Brooks Brothers Goes Ivy League & Why Those Slippers Need to Stay Home

Hello-Hello, welcome to a delightful Friday here at the Prepatorium, it has been a hectic week.

We begin today with news of another new endeavor for the folks at Brooks Brothers, they will be producing a line showcasing 15 colleges and universities.

Via Brooks Brothers

News about the new collection came late last week that the company will be offering products with the logos of fifteen different colleges and universities.  Here are examples of a few items you can expect to see, specially selected with TQM in mind, that Notre Dame logo seen lower right has a special place in her heart.

Via Brooks Brothers

There was quite the to-do initially, some thought the folks in New Haven were being left out. From the Yale Daily News:

“Preppies, have no fear: despite some rumors to the contrary, Yale will be included in the upcoming Brooks Brothers Collegiate Collection.

Several blogs picked up a Bloomberg story about an unannounced clothing line from Brooks Brothers that would feature fifteen colleges, including Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. Yale was not featured in the article’s list of schools, but according to several sources, the University will be participating in the new collection, available August 15.

For the record, here is the list of schools.

• U.S. Naval Academy
• Alabama
• Auburn
• Boston College
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Georgetown
• Notre Dame
• NYU
• Ohio State
• Princeton
• Stanford
• Vanderbilt
• Univ of Virginia
• Yale

One FYI: in most blog posts and stories we have seen Harvard and/or Georgia included on lists of schools, here is the list shown on the Brooks website.

Brooks Brothers

Look carefully, for we do not seen either Harvard or Georgia on the rundown of schools currently included in the collection.

BTW, a new tie has been added to the Brooks collaboration with Social Primer; here is the Tennis Hall of Fame tie.

Social Primer for Brooks Brothers

As you can see from the photo, there are little white tennis rackets and a ball on the blue portion of the tie, it honors the International Tennis Hall of Fame & Museum in Newport, Rhode Island.

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Also today, a look at relatively new trend: wearing evening slippers out and about. You know the kind of footwear we’re talking about, basic velvet with one’s monogram.

Broadland Slippers

Or the family crest if appropriate.

Broadland

Designed for an evening of casual elegance at home (and a very limited group of other social occasions), evening slippers have been updated, as many readers are no doubt aware. Below left we shoe “Jardin” for women, on the right the men’s “Storm,” both from a shop we have been fond of for some time, Stubbs and Wootton.

The Journal recently carried a story about the new trend, “How Going Outside in Slippers Became Cool.“

“Velvet evening slippers à la Hugh Hefner have caught on with some young celebrities, fashion editors, publicists and other early adopters of men’s high fashion. But no one’s saving them for intimate evenings at home by the fire. Instead, men are hitting the streets in hard-soled, heeled slippers, using them to add an insouciant flavor to shorts, cropped pants, jeans and full suits.”

Really?

Ray Smith’s story was accompanied by a photo of Kanye West wearing the aforementioned slippers. With his jeans.

Getty Images via The Wall Street Journal

The slippers in one form or another have been around forever, but the wretched habit of wearing them out in public is recent.  Fortunately there is a voice of reason on the topic, prompting us to say, “We stand with Esquire on this.”  A headline from the magazine’s Style Blog:

A Trend We Can’t Support: The “Casual” Velvet Slipper

Hallelujah. From Kurt Soller’s blog post:

“If you read the Wall Street Journal this morning, you might be tempted to head over to Brooks Brothers or Ralph Lauren and snag yourself some velvet slippers before they’re sold out.  Please don’t do that.”

Mr. Soller provides solid reasoning as to why one should just say no.

“Prince Albert Slippers, as they’re officially known, or Hugh Hefner slippers, as the WSJ would have them known, are made of velvet for a reason: They’re meant only for formal occasions. And actually, at one point, they were intended to be worn only by the host of a party — in times gone by, people actually had formal events in their own homes. Today, if you wanted to be particularly dashing (or, in some circles: obnoxiously preppy), you could slip on a pair of these slippers right after you put on a tux. For this to work, you’d have to be headed somewhere nice for the evening — somewhere inside.

Very well put, we’ll leave it at that. (Except to say, click here to read Mr. Soller’s entire post on the topic.)

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We leave you with a bit of Friday Fun, we have been busy getting in new things here at Princess InterGalactic HQ. Like our Exclusive Kiel James Patrick Stede Bonnet Headband.

KJP Stede Bonnet Headband at Preppy Princess

With that we say goodbye until next time, if interested in the Kate and William visit to California starting tonight, we will be busy tracking those events at our sister blog, What Kate Wore.

