Style with staying power
In the 1970s, 13 men’s clothing stores in Harvard Square catered to the Ivy League look. Today only two remain: J. Press, which opened in Cambridge in 1932, and the Andover Shop, which followed 21 years later. The look they sell is one that has stood the test of time. “The Ivy League look is part of our heritage,” said Denis Black, the 69-year-old general manager emeritus of J. Press. The first store was founded in 1902 in New Haven, Conn., by Jacobi Press, a Latvia-born haberdasher. After satisfying the sartorial needs of the Yale community and many of New England’s finest preparatory schools, he went on to open stores in New York City, Cambridge, and Princeton, N.J. Today, the company maintains locations in New Haven, Washington, D.C., New York, and at the corner of Mount Auburn and Dunster in Harvard Square. The Ivy League style’s heyday stretched from the 1950s into the...