17/100: Love Story (1970) with Avery Trufelman
The most influential fashion film you've never seen
Love Story (1970)
Costumes by: Pearl Somner Debuskey and Alice Manougian Martin
Directed by: Arthur Hiller
This movie may be for you if: you’re more interested in a sporty look than actually playing a sport, you fantasize about being upper middle class, and you’ve ever been called a “preppy.”
Where to watch: Pluto TV
Earlier this week, American heritage label J. Press debuted at NYFW with a bright orange, re-issued copy of Take Ivy on each seat. If you’re immersed in the world of Ivy style, it makes a lot of sense that a brand founded at Yale in 1902 would present guests with a Japanese photography book from the mid 60’s. If you’ve worn a collegiate-style sweater once or twice but are otherwise uninitiated, there’s no better place to dive in than with Articles of Interest’s 2022 series, American Ivy.
I listen to a lot of podcasts. My Spotify wrapped is an annual lineup of relatively uncool musical artists that I will never share publicly, followed by big floating numbers that show off the truly staggering number of minutes that I spend listening to podcasts (also not to be shared publicly). All of that is to say that out of everything I’ve ever listened to, Season 3 of Articles of Interest remains an all-time favorite.
In American Ivy, host Avery Trufelman deftly guides listeners from elite East Coast campuses to WWII-era Japan to Ralph Lauren’s 1950’s Bronx childhood. It’s a story of class, culture, and democracy, as worn and made and adopted by Black activists and Jewish immigrants and Japanese fashion buyers and, of course, by Ivy League college students.
In Trufelman’s own words, ivy style is, “perhaps, the most incredible fashion arc of the 20th century.”
A few pieces of key media made repeat appearances throughout American Ivy. Though Take Ivy now holds cult classic status, the book was only first translated to English in 2010. In the decades before, American audiences were getting their lessons in elite student dressing from other sources: most notably the semi-satirical 1980 Official Preppy Handbook. Though “preppy” was widely understood enough to be lampooned in the Handbook by the fall of 1980, a hit 1970 romance film was an essential catalyst to the rise of prep ten years earlier.
And I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to talk to more about Love Story than Avery Trufelman herself. Luckily for me, she said yes: call me!
“It’s the movie that coined the word ‘preppy,’” Trufelman told me. “It’s hugely important.”
I’m always so hesitant to officially declare anything as the first. It feels scary! “Was Love Story really the first time it appeared in any popular media?” I asked, just to confirm.
“Yeah, it is,” Trufelman says, continuing on to mirror my incredulity. “I was like really? Is this true? But Dr. Lorynn Divita, a professor [of apparel design and merchandising] at Baylor, was the one who told me this. She’s the author of multiple books on trends and trend forecasting, and I absolutely trust her as a source.”
In American Ivy: Chapter 5, Trufelman expands on the background of ‘preppy’ before it went mainstream. “Real prepsters, as in people who went to preparatory high school, they called themselves ‘preppy’ for a long time - at least since the 1930’s,” she explained. “But only real preppies knew what preppiness was because that world was just so elite. Like, how could anyone outside of this world even know that there are these fancy high schools that are usually boarding schools that look like tiny colleges?”
Later in the episode, Trufelman speaks to the editor and co-author of The Official Preppy Handbook, Lisa Birnbach. Despite having gone to prep school and graduating from Brown, Birnbach herself first heard the word ‘preppy’ in Love Story. Even immersed in the world of Ivy, she didn’t have the word to describe the style of her peers until it was speared at Ryan O’Neal on screen.
“Preppy culture was something that glued my friends and me together,” said Birnbach. “We all thought it was funny.”
The costume design for Love Story was created by Pearl Somner and Alice Manougian Martin. The movie tells the tale of a tragic romance between college students Oliver and Jenny, played by Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. Oliver Barrett IV is a Harvard hockey player, while the working class Jenny Cavilleri studies classical music at nearby Radcliffe College, a women’s liberal arts school that would be fully incorporated into Harvard by 1999. Jenny calls Oliver “preppy” what feels like a hundred times throughout the movie, in what starts as an insult but devolves into an endearing nickname. Despite her endless snarky digs at his silver spoon style, Jenny’s fashion is just as influential as his in the American prep cannon.
Love Story is set in the film’s “current day” of 1970-ish, against the idyllic East Coast backdrops of Cambridge, New York City, and the Old Westbury Gardens mansion on Long Island. While the cheesy dialogue and painfully dated relationship expectations really haven’t aged well, I kept thinking about how timeless the fashion felt. How classic. Jenny and Oliver stroll manicured campus lawns in camel coats, Aran knit sweaters, shiny leather shoes, tartan skirts, and beautiful wool scarves.
