Edited with text by Jason Jules. Art direction and design by Graham Marsh.
How Black culture reinvented and subverted the Ivy Look
Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Financial Times
From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear. Here you will see some famous, infamous and not so famous figures in Black culture such as Amiri Baraka, Charles White, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sidney Poitier, and how they reinvented Ivy and Prep fashion—the dominant looks of the time. The real stars of the book—the Oxford cloth button-down shirt, the hand-stitched loafer, the soft shoulder three-button jacket and the perennial repp tie—are all here. What Black Ivy explores is how these clothes are reframed and redefined by a stylish group of men from outside the mainstream, challenging the status quo, struggling for racial equality and civil rights. Boasting the work of some of America's finest photographers and image-makers, this must-have tome is a celebration of how, regardless of the odds, great style always wins.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style'.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
New York Times
Guy Trebay
It is a rare event when a volume comes along that skews our understandings of fashion as effectively as “Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style"
Independent
A magnificent piece of photographic social history – broken up into chapters about the Black Ivy look in literature, arts, music, film, politics, sports, advertising, civil rights demonstrations and marches and in urban environments. […] A revealing study of the role clothing played during a period of upheaval and social change.
Bookforum
Melvin Backman
The images throughout Black Ivy capture various clotheshorses playing with the codes of the day to create something a little off but beautiful. It doesn't matter that the clothes are ordinary and pedestrian; what's documented here is not a set of breathtaking garments but the flowering and proliferation of a mildly subversive spezzatura.
Mr Porter
Justin Quirk
The black Ivy era showed how style could be deployed as an intrinsic part of a radical political, intellectual movement and could fortify a person’s identity when they needed it the most. And that noble idea’s moment has come again.
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Thursday, January 27 from 6–9 PM, Drake's NYC and Reel Art Press present the launch of Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style. Come celebrate with author Jason Jules, who will be signing copies of the book and toasting with libations provided by EBBS Brewing Co. Please RSVP to drakes@drakes.com. continue to blog
"Style is about the freedom to be oneself, to authentically express oneself, and in doing so reject limitations imposed by others," Jason Jules writes in the critically-acclaimed survey, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style, back in stock from Reel Art Press. "When it comes to this period and these clothes, it's often mistakenly argued that Black men appropriated this style out of a desire to be white, coming from a deep sense of inferiority. In reality, the urge to wear these clothes was in no small part borne of the desire to demonstrate that equality which had been so fiercely denied them in other ways. Countering racist preconceptions, the goal was to be recognized as at least equal to the rights they were fighting for, not only in the eyes of the American mainstream but throughout the world. Rather than a sign of conformity and compliance Black Ivy was a kind of battledress, a symbolic armor worn in the nonviolent pursuit of fundamental change. Making society treat them differently meant making the mainstream see them differently first. And they did." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 10.75 in. / 224 pgs / 100 color / 100 b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $49.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $64.95 ISBN: 9781909526822 PUBLISHER: Reel Art Press AVAILABLE: 12/21/2021 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ASIA AFR ME
Published by Reel Art Press. Edited with text by Jason Jules. Art direction and design by Graham Marsh.
How Black culture reinvented and subverted the Ivy Look
Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Financial Times
From the most avant-garde jazz musicians, visual artists and poets to architects, philosophers and writers, Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style charts a period in American history when Black men across the country adopted the clothing of a privileged elite and made it their own. It shows how a generation of men took the classic Ivy Look and made it cool, edgy and unpredictable in ways that continue to influence today's modern menswear.
Here you will see some famous, infamous and not so famous figures in Black culture such as Amiri Baraka, Charles White, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sidney Poitier, and how they reinvented Ivy and Prep fashion—the dominant looks of the time. The real stars of the book—the Oxford cloth button-down shirt, the hand-stitched loafer, the soft shoulder three-button jacket and the perennial repp tie—are all here. What Black Ivy explores is how these clothes are reframed and redefined by a stylish group of men from outside the mainstream, challenging the status quo, struggling for racial equality and civil rights.
Boasting the work of some of America's finest photographers and image-makers, this must-have tome is a celebration of how, regardless of the odds, great style always wins.
