Fashion that's perennially preppy

NEW YORK — The quintessential Ivy League look, born on college campuses more than a century ago and epitomized by tweed jackets, seersucker suits, khaki trousers and button-down oxford-cloth shirts, hit the peak of its popularity in the mid-1950s, had fallen out of favor by the '70s and today is invoked most often as the upscale ancestor of the preppy aesthetic. But thanks to a shelf's worth of recent and upcoming books, a new museum exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and a new clothing line from J. Press — one of the Ivy League's earliest outfitters — interest in the look seems to be growing like kudzu.

By Adam Tschorn

September 23, 2012