Ivy style fashion rise, fall and revival

Miyuki-Zoku, image provided by Nikkei.com.

When Japan Meets Ivy: Fashion Revolution in the 1960s

In the summer of 1964, a group of teenagers reported to the police and were rounded up on a luxurious Ginza shopping street. What are their crimes? Wear “strange clothes” such as button jackets, tight twill and brogues. These are Miyuki-Zoku, named after the streets they usually live in. Why were they arrested? Images Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s: The country is being rebuilt and modernized, but remains very conservative. As for men’s fashion, formal, thin-thin suits in soft gray and brown dominate the style of the sphere. The idea of ​​costumes that may be fun, expressive, or (forbidden by heaven) fashion is considered to be outright aliens.

Enter Ishizu Kensuke and he will change everything. Born in a wealthy family in Okayama, Ishizu became obsessed with Western clothing. Moving to Tokyo in the 1930s, he often wore expensive British suits and lived a Gatsby-style lifestyle. Later, he moved to Tianjin, worked in a Japanese store, selling Western-style gentleman’s clothing until the momentum of war became momentum for Japan, when he enlisted in the army and served in the navy until the end of the war.

Yi Shimoto’s interest in fashion and Western clothing may have emerged when he was young in Japan, but this was a meeting in Tianjin after the war, sowing seeds because it would become a fashion revolution led by earthification in Japan. The key meeting of thought was an introduction between Isaijiguo and the former lieutenant in Princeton, who introduced him to the Ivy League style.

Ishizu returned to Japan in 1946 and had radical ideas about the way Japanese men dressed. In 1951, after working in the clothing industry for several years, he founded his own brand. jacketembodies the fantasy of the Ivy League and the coolness of American colleges. During the same decade, he was an integral part of the establishment of the Male Fashion magazine otoko no fukushoku – Later renamed Men’s Club – Publish an article detailing how to design formal business outfits and Ivy-style pieces. His brand also produces a lineup of clothing inspired by the East Coast University, an innovation in which every piece of clothing is still being made in dedicated stores.

Kazuo Hozumi and cute Ivy boy

In 1954, Van reached a turning point: Ishizu got in touch with the architect-turned cartoonist Kazuo Hozumi to illustrate his magazine. Hozumi is no stranger to the Ivy style. Through Western Fashion Magazine, he was introduced to the genre and fashion illustrations. These are these magazines, said to be university campus movies in 1960 A story of a tall man This inspired his work. His most famous work – the iconic “Ivy Boy” character – entered public consciousness in 1963, part of the old Woodblock print featuring samurai; in Hozumi’s version, Dandies dressed in various ivy-style round smiles replaced Samurai. Although created for group exhibitions, prints and Ivy Boys quickly became part of the history of the boys’ club.

exist Men’s ClubHozumi fell in love with Ivy League fashion, illustration Van Ads, and became close friends with Ishizu. His works are often Men’s ClubAlthough he appeared in Van Events in person, it led many to mistake him for Van employees.

Image courtesy of Mainichi newspaper.

how Men’s Club Become Dandis

By the mid-1960s, something extraordinary happened on the streets of Tokyo: a young Japanese man gave up on his father’s conservative dress code, button-down shirt, natural shoulder jacket and perfect twill. In 1964, Ishizu even commissioned a uniform for the opening ceremony of the Olympics, an honor that eventually changed the public’s attitude towards Ivy League fashion. Suddenly, Miyuki-Zoku is not a crime – they are young middle-class kids with good taste and good clothes.

Take Ivy’s cover, originally published in 1965

In 1965, Van Jacket and Men’s Club Publisher Fujingaho has produced a photo book and captured real Ivy League students on campus. Title With ivy – Nodding to Dave Brubeck’s jazz hit “Take Five” – ​​and filmed by Teruyoshi Hayashida, the book becomes a visual blueprint that will continue to influence Men’s Club The photos have been spread for many years, shaping Japan’s vision for the East Coast University style.

What makes the Japanese Ivy style unique is that it is explained by local sensitivity. When Americans wear pre-college clothes with casual confidence, the Japanese do it almost with religious dedication to authenticity. The Japanese have a term: Amtora, The abbreviation of “American tradition”. Their American-prepared version is unique to the Japanese because of its high respect for details and craftsmanship. Not only did they copy, they were going to perfect and create versions of the usual “Ivy League” rather than anything the actual Ivy League school found.

Men’s Club Magazine became the Bible for this fashion movement, and Hozumi’s illustrations guide readers into the subtle differences between proper button collars and regular dress shirts. Every detail matters: the exact width of the tie, the correct way to lace oxfords, the seasonal appropriateness of Madras and Thessachs dishes.

Miyuki-Zoku, image courtesy of Mainichi newspaper.

The fall and rebirth of Japanese Ivy

Like all fashion moves, the Ivy Prosperity can’t last forever. By the late 1970s, the glitz-glut of European fashion houses, punk music and the Japanese economic bubble had pushed preparatory style to the shadows. Despite reaching a record profit of more than 45 billion yen in 1975, the Van Jacket began to fall into red, and its 1978 bankruptcy symbolized the end of an era.

But fashion is cyclical. The new generation was proposed in digital culture, but longed for tangible qualities, rediscovering the appeal of well-made classics. In 2015, an American writer in Tokyo W. David Marx issued Ametora: How Japan Saves American Style – A book that connects the dots between Ishzu, Hozumi and the obsessed Japanese Ivy. Marx believed in it that Japan not only imported American fashion—it retained and perfected it. The book followed by Translated into Japaneseit has a cover adorned with Kazuo Hozumi’s iconic Ivy Boy character.

Van Jacket filed for the second time in 1984, but the brand was eventually restored by an external party in 2000. With ivya photo of a cult related to the brand in 1965, was rediscovered by American fashion blogs in the late 2000s and was republished internationally. In 2010, Van Jacket’s latest iteration settled in the quaint neighborhood of Kurama. In 2020, a new truck also opened in Hibiya Okuroji.

Like the magazine Popeye,,,,, second and Men’s Club (still in print) Keep the flame alive, while social media creates a new type of Ivy influencer. Even the world of illustrations has not forgotten Hozumi. One of the most obvious signs of life in Ivy is Mr. Slowboyalso known as Fei Wang, is a Beijing-born and London-based illustrator whose charming watercolor gentleman channel is the spirit of Kazuo Hozumi’s Ivy Boy. Known for his costume illustrations Barber, gentlemanChristie’s,,,,, uniqlo and PopeyeMr. Slowboy published a monograph, Mr. Slowboy: Portrait of a modern gentlemanby a paper He’s gone Introduction by authors W. David Marx and Kazuo Hozumi himself.

On the move 2023 Japanese single film interview Shortly before Hozumi’s death, Mr. Slowboy met Hozumi in Tokyo. The art, details and the quiet beauty of men’s clothing are correct – each masters the other’s work, which is linked through a shared dedication to Ametora and Ivy Boy’s timeless elegance.

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