Ardour Brand I V Bear line...

As we prepare for the new Ardour collection to be finished we wanted to give some background as to why we have designed and manufactured the items we have for our I V Bear line. 

I think for the most of both of our lives growing up and going into our adult years we have spent a lot of time crossing over in terms of styles, with heavily rooted values in British sub culture we have both always ventured outside of these styles looking elsewhere for inspiration and also curiosity and bringing in different ingredients from other culture's.

One such ingredient is Ivy League and Ivy sportswear, already close to home as a smart look it houses the main properties of what we love in clothing, harrington's, knitwear, oxfords, loafers, sweatshirts, sportswear and cagoule's to name a few and they are all items we have lovingly adopted into our wardrobes over the years while keeping a rugged British rogue tone with it, character, something that feels less preppy and more underground as we wear it differently than those stateside and is more about some working class lads dressing in a way that we probably shouldn't and mixing it up a bit.

Looking back and seeing the similarities of traditional Ivy style compared to modern day styles you can almost chain the links from Ivy and Mod to Suedehead and Casual and other cultures with a lot of similar styling still present in places if ever so slightly updated, maybe it's something that only lads from a certain background notice, especially in Britain where throughout the 1900's up to the present day scenes and cultures have always been formed from a different outlook and from a predominantly working class background and that's always evident when browsing old photos whereas Ivy was born through very different circumstances.

Traditional Ivy Leaguers might turn their noses up at our point of view probably in the same way they turn their noses up at others who take Ivy into their own hands, less Brooks Brothers more Mark Mcnairy, but that's what makes it exciting and with the values being slightly different of why we dress that way there will always be a slight conflict of interest.
In terms of Ivy Styling today we think it's evident that it's at a strong point in fashion, albeit slightly twisted but then we've never been one for complete traditional values because I think at some point you do have to move on slightly but the core character of Ivy style is as cutting edge now as it has always been and browsing through collections from the likes of Margaret Howell, Our Legacy and Mark Mcnairy (to name a few) it shows that Ivy styling is in a firm position and not just within the core labels that we expect it from. 

Going back to Ardour and how we vision things, from our point of view we are always drawn back to the letterman's and jackets, in particular coach jackets and rubber rain jackets so this is the route we have gone into for the first part of this year.

Last year we started a sub line up under Ardour called the I V Bear range (Ivy Bear range) where we wanted to bring out Ivy inspired clothing and accessories starting with our collaboration with Ebbets Field Flannels and also our own AB college sweatshirt. 

Continuing with this line we have a new range of college sweatshirts that will be on sale soon, plus two coach jackets and also a rubberised rain jacket collaboration which is in the making. 

We have used our sportswear AB logo in cream on the bottle green sweatshirt, and also a traditional looking Maroon sweat with our mustard Ardour Hornets logo.