Sonia Dara, H’12, graces the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue this year — posing in a glamorous paisley bikini and, if you’re looking at her jewelry, nice jewelry I guess.

“I converted to an economics degree [...] that would allow me, if I wanted to, to integrate modeling [the fashion kind, not the observing-graphs kind] into it,” the academically inclined Dara says in the video available at SI’s site, in which she dances with a sari and poses with “local women” in traditional garb. Too bad Dara didn’t go to Columbia and thus hasn’t heard of Edward Said! He would have THINGS to SAY.

Facebook espionage after the jump!

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So this is how the Burn Book scene in Mean Girls happens! After this week’s post on Cornell’s strict guidelines for its aspiring sorority princesses, an anonymous tipster exclusively sent IvyGate six pages of fashion guidelines for aspiring rushes, from Cornell sorority Pi Phi’s rush chair. (By way of context, Pi Phi’s 2008-09 Executive Board is pictured at right.) It’s a document containing multitudes: sometimes it’s really encouraging!

“Blazers: Yes, please! I love a casual top with a cool boyfriend blazer over it.”

This encouragement to wear your best boyfriend blazer represents the promise of Pi Phi, whose mission statement indicates its goal:

“to promote friendship, develop women of intellect and integrity, cultivate leadership potential and enrich lives through community service.”

Most times, though, it is less than that! We applaud Cornell for making every one of our sorority stereotypes come so vividly to life (Pi Phi’s Cornell chapter President didn’t respond to our request for an interview last night, so we’re operating on a stereotypical basis and feeling good about it), and to the commenter who said, on our previous post:

“Sadly, there’s something especially fake and pathetic about many of the girls on East Hill these days. Fortunately, these are the same girls who really seek an MRS more than an MBA or MD.”

This is laying it on a little thick, naturally — especially given that these girls are trying to look good for one another, not for men. But judge for yourself! After the jump, we’ll begin our four-part serialization of the Pi Phi fashion guide, with one part of the beauty equation: clothing for the initial rounds of rush. And remember:

“If you’re wearing cheapo shoes, make sure they don’t look it.”

Viva la Pi Phi Plastics! Read on after the jump for more from the fashion KGB.

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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.

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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???

The Ivy League look came about as a result of an odd confluence of factors, the Cold War not excluded, but it exists today for one reason: looking out of place and loving it. A number of trends have ebbed and flowed through campuses throughout the Northeast in recently years—and more problematically through the parts of the country that don’t include the Ivy League—wherein kids are wearing coral-colored pants embroidered with little whales and cable knit everything else. Throw in a tweed jacket for guys or a cardigan (worn over-the-shoulders of course) for girls, and it’s a trope.

This isn’t the place to judge style or taste. But it’s the perfect place to judge people. A curious blog found its way into our inbox recently—curious because we thought it was a joke for a solid 2 days—that’s focused entirely and specifically on Ivy Style. Forget tips for women, though, because in the good old days, the Ivy League was only for the dudes, the dudes with the money. It’s just like this posted poem song, “The Ivy League Look,” from Princeton’s Triangle Club written in 1957:

Corduroy slacks disgust me
Black leather jackets are vile
Long greasy hair and blue suede shoes
Transform my blood to bile.
If you want everyone to accept you
As a modern American male
You must dress the way the magazines say
They dress at Harvard and Yale

Now, it wouldn’t be as interesting if the editors of this blog weren’t totally serious. It also would be less hilarious if the founder of the blog hadn’t graduated from the University of California-Fullerton. In fact, none of the very short list of editors ever attended an Ivy League school, but they all do live in Cambridge and spend a lot of time watching the Ivy League happen.

Read the poem song in full, see some pictures of fur coats and ugly jackets, or just get some pointers on how to dress after the jump.

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