Harvard Brings Ivy Couture to the Masses (or Tries to Salvage Its Endowment)
You know Harvard’s broke when they start competing with Hollister. The country’s oldest college recently announced a partnership with clothing manufacturer Wearwolf Group in a ten-year licensing deal to produce a fancy men’s fashion line. Harvard recently started trademarking everything on the planet, but this is a new creative low for the endowment managers struggling to avert the university’s impending bankruptcy. With prices in the hundreds, the new collection oozes wannabe-Chace Crawford, complete with seersucker shorts tailored to a frighteningly obvious degree and über-metro man purses. According to creative director Joan Fowler, the designers took cues from “photos of students lounging in Harvard Yard in the sixties” for inspiration. But to brand-happy Asian tourists’ dismay, “Harvard” only appears on the labels inside, and other references to the university remain minute, such as crimson-colored stitching on the buttonholes. (Really.) Fowler insists that they’re on to something big:
It’s a style that has become current again and not just with the American consumer. We think Harvard Yard will have global appeal.
Coming in light of a “NYC Prep” episode featuring another douchey alum, the Cambridge School for Kids Who Can’t Dress Good dropped down to Perez Hilton’s radar with one uncharacteristically insightful question:
… why???
