Key Points
On the cover of Lisa Birnbachs The Official Preppy Handbook, a tongue-in-cheek 1980s guide to looking, acting and thinking like a US prep school elite, a pattern along the border depicts a fabric that has become synonymous with casual American luxury: madras.. ..
The pair struck a dollar-a-yard deal (about $10 per yard in todays money), with an immediate shipment of 10,000 yards that was entirely scooped up by Brooks Brothers and tailored into sporty jackets, shirts and shorts.. . Laidback postWorld War II baby boomers couldnt have enough, she wrote, noting that shelves with madras clothing were stripped within a week.. . . But, in his excitement, Jacobson forgot to tell Brooks Brothers the fabric would bleed, the author said..
Although Ogilvy, Nair and Jacobson shot madras into superstardom in the US during the 1960s, the fabrics link with the Ivy League had started centuries earlier with Elihu Yale, the colonial administrator of the East India Companys Fort St. George outpost in Chennai and the primary benefactor of Yale College (now Yale University).. ..
Yale, who amassed much of his fortune through the East India Company in the late 17th century, sent unusual cotton fabrics that the Indian cottagers made to be sold or otherwise improved to benefit the college, the ad reads.. ..
Some say it was inspired by Scottish tartans, though it differs in several important ways (madras features neither the black lines nor the two-by-two weave of tartan, and is made of cotton, not wool).. . . Records seen by Metropolitan Museum of Art researcher Kai Toussaint Marcel show that Portuguese merchants traded the Indian fabric in North Africa and the Middle East as far back as the 13th century, and that the Kalabari people of Nigeria used it in dresses and headdresses and during religious and spiritual rituals..
