Last week the New York Times ran a nice piece on Chipp2, Paul Winston's MTM and Custom tailoring business in New York, located very near the old Press and A.T. Harris site. Although I have never ordered anything from Chipp2, I have met Paul, and I hear that he does fine work.
In searching through the AAAC archives, I ran across this catalog from the old Chipp. Click here to access the remaining pages. To my knowledge, their off the peg suits of old were all made in New Haven behind the Yale ice skating rink.
Most people seem to agree that Chipp was always a bit more edgy than the more English Brooks. Colorful silks, inside jokes disguised in various ways, embroidered corduroys, patch madras, quirky emblematic ties (for example, with nooses)--Chipp did all of this.
I have no evidence, but it seems that Chipp might have had much more of a hand than Brooks or Press in originating or at least pushing the Preppy look during the late 70s and early 80s.
6 comments:
For those interested, here's the link to the NY Times piece:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/a-tailor-who-caters-to-a-certain-taste/
weejun- great post and pictures. I suspect you are right-and I assume they were the supplier for weekend party clothes-in the east anyway.
Their influence evident today-maybe subliminally on JCrew..
but a bit odd in that the context and time(s) in which they were worn much changed. Some of it if worn today-outside of original geography and social set would appear forced .
What ever the case a great retrospective and post.
max
Bully - I'm with you & Max on the Chipp/Prep connection. There's is a more expansive Trad than Press & The Brothers Brooks. More fun lovin' WASP than sober old Ivy?
Russ.
true enough Uncle Russ-I think there has become something iconic about c 1980(a car from that time has reached antique collector status!) Ivy or trad set party clothes and it has influenced the kiddie neoprep set.
I wondered what(new) examples in recent times caught some of that absurd zeitgist.. last fall I was at a party and the owner of ad agency was wearing a navy blazer. the usual works , Aldens but Bills Khaki paisley corduroy. some items start out as a blip and then graduate to the trad pantheon.
easier to see in retrospect, I suppose but then some of it was codified as gospel.
As for Mr Paisley Cords--actually a nice gent-(I do envy his audacity) I wondered if it was a little gauche or on its way to bonafide trad country club party clothes. Initial offering of Pants w/frog motif 30 years ago might have caused similar bewilderment even in that culture.
max
It's a fascinating area Max & you pinpoint it very well.
We're seeing mutations of mutations today when we look at the mainstream representations of the style we love.
But when we try to dig back to the originals we find problems too - If we do reproduce the classic look of Madison in '58 then what are we actually wearing today in 2008?
That way the Fedora Lounge lies.
No answers from me.
Wear what you love.
The way to kill the style dead is to try to write its handbook.
Russ.
Wikipedia's "American Trad" entry (for those who may not have seen it):
American Trad (also known as AmerTrad or simply Trad in the United States) is a men's clothing style that was influenced by early Brooks Brothers clothes and its amalgam of Anglo-American style; as well as by the natural-shouldered Ivy League clothing style of the 1920s to 1960s. For this reason, American Trad is sometimes considered akin to the preppy look.
Eschewing blatant display of excess and fickle fashion, the American Trad style includes elements such as the three-button rolled to two ("3/2" for short) sack fit blazers and suits, plain front trousers, button-down Oxford cloth shirts, silk ties, and loafers made by Alden, Allen-Edmonds, Bass (the Weejun) and other American shoe manufacturers. A look similar to American Trad appears in Italian films of 1950s and 1960s, and within the British mod subculture of the same period.
Having been assimilated into mainstream American style, the American Trad look has continued into the 2000s, more or less intact. J. Press, a men's clothier from New Haven, Connecticut, exemplifies this style, and its clothing style has changed little since 1902. Stores such as O'Connell's in Buffalo, New York, and Cable Car Clothiers of San Francisco, California are examples of the few stores that continue to exclusively offer clothing in the American Trad style.
Although American Trad is associated with New England mainstream WASP culture, notable adherents have included authors and journalists such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, John O'Hara, Ralph Ellison, the early Jack Kerouac, George Frazier, and George Plimpton. The look was also adopted by outsiders, jazz musicians such as Miles Davis and Chet Baker, who bought their clothes from The Andover Shop in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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