Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style

The title says it all.

As Japan rebuilt and modernized in the post-WWII years, an underground fascination with American "Aibii" (from the English word "Ivy") style took root with Japanese youth.  By 1964, these kids, dressed in shirts with strange buttoning down collars;  jackets with superfluous top buttons; and short tan pants, had acquired an official name, the "Miyuke Tribe" and, in the eyes of authorities wishing to present Japan's best face in the lead up to the 1964 Olympics, they'd become an official problem, as well.

The American-style Youth Quake had arrived in Japan and the country's fashion landscape hasn't been the same since.

In 2010, people around the fashion world rediscovered a rare 1965 Japanese photo book, Take Ivy, a documentary of student style on Ivy League campuses and one of the most influential men's style books ever published.

The craze for the book sparked the realization that the Japanese had safeguarded America's sartorial history while the US had worked to make Dress Down Friday an all-week affair.

In this seminal book, author W. David Marx makes the argument that Japanese consumers and brands have saved American fashion in both meanings of the word -- by physically archiving the clothes as canonical knowledge and protecting them from extinction through continued production-- and tells the fascinating story of how they did it.

An essential read for any student of Ivy and American Traditional ("Ametora") Style.