Styling the “Ivy” Man: Jewish Men as Creators and Consumers of an American Style, 1940–1965

Abstract

Studies of Jewish “Americanization” have largely focused on earlier periods of immigration and emphasized the democratic nature of dress in the United States. In contrast, this study analyzes the decades at mid-century when Jews began visibly to enter the American mainstream and argues for an increased appreciation of male sartorial distinction as cultural capital in Jewish social mobility and self-assertion within a stratified American social system. In the decades after the Second World War, a commercialized form of Ivy League style became one of the leading modes of middle class American masculine self-fashioning. Many Jewish students, professors, and young professionals found in Ivy style a statement suited to their aspirations of educational, social, and economic advancement in the face of traditional antisemitic discrimination. The Jewish history of Ivy style reveals the ambiguities and ironies of this process of class-specific Americanization, given the disproportionate role of Jewish tailors and businessmen in the creation and curation of an American style so closely linked to power. Drawing on memoirs, contemporary images, and vintage clothing, this article examines the connection between Ivy style as sartorial habitus and Jewish social and cultural integration in and through higher education.