May the weekend be fabulous!

J. Crew Thrashed, & We’re Mad for Madras… With Rope

Hello-Hello!

It really should be a One-Topic Tuesday here at the Prepatorium, we have too many multiple commitments this afternoon and evening and should limit our time here with you, but there is more than one topic to share, so we shall hurry our way through these items.

Some readers may recall our post sharing news that Bergdorf Goodman was opening a Children’s Department, Little bg; it is now open.

Courtesy Bergdorf Goodman

For loads of fun photos showcasing the new department, pop in to the Stylish Tot.

Image via The Stylish Tot

We continue seizing any, and every opportunity to showcase footwear for the tiny preps in your life, it is all simply too precious to resist. Little bg doesn’t disappoint in this arena, and we also adore the Watermelon Seersucker Dress by Florence Eiseman, today’s Pretty in Pink.

Bergdorf Goodman

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Readers may remember our post mentioning that J. Crew was going to be made available for purchase on a global level; the company made a deal with online retailer Net-a-Porter to distribute its merchandise.  The UK’s Daily Mail did a story yesterday reviewing several pieces from J. Crew’s current offerings; all was not sweetness and light. Things started out in a fun way:

“If J Crew were a woman, she would know how to bake cupcakes, and prefer the bedroom to the boardroom. I can see SATC’s Charlotte in J Crew, but none of the others.

I would also say it’s a teensy bit like Boden – worn by outdoorsy mums who like picnics and boats and labradors -but not as wholesome, or as remotely affordable.”

Writer Liz Jones focuses on several key pieces, including this tee shown in the article. The caption in the paper reads: “Too flimsy: The J crew T-shirt, £32“.

The Daily Mail

We are guessing the story is referencing Crew’s Softspun Cotton Pocket Tee ($32.50 USD), but we could be mistaken.  The tee is described this way in the story:

“J Crew’s has a scooped neck, which I hate, and although the neon colours are pretty, the fabric is far too flimsy. I can imagine very few women who would not feel self-conscious and exposed in it.”

To be fair, American tee-shirts as a whole are thrashed in the story.  The retailer’s Tiered Brique Skirt is also written off as “just awful”. Below left we show the image from the story and on the right, the skirt as seen on the US website.

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Ms. Jones speaks highly of Crew’s military jacket, a pencil skirt, and a striped sack dress. The writer is also fond of the Crewcuts line:

“The bad news is that there is, as yet, no childrenswear available here – which is a shame because it’s so fabulous it almost makes me want to go through childbirth.”

But then we get to an unnamed party frock:  .

“There’s a J Crew dress that looks fabulous in photographs, but don’t be deceived.The embellishment is too heavy for the fabric, and the horizontal stripes make even the slimmest woman look wide.

I asked a friend to guess the price, and she said £60. In fact it’s £458….”

Also shown in the story, this gown.

Above we show the Delphinia gown ($350 USD) as seen in the story (L) and on the J. Crew website. The caption in the Mail’s story reads: “The maxi dress: £230 but looks cheap“.

Ouch.

To read the entire story, just click here.

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A few Bits and Bytes:

• Liberty of London will be doing a menswear line, the 200-piece collection is slated for launch next spring
• Baltimore Ravens’ football star Michael Oher and his adoptive family, the Touhy’s (the Blind Side), will be featured in this Sunday’s edition of Extreme Home Makeover. Additionally, Mr. Oher is going to be doing his own book, “”I Beat the Odds: My Amazing Journey from Foster Care to the NFL and Beyond,”due out next February

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We are just delighted to share a few goodies new to the shop, beginning with an addition to the Kiel James Patrick for the Preppy Princess Collection.

KJP for the Preppy Princess Collection

This is our new KJP Madras and Rope headband, designed by Kiel and made exclusively for us, absolutely one of our fave items from this talented young man.

We were especially tickled that Kiel made time to design this (and a few other new treasures not yet on the site), as he is smack in the middle of creating his new Collegiate Collection, soon to be available at the Harvard Coop and Dartmouth Bookstore.

Courtesy Kiel James Patrick

We are guessing these will fly out of both stores. At the speed of light.

In addition to the new KJP Collegiate Collection, we are ever-so-excited to be assisting the designer extraordinaire with a new product launch in the next month!

Courtesy Kiel James Patrick

Until then we are only able to share this image. Sigh.

May your afternoon and evening be simply fabulous!