It’s hard to consider the 1965 Japanese photo book Take Ivy anything less than an Urtext of menswear and streetwear photography. Before Bill Cunningham was documenting what was hot on the streets of NYC and back when saying “time to take fit pic” probably could have had you arrested on suspicion of making pornography, photographer Teruyoshi Hayashida joined Shosuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kurosu, and Hajim Hasegawa going from one elite East Coast college campus to the next, documenting the style that would eventually take its name from the book the group would publish with Fujingahosha magazine publishers. The shooting took place from 1959 to 1965, so it coincides with the presidency of prep style god John F. Kennedy, but it also came just before people started growing their hair out and the slow decline of men wearing suits and ties whenever they went out in public. That’s why I’ve always appreciated the book and the style: given the time the photos were shot, the young men in the photographs are almost certainly all sons of wealth and power. Yet the way they dress is so casual. They’re doing the business of being university students, but they’re dressed in a way that likely concerned some of their parents. You see button-up shirts and blazers, but they’re often worn in (then) untraditional ways—a student smoking a cigarette in his tweed jacket paired with Madras shorts, loafers and deck socks or the guy on his way to play squash with his shirt hanging out past his waist—and everything looks fabulously worn in and out the way old-school W.A.S.P.s tend to be fond of.
The photos of guys in shorts have served as a touchstone for me since I first saw images from Take Ivy. I don’t know why, but ever since I started paying some attention to what I was wearing, I’ve always had fun pairing shorts with anything but a t-shirt. When I was in high school, I found this pair of plaid shorts at the thrift store, and I loved wearing them with a Detroit Red Wings jersey and canvas Vans low-tops. In hindsight, it was influenced by a lot of the cool older Gen. X slacker types I was seeing all over at the time, but the idea stuck. When I was asked to take part in the J. Press “Icons” series earlier this year, I saw a pair of Madras shorts in the collection and instantly knew what I was going to do. I wanted to pay some homage to Take Ivy, pairing it with an oxford that was a little too baggy when left untucked, my Gucci loafers, and a Last Days of Disco hat from Human Boy Worldwide because I wanted to also give some “character from a Whit Stillman film hanging out long after the party is over and the sun is coming up.”
Living in New York means you’re generally surprised when you get to truly experience a season. You spend the majority of your summers and winters complaining about how it’s too hot or miserably cold and how you can’t wait for the equinox to start. But then fall or spring begins and it’s still the previous season’s weather for at least a month, maybe longer. There’s a good meme out there about the 12 seasons of NYC weather that really sums up how difficult it is to dress from one day to the next. Factor in the way the temperatures can fluctuate depending on location and the amount of walking you might have to do from one day to the next, and dressing appropriately is incredibly difficult. Right now, as I write this, it’s supposedly “Hell’s Front Porch” weather because “It's 73.0°F which is 2.6 standard deviations above the mean of 53.6°F for 12 PM, May 02.” I start sweating around 68 degrees, so that’s generally when I feel fine putting on shorts if I want to be comfortable. But right now, I’m in a pair of khaki pants and a long sleeve shirt and I’m in heaven. It will be shorts all the time season soon enough, but the problem is that I generally hate wearing them because I think other men have turned shorts into a lazy person’s clothing item. As a bigger, sweaty guy I get wanting to be comfortable, but a pair of old cargos to dinner at a nice restaurant or John Fetterman acting like big men weren’t around and wearing pants before he got into politics bothers me. Why do you want people to think you’re sloppy or an overgrown child? I’ll never understand it, and that’s why I always wince a little when I first put on shorts. The way I’ve combatted the feeling is to think really hard about the rest of what I’m wearing. I play around. Maybe it’s an old baseball jersey or an Oxford—nothing too crazy. But if I’m wearing shorts and going somewhere like coffee with a friend or to an event where I'll be around other people, then I’m taking a page from Take Ivy and wear them with a pair of loafers, maybe boat shoes, or possibly canvas sneakers. That’s generally it. Some people can get away with a pair of something Jordan 1s or the very NYC-specific shorts and Timberland boots, but taller footwear makes my legs look shorter, and the truth is that I’ve got a pretty nice set of gams. I like showing them off. When you don’t have much going on in the looks department, you need to rock what you’ve got. When it’s just warm enough or there’s a slight chill and I’m still wearing shorts, tossing on a sweatshirt or tennis sweater never fails. It’s another page right out of Take Ivy: a little baggy up top, slim on the bottom.
I’ve got the loafer and shorts thing down to an art at this point. Horsebits are always good, but maybe you don’t want to take out expensive shoes to go have a few beers. That’s fair. Boat shoes supposedly “being back” (as if they ever left) means you have one easy option for shoes you can slip in, and I think more men need to give slippers a try. If you’re willing to invest, then I’m a big fan of Del Toro, but my AWMS big cat print slippers inspired by Paul Bowles get the most compliments. If you’re not a slipper person, I get it. But I will stand by the belief that everybody should have at least two pairs of loafers in their closet. One can be a less-expensive pair that you just take care of over time, polishing them or maybe getting them resoled when necessary. I’ve had a pair of black Bass Weejuns and also a pair of oxblood penny loafers L.L. Bean that I bought at the same time 15 years ago. Those tend to be more day-to-day, but if I’m going out to dinner and shorts are appropriate, then I’m wearing something I don’t put on that often. I’m either going with my Sid Mashburn Italian loafers with the tassels or my Morjas Ivy loafers that I recently got. They’re a little bit more expensive but both are well under a thousand dollars, which is (at least) what you’re going to be paying for anything else of the same look and quality. But if you take care of them, like any pair of shoes, they’ll last a long time. It’s simple grandpa wisdom to live by, but it’s true.
The loafer and shorts thing isn’t for every occasion. I’ve been really into mules and baggier mesh shorts from Stussy the last few summers and sometimes I’ll do the classic socks and slides if I’m just going to the bodega because I live in Brooklyn and that’s just what we do here. I generally like something I can just push my foot into, but like anything else, it’s all about how I’m feeling at that moment on that day. It just so happens that the Take Ivy shorts and loafers thing is the way I tend to feel most days.
Diamond Concierge Service #014
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