Chapter 4

Kansuke Shizu was absolutely knocked out by the style he saw on the Princeton campus when he visited in 1959.

He was like, this is it, I found it, this is the look.

Ivy is a little respectful, but it's also a little rebellious, and totally reminds me of the Shabby Bankara style that Japanese students already wear.

And so, in 1962 Shizu takes his clothing company Van Jacket, and he pivots it.

And he decides to start selling khakis and blue blazers and Oxford button-down shirts to Japanese teenagers.

But the tricky thing was, the whole reason he liked the Ivy look was because it was casual and carefree and sort of tossed on and natural.

And that wasn't going to just happen in Japan right away.

Ivy leaks out in the US, it's not a fashion in the sense that people ran out and all bought it at the same time.

As you now know, and as W. David Marx will attest, Ivy developed really slowly in the United States.

The classy casual vibe that Shizu loved so much with Ivy style had evolved organically from a number of unique social circumstances in America.

And so you can't take this thing that's organic where the rules are unspoken and hope that it spreads. You have to convert it to a trend that you can explain in painstaking detail of how exactly you dress Ivy League.

So before he could sell Ivy, Kansuke Shizu first had to define it.

And so when they started making Ivy League clothing, they also converted Men's Club to be like a Bible of Ivy League style.

Men's Club, that fashion magazine that Shizu had helped start, Men's Club became Ivy Style's definitive rulebook.

And so they basically create this guide for people who know nothing about Ivy League style to somehow learn how to dress Ivy League by breaking everything up into these very, very detailed rules.

Really specific rules. It's like your jacket must have a center hook event. You need three buttons on the jacket.

Pockets must be straight. Slanted pockets are anti-Ivy. So it's just like every detail of the suit. It's like here's what it should be like.

Which is so funny because you know on the campus of Princeton, the hallmark of Ivy was that it was casual and improvised and that was the appeal.

But improvisation is a byproduct of mastery. And before you can jam, you have to learn the scales.

When it was originally into this Japan, in the 1960s.

Professor Massifumi Mondan of the University of Sydney. They had this idea of Ivy as a very solid, clear, defined fashion style.

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