . . .

By way of illustration, what would your hypothetical Quaker or modest NE WASP make of a modest natural shoulder sportcoat worn under a raccoon stadium coat?

You may well be right, Dopey. My sense of the ethos behind the look probably derives from my experience of the attitudes and character of the mature people I've known who stayed faithful to that silhouette beyond the end of its "fashionable" period in the late '60s--some of whom indeed still prefer it. (These include, for example, several old-family Philadelphia Episcopalians who considered the idea of offering the Eucharist more than a few times a year to be suspiciously high-church and soppy.) To the extent that the silhouette has any claim to be an "American classic" that ethos may play a role. However, I wouldn't push the claim any farther than that.

Your raccoon stadium coat example is a point very well taken for undergraduate fashion in the flamboyant '20s. This illustration of a Harvard man, class of '55, wearing his father's 1923 raccoon coat (equipped with a poacher's pocket sized to hold a full Prohibition-era fifth) to the 125th Harvard-Yale game certainly attests to a lack of understated reticence in Cambridge as in New Haven (although the father no doubt had more elegant headgear):

couch wrote: You may well be right, Dopey. My sense of the ethos behind the look probably derives from my experience of the attitudes and character of the mature people I've known who stayed faithful to that silhouette beyond the end of its "fashionable" period in the late '60s--some of whom indeed still prefer it. (These include, for example, several old-family Philadelphia Episcopalians who considered the idea of offering the Eucharist more than a few times a year to be suspiciously high-church and soppy.) To the extent that the silhouette has any claim to be an "American classic" that ethos may play a role. However, I wouldn't push the claim any farther than that.

. . .

Thanks for the photo of the raccoon coat.

You raise an interesting point - when did Ivy Leaguers abandon the idea that clothing styles change constantly with fashion and instead start to indentify the "Ivy League" look as a less fluid, more static form of tribal garb. And more importantly, why?

I have an idea, which is that the change came about as mass produced clothing became more readily available and inexpensive. As a result, fashion was no longer limited to those people who could afford to replace perfectly good clothes with other perfectly good clothes but in the latest fashion. Instead, anyone could afford to change their wardrobe to follow the most current styles. Once fashion became the property of everybody, the Ivy Leaguers hewed to their own, now more stabilized look as marker of belonging.
To be fair, I am more or less speculating and have not bothered to do any work to verify how plausible this explanation might be.

dopey wrote:You raise an interesting point - when did Ivy Leaguers abandon the idea that clothing styles change constantly with fashion and instead start to indentify the "Ivy League" look as a less fluid, more static form of tribal garb. And more importantly, why?

I have an idea, which is that the change came about as mass produced clothing became more readily available and inexpensive. As a result, fashion was no longer limited to those people who could afford to replace perfectly good clothes with other perfectly good clothes but in the latest fashion. Instead, anyone could afford to change their wardrobe to follow the most current styles. Once fashion became the property of everybody, the Ivy Leaguers hewed to their own, now more stabilized look as marker of belonging.
To be fair, I am more or less speculating and have not bothered to do any work to verify how plausible this explanation might be.

Interesting discussion. I have always been under the impression that the mention of Ivy League style is extremely rare amongst Ivy Leaguers and that any conscientious pursuit of such style is usually seen without the eight schools. Within the eight schools, it just is, and 'it' includes a diverse range of styles, including what might be described as Ivy. My observations do not go back to the 50s and 60s but rather more recent, so I may be speaking out of context.

shredder wrote:

dopey wrote:You raise an interesting point - when did Ivy Leaguers abandon the idea that clothing styles change constantly with fashion and instead start to indentify the "Ivy League" look as a less fluid, more static form of tribal garb. And more importantly, why?

I have an idea, which is that the change came about as mass produced clothing became more readily available and inexpensive. As a result, fashion was no longer limited to those people who could afford to replace perfectly good clothes with other perfectly good clothes but in the latest fashion. Instead, anyone could afford to change their wardrobe to follow the most current styles. Once fashion became the property of everybody, the Ivy Leaguers hewed to their own, now more stabilized look as marker of belonging.
To be fair, I am more or less speculating and have not bothered to do any work to verify how plausible this explanation might be.

Interesting discussion. I have always been under the impression that the mention of Ivy League style is extremely rare amongst Ivy Leaguers and that any conscientious pursuit of such style is usually seen without the eight schools. Within the eight schools, it just is, and 'it' includes a diverse range of styles, including what might be described as Ivy. My observations do not go back to the 50s and 60s but rather more recent, so I may be speaking out of context.

I would have thought that the postwar boom had already made mass-produced clothing pretty common by the late '50s, when "Ivy League" looks shared the fashion rotation with Ban-Lon knits, Haggar "Forever-Prest" slacks, and machine-embroidered camp shirts. My hypothesis would be that the Ivy League/trad look became more stabilized as an alternative to design-led developments associated with the so-called "peacock revolution" of the late '60s and early '70s. George Wein introduced Miles to the Andover Shop in the late '50s and by '65 George Frazier would call him "The Warlord of the Weejuns." In contrast, the lyrics of "My Conviction" from Hair, which premiered off-broadway in October '67 but which Rado & Ragni began writing as early as '64, include the lines:

I would just like to say that it is my conviction
That longer hair and other flamboyant affectations
Of appearance are nothing more
Than the male`s emergence from his drab camouflage
Into the gaudy plumage
Which is the birthright of his sex.

For men who were uncomfortable with or uncertain about gaudy plumage, or with one or another aspect of the political and cultural changes sometimes linked to it, the Ivy/trad look offered an understated style that for better or worse carried associations of settled tradition and establishment values--and to some extent, elite privilege. For many it was an aspirational look, and in my experience during that period it wasn't always an all-or-nothing thing. Some people would have a "wild" Pierre Cardin-cut suit that they might wear to a party with an arty set, but stick to their Brooks Bros. for most occasions. Others who were generally more adventurous would keep a traditional suit or two for occasions when they needed to appear to have "bottom."

