New York Observer Declares Douche In for Fall/Winter 2009
Great news for the guy in lecture who’s been blocking everyone else behind him with his eight popped collars–douche is in this season! The New York Observer recently declared Ivy League fashion the trend of this fall, beckoning in a new era of flagrant assholery.
Defining “trad” as an “Ivy League-inflected style that’s managed to retain an old-school sensibility without seeming dated or costumelike,” writer Joe Pompeo immediately goes on to contradict himself:
Think Oxford button-downs (and that’s real button-downs, meaning collars that button down, not simply dress shirts, to which the term is often misapplied). Natural-shouldered blazers. Flat-front khaki trousers. Loafers. Bow ties, rep ties. Polo shirts in solid colors. Lots of madras plaid. Early Brooks Brothers. New England WASPs. F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Does the sidekick monkey come with the outfit? Read more after the jump.
Yes. His name is David Wilder, a 41-year-old Yale alum and J. Press salesman who refuses to abandon his college days and move on with his life. Wilder describes the difference between trad and mere preppy: the latter is “more eccentric, more colorful.” (Read: looking like a Hollister ad as opposed to Farnsworth Bentley.)
Not only does Wilder giggle like a little schoolgirl over duck prints, but he managed to make Polo Ralph Lauren look tame compared to J. Press, located in New Haven (for Yalies), Cambridge (for Harvardians), and Madison Avenue (for rejects who ended up at Columbia).
Imagine your best-dressed uncle throwing open his closet for you to frolic around in. Like an insiders’ club for people who love the Ivy League look.
What Wilder fails to mention is that your best-dressed uncle probably also has a velvet-covered ball gag with matching leather thong. Take it from a man who thinks showing off hairy ankles is attractive. No, literally. Don’t go in that closet if you’re planning on sitting down anytime soon.
Anyways, looking like prick has never been so haute.
8 Comments | 
| 
Print This Post
Read more: fashion, Harvard, Ivy League, this is why people hate the ivy league, Yale
Email – 
Search
About
Follow us on Twitter
Report a bug
Archives
RSS Feed
September 9th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Uhhh, yeah so done, so cliched, so recycled. This look must arise from Recessionist thinking, a desperate-ditch attempt to bring bread to the table by selling silken
cumrags.They could at least come up with something edgier. Like Ivy League hip. Stop looking at Harvard, Yale, start looking at Brown, Columbia. Think reconstructed Saks Fifth-meets-Cheap Monday, but with a touch of Pierre Cardin for that classic Assholerish reprise. Very trad.
This is for the young ones.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I think it’s low to call students at Columbia “rejects”. I would normally say you were being facetious, but the fact that you’re a Harvard student takes it out of the realm of “funny” and into that of “you’re a tool”. I know far more students who went to Harvard that say they were dissatisfied with their undergraduate experience than I do who went to any other Ivy League (or the like) school.
Why don’t you get off your hollow tower of superiority and stop publishing Holocaust denials and copywriting your name all the way to the “Harvard comma”.
September 9th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Yeah, sure, because throwing on skinny jeans AND topsiders makes you so much cooler. What’s with the hate on trad clothing? Judging books by covers, much? I realize it’s IvyGate’s job to do this, but come on, let’s have a little self-awareness here. This is what we all actually wear.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:07 am
seriously. stop wasting my fucking time by simply re-posting articles off gawker/dealbreaker. its not that hard – get your own tips, write a funny blurb, ka-bam! that’s a blog. you act as if YOU just so happened to read this in the NY Observer when you read it on Gawker yesterday just like the rest of us. get real, you are embarrassing our alma maters with your pathetic attempts at journalism.
September 10th, 2009 at 7:28 am
@B’ 08
Although normally I’d agree with you, the author was just trying to find a unified thread between the locations. Harvard and Yale are not often thought of in the same sentence as Columbia. It would make sense for there to be a J. Press location in Princeton, NJ, but for Madison Ave… what is there? So, ah, it occurs to this writer to attribute it to all those Harvard-like kids at Columbia. What are they doing there? They must have been rejected!
This does not necessarily imply superiority – it could have been the other way around, with a Columbia boutique that happens to be in Cambridge, and must be selling to Columbia rejects at Harvard. Do you understand?
I doubt that you will, but I am pretty brilliant for coming up with that logic. And also, as it happens, a wait-listed Harvardian…
September 10th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Ivy styles? Blech, anyone who’s spent time in DC will recognize this as more Georgetown’s style than anything: pastel polos, madras, sockless top siders, pastel animal-embroidered khakis, and blond locks framing rosy cheeks.
Actual style at the Ivies has thankfully moved on (as far as I can vouch for lots of recent time around Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Columbia). At least our polos aren’t pastel, and our khakis solid…
September 11th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I didn’t think it was possible to be proud of a STORE being in your town. And could it be possible to even be proud of the fact that you make fun of Columbians (who indeed reside in the City of New York just as Yalies reside in the “City” of New Haven) for having a store near them but-not-nearly-close-enough-it’s-on-MADISON? Gauche snobbery at its best here.
I am questioning why you wish to attribute a store with your sense of superiority. So simply vapid, materialistic, aspirational…
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
This fad is quite beyond colleges alone. I know grown men that wear these styles… maybe that’s why there’s a store in new york. ever talked to a preppy financial type? That aside, this style does seem pretty prevalent at Cornell… yea… it sucks.