The movie’s looks are a country-club buffet of neutral colors and crisp tailoring and traditional prints, with Jenny frequently incorporating red in a way that feel so classically moneyed. But when I mention the “timeless” feeling of Love Story’s fashion, Trufelman reminds me that the original audience would have felt differently.
“Ivy style kind of became solidified into “classics” fairly recently,” Trufelman noted. “It was in the 80’s that it became sort of “what you wear.” We look at those clothes now, and you’re like yeah, that’s what you wear when you’re visiting grandma, or on a job interview, or a date night. Like you want to look nice? You wear Ivy.”
But for the early 70’s viewers first seeing Love Story, the costume design didn’t feature looks that feel safe and ubiquitous in the same way they do now. Trufelman explained that Jenny and Oliver’s outfits would have been widely perceived as college clothes, more campus-coded looks specifically worn by young people.
“This is a look that developed over time, very slowly,” she said. “I think in the 70’s it was still finding its identity. Now we totally take it for granted.”
Love Story was a huge hit. It’s one of the highest grossing films of all time, nominated for seven Academy Awards and two Grammys for the theme song. The screenplay was adapted into a novel as part of the movie’s marketing campaign, released prior to the film and becoming a NYT best-seller. “Preppy” wasn’t the only trend it started, either: MacGraw’s character is credited with launching the name Jenny to the number one spot for American girls, where it stayed for 14 years. The actress’s own knit hat that she wore on set one day spurned years of copycat styles that remained popular throughout the 1970’s.
But before listening to Articles of Interest, I had never even heard of Love Story. And neither had Trufelman.
“Can I tell you…” she admitted when we first started our conversation. “I don’t really like that movie.”
I immediately started laughing, because I also think the movie kind of sucks. MacGraw and O’Neal are beautiful and charming, yet the film itself isn’t particularly compelling, and the relationship depicted definitely isn’t 2026 #couplegoals. So why were audiences so obsessed in the 70’s?
“It’s not just a romance fantasy, it’s a class fantasy,” said Trufelman.
“Another book [Love Story] was in is Class by Paul Fussell,” she said, immediately scanning her bookshelf to pull out her copy. “It’s a really interesting book because it’s like, I would say half satirical, but not really. It’s a book about how class works in America. He says that there are nine classes, but upper middle - that’s what everyone wants to be.”
Trufelman locates Fussell’s 1983 book on her shelves and begins reading aloud. “It’s in large part the class depicted in Lisa Birnbach and other’s Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of the 1980’s. And it is the class celebrated also in the 1970 Ivy idyllic film Love Story. The vast popularity of these two products suggests the appeal of the upper middle style to all Americans who don’t possess it. Indeed, most people of the middle classes and below would rather be in the upper middle class than even the upper, or top out of sight… Being in the upper middle class is a familiar, incredible fantasy.”
Despite there being higher echelons of wealth, Fussell argues that most people don’t actually aspire to the tippy-top. The ultra-wealthy are perceived as the enemy, whose strata includes uncomfortable and unknowable etiquette, while the upper middle class offers the ease of money without all of the social trappings and cultural baggage.
“With the upper middle class, it’s all leaning towards frivolities like golf and tennis and yachting,” Trufelman continues, still quoting Fussell. “Who wouldn’t want to be in a class so free, secure, and amusing?”
“I think it was a much more class-coded look then than it is now,” said Trufelman of the fashion of Love Story. “Now, of course, the legacy of [Ivy] is extremely white collar, but I think it’s been toyed with so many times that it could mean a lot of different things [today].”
I think of the short sleeve polo shirt, which Trufelman also delves into in Chapter 5. The knit shirt has long been an iconic beacon of preppy culture, as easily paired with chino shorts by suburban dads as it is diamond-studded jewelry by chart-topping musicians. Though the polo shirt was first designed by French tennis player Jean René Lacoste in the 1920’s for tennis (not polo), it wasn’t available in America until Ralph Lauren made his own version in the early 70’s (then dubbed the polo), a few years after the enormous success of Love Story. For audiences seeing Jenny and Oliver in theaters, the popped-collar, brightly colored, polo-wearing prep didn’t even exist yet.
“Love Story was part of this wave of nostalgia in the 70s, sort of pining for a simpler time,” Trufelman elaborated. “There were these movies that basically sidestepped the counterculture - they just pretended hippies didn’t exist. Or they took place in the 50’s, like American Graffiti (1973) or Grease (1978). At the end of The Exorcist (1973) she emerges looking like Jackie Kennedy, and that’s how you know she’s like, at peace.”
