Skull and Bones 1948 Yearbook
While browsing The Cary Collection last month, we discovered a most curious book in Cary’s voluminous inventory. Simple in appearance, bound in black Moroccan leather with four names stamped in silver leaf across the cover. It is a yearbook of sorts—Thomas William Ludlow Ashley’s Skull and Bones yearbook to be exact. Founded in 1832, the secret society at Yale university in New Haven, Connecticut is infamous for tapping campus leaders and other notable figures for its membership. The family names on the secret society’s roster read like an elite party list—Lord, Whitney, Taft, Jay, Bundy, Rockefeller, Goodyear, Kellogg, Pillsbury, Vanderbilt, Bush and so on. Though Ashley went on to enjoy a longstanding political career in Washington, it is another politician’s membership that shrouds this yearbook with bated breath—a one George Herbert Walker Bush...
Read More
The Cary Collection
Thomas Cary just paid $1,400 for Take Ivy, and it was only the second edition. It doesn’t bother him that it’s being reprinted. “I have clients—I sell to Tommy (Hilfiger?),” he assures us. Over the last decade he has spent up to a quarter million a year on rare and vintage books only to turn around and shrewdly supply them to the likes of Kate Spade, Tory Burch, J.Crew, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. They are just a few of many tapping The Cary Collection for design inspiration and display; furnishing their retail stores stretching from the Hamptons to far east Asia. Though a queer client list for a book dealer, Cary’s aesthete taste has granted him access to this veritable Who’s Who of neo-prep designers...
Read More
Ralph Lauren
This eponymous 40th anniversary book sits as the crown jewel in Fred’s makeshift coffee table. At an impressive 11 1/2” x 15”, this profound volume shares intimate reflections of Ralph Lauren’s life and work, featuring more than 700 hand picked photographs. The man is a dreamer—a storyteller. When he began designing menswear his inspiration came from old yearbooks and images of students from Princeton, Harvard and Yale. What he designed in 1967 isn’t old, and yet what he’s creating in 2010 isn’t new. And therein lies the beauty of the prep aesthetic. The clothes are as timeless as the vision behind them...
Read More
The Sartorialist
The Sartorialist is in our town (Dallas, TX) today for his book signing. Ironically, we’re in his (New York, NY). While disappointed we wouldn’t be meeting Scott Schuman personally; however, our good friend Sara, who publishes Pair Diem, amicably agreed to take our book along with hers to the signing...
Read More
