Men's Fashions Veer Yet Closer to Edward VII; Distinctive Ectomorph Holds Style Spotlight As Male Goes Stringbean

While the Radcliffe girl in signalling thumbs down on the new look, the Harvard man is picking it up with enthusiasm. The well-dressed man is becoming narrower and narrower--the stringbean look now dominates proper male fashions.

Evidently, this is another attempt to assert the utter superiority and distinctiveness of the ectomorph--in Harvard's world, at any rate. Everyone knows that the seats in the Stadium, at New Lecture Hall, and at the Indoor Athletic Building were designed solely to accommodate ectomorphs. Now it appears that the style sultans in New York and London are making clothes expressly designed to shrink the masculine form.

Of course, dress at Harvard is a fairly static, conformist affair. Zoot-suits, funnel shapes, and one-button California drapes were never in order: it's always been (or at least, for as long as we can recall) the three-button jacket with sparely padded shoulders.

But the traditionally straight, string-beanish outline is growing straighter. Whether the impulse originated along New York's Madison Avnue, London's Saville Row, or Cambridge's Mount Auburn Street, is of little consequence. The important thing is that male styles are gradually turning back to Edward VII for a model.

For example. A few weeks ago, we noticed in the window of one of our most stylish Cambridge haberdashers, a four-button jacket. Four buttons! All the other usual equipment, naturally--tweed, British vents, spare shoulders, pocket flaps--but four buttons! After a while, the jacket disappeared from the window, and we breathed a sigh of relief, still clinging to our recently threatened three-buttoned job. But when, scarcely a week ago, we noticed the self-same jacket draped--or rather, compressed--around the shoulders of a friend of ours, our anxiety was trebly renewed.

We began seaching around for further signs of the reversion to Edwardianism, and to our dismay, we found several. Although we've seen nobody wearing a bowler, we know there are several floating around. Various acquaintances are known to possess slim, black walking sticks. And the other day on Plympton Street, we noticed somebody wearing a black cape.

Keeping in Step

Of course, if Edwardianism asserts itself as the proper style of masculine dress, there is nothing to do but adopt it. We've readily taken up Chesterfields, so there is little reason for us to resist four or five or six button coats, inverted shoulders, walking sticks, bowlers, and full, flaring capes if they happen to become fashionable.

For the present, however, we must consider what is presently correct. In the Spring, seersucker and cord jackets are both practical and eminently proper. Of late, the inexpensive blue denim jackets have become quite popular. There are also sober tan or grey gabardine suits, and for more formal occasions or chilly evenings, the ever-dependable grey flannel is unspeakably proper.

In shirts, the oxford weave, with the button-down, tab, or golf collar is worn all year. However, don't be fooled merely because a shirt is both oxford weave and button-down: pink is still pink.