The Ivy League world of Love Story wasn’t just a world of privilege and leisure, but also a smooth, gleaming fiction devoid of war protesters, DIY patchwork, political pins, and tie-dye. Sure, the story is sad. But before tragedy strikes, a perfectly sunkissed Oliver recites Whitman and Jenny plays piano with a bow in her hair.
“There are all of these movies [at that time] that are like, ah wouldn’t it be nice if we could just go back to a simpler time, when none of this happened?” said Trufelman. “It kind of primed everyone for the big preppy revival in the 80’s, when everyone was disillusioned by the revolution.”
Despite being widely skipped over by most moviegoing generations following the Baby Boomers, Love Story was never forgotten by fashion designers, costumers, and historians of prep. The film’s iconic ivy wardrobe has been a longtime favorite inspiration for American labels like Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors, and Marc Jacobs.
In a 2021 interview with Vogue, Legally Blonde (2001) costume designer Sophie De Rakoff said “her inspirations for Elle came from the archives: Ali MacGraw in Love Story (1970) and the women in His Girl Friday (1940).”
In Taylor Swift’s filmmaking debut, All Too Well: The Short Film (2021), the singer-songwriter cited Love Story as a source of inspiration. During our conversation, Trufelman also mentioned Gossip Girl. Though costume designer Eric Daman never explicitly references Love Story in any press or interviews, Blair Waldorf’s old-money Upper East Side style often seems to take notes from MacGraw’s Jenny.
One of the reasons I was so excited to talk to Trufelman about the cultural impact of this film is because there’s little information about how the costume design actually came together. The style of Love Story is still written about in publications like Vogue and Town & Country decades later, but I couldn’t find a single primary source from the costume designers themselves. No interviews, no sketches, no behind-the-scenes photos of Pearl Somner Debuskey and Alice Manougian Martin on set. It’s unclear what their personal connections were to the Ivy League world they so accurately captured. Despite leaving behind such an important legacy in American fashion, the designers only have one other film credit each.
Debuskey spent the rest of her career in the theater, creating costumes for Broadway and off-Broadway productions from East Germany to Beijing. Self-described as a “red diaper baby,” Debuskey spent her life involved in left wing political activism, and is remembered for artistic ventures including cloisonne jewelry and a book of rubbings from tombstones in Prague’s Old Jewish Cemetery. She lived to 94 years old.
Martin seems to have left the entertainment industry after Love Story. I couldn’t find any additional information about her life and career.
I asked Trufelman if she has any personal favorite outfits from Love Story. She paused, hmm-ing thoughtfully.
“I mean… It’s the whole preppy thing, right? It’s not the clothes themselves, it’s how they wear it,” she said. “Everything’s a little disheveled, it’s not perfect. Like their collars are turned up. It’s kind of great.”
“Oh, her red rights! I love the red tights.”
Overall as a Fashion Film: 9/10
Fashion: 8/10
Influence: 10/10
Movie: 6/10
A huge, huge, thank you to Avery Trufelman of Articles Of Interest for taking the time to talk to me. Our interview and a (third) re-listen of American Ivy really brought this piece to life!
Sources & Additional Reading (and Listening):
Articles of Interest by Avery Trufelman, available wherever you listen to podcasts!
Take Ivy by Teruyoshi Hayashida, Shosuke Ishizu, Toshiyuki Kurosu, and Hajime Hasegawa, 1965
Black Ivy: A Revolt in Style by Jason Jules and Graham Marsh, 2021
Pop That Collar—Revisiting ‘The Official Preppy Handbook’ by Jessica Mischner for Garden & Gun, 2015
Dress the Part: Why We’ve Fallen for the Preppy Seventies Style of Ali MacGraw in Love Story by Alexandra Macon for Vogue, 2014
Love Story, Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neal and the Ivy League Look by Alison Jane Reid for The Luminaries Magazine, 2021
Elle Woods Has Shaped Fashion for 20 Years by Aamina Khan for Vogue, 2021
Costume Designer Pearl Somner Debuskey Dies at 94 by Robert Viagas for Playbill, 2018
I’m familiar with the movie because it was my mom’s favorite (and a reason she named me Jennifer). I love the fashion and look of the movie, but the film itself is really quite bad!
I’ve never seen this movie, but have always been aware of it because it’s like a cultural touchstone, I suppose. I never had much interest in seeing it, but after reading this cultural/fashion context, I want to watch it just to experience the vibes lol
The section you talked about Paul Fussell’s assertion that everybody wants to be middle class, not upper class, is fascinating. Never thought about it that way, and I’d love to revisit the concept of shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Cribs, My Super Sweet Sixteen, etc. through that lens.