And Shredder, you are of course right that while attending one of the schools in question, a "prep" or "Ivy" style would not need to be so designated, and much youthful rebellion showed itself simply in how one wore the clothes (often pretty sloppily). But I'd speculate that generally before the mid '60s, mostly you just went, or were taken by parents, to specific stores for basic clothing, and that those stores (Andover Shop, Murray's Toggery, Brooks, J. Press, Eljo's, Varsity Shop/Culwell & Son and their ilk) carried clothes for 'reputable' young gentlemen. Of course articles from other sources were experimented with and incorporated, but the main elements were given. I suspect any real passion for the look only develops later in life at about the time nostalgia for alma mater sets in, or a belated appreciation for civilized institutions, however imperfect. By the late '60s most elite campuses were already highly politicized and in cultural ferment (not to mention admitting a much less homogenous student body, including women and minorities) and there was no consistency of style left at all--you had the spectrum from button-downs, ties, and tweeds in class to cut-off jeans, tie-died T-shirts and Indian water-buffalo sandals.

Thus fashion innovation branched away from the natural-shoulder sack into realms more strange if not more rich, and developments in the trad field were limited to points of detail and manufacturing technology. When items (shoe technologies, outerwear) from "outside" gained sufficiently durable status as classics, they would be brought into the fold. By this point, dressing Ivy/trad (and I know some will make subtle distinctions among these) had become a conscious choice rather than a default style. (Miles, of course, left it far behind.) This is why I stated in an earlier post my supposition that the choice had something to do with an ethos drawing on certain historical roots.

This anyway is a hypothesis that fits the data points I have, which may be deficient.

Excellent discussion.

I can think of one reason the undarted Ivy jacket went out of favor: body size. It's probably no coincidence that the style went out of style just as (American) men started getting larger. The style only favors the ectomorphic frame (tall, narrow shouldered, narrow hipped). On heavy men, it is an abomination, emphasizing a pear-shape. The younger and more health conscious tend to have broader shoulders from weight training. The jacket's shapelessness tends to make them look large and boxy--the last thing anyone would want after hours in the gym.

Well Gentlemen,
Brooks Brothers "not always been Brooks Brothers".
We have a BB coat of 20s; well,is very similar to the BB 50s coats.



But Here we have a Brooks Brothers Double breasted and a single breasted from 1940.




Now (leave the ugly shape of revers of the double breasted), we have a very different silhouette.
This is not the "classic" post war ivy style.
So?

Well, the SB coat from 1940 appears to be cut without front darts; the amount of drape, waist suppression, and shoulder emphasis are more modest than most of what we've seen from AA/Esquire or movies from the same period. (Fashionable shoulders were starting to be pretty built up by '40.) I can't tell from the photo whether the DB has darts or not, but both it and the SB are photographed on forms, so it's difficult to say whether the DB has been pinned, as is still usually done for display purposes. I would not be surprised to see a little more waist suppression on a DB in any case.

Of course BB, like all merchants, was not untouched by trends. But the real test is to look at the silhouette relative to others of its time. These still look pretty conservative to me.

What's really interesting to me in the ad you post is that it shows what looks like a three-button jacket rolled to the lowest button, well below the waist. Not so obvious worn with the vest, which keeps things correct and the chest covered, but this buttoning style certainly loosens up the look. I wonder whether the styling in the ad was influenced by the Duke of Windsor's manner of wearing his 2-button jackets, as Costi has discussed in another thread. Still not my cup of tea, and even more extreme here. If this jacket were buttoned at the middle button, it would look pretty similar to the first one apart from a little more shoulder padding (and the lack of patch pockets).

couch wrote:

dopey wrote:You raise an interesting point - when did Ivy Leaguers abandon the idea that clothing styles change constantly with fashion and instead start to indentify the "Ivy League" look as a less fluid, more static form of tribal garb. And more importantly, why?

And Shredder, you are of course right that while attending one of the schools in question, a "prep" or "Ivy" style would not need to be so designated, and much youthful rebellion showed itself simply in how one wore the clothes (often pretty sloppily). But I'd speculate that generally before the mid '60s, mostly you just went, or were taken by parents, to specific stores for basic clothing, and that those stores (Andover Shop, Murray's Toggery, Brooks, J. Press, Eljo's, Varsity Shop/Culwell & Son and their ilk) carried clothes for 'reputable' young gentlemen. Of course articles from other sources were experimented with and incorporated, but the main elements were given. I suspect any real passion for the look only develops later in life at about the time nostalgia for alma mater sets in, or a belated appreciation for civilized institutions, however imperfect. By the late '60s most elite campuses were already highly politicized and in cultural ferment (not to mention admitting a much less homogenous student body, including women and minorities) and there was no consistency of style left at all--you had the spectrum from button-downs, ties, and tweeds in class to cut-off jeans, tie-died T-shirts and Indian water-buffalo sandals.

Couch, my thoughts exactly. As the schools started complying with affirmative action, expanding financial aid programmes, admitting girls or absorbing a neighbouring girls' school, and attracting more students from abroad, it became impossible to define a singular Ivy style. Therefore, I do not think that the Ivy Leaguers abandoned the idea that clothing styles change constantly with fashion and indentified the 'Ivy League' look as a less fluid, more static form of tribal garb. If anybody did, then I think that the merchants like J Press, their loyal clientele and fashion writers did. Other than amongst the aging professors, it has become a rare look on campus. For those who matriculated after the mid-60s, there is actually very little basis for nostalgia with respect to 'Ivy style'.