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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy April 21, 2004: Beer
jacket jaunt Spring at Princeton has long been heralded not by the robin red-breast but by the orange and black of the beer jacket. Fifteen years ago they were worn by seniors a bit sheepishly, as we took pride in the glory of their tradition but winced at their sheer dorkiness. Through the years, though, they were worn with more genuine good cheer, as symbols of seniority, literally, and the rights accorded therein. Seniors in their beer suits (until the post-War years, they were entire costumes of overalls, jackets, and occasionally hats) could sit on the Mather sun dial, among other privileges. According to the Princeton Companion, the suits got their start in 1912, when seniors “while quaffing beer and carving their initials on the tables of the old Nassau Inn, noticed that the foam from their steins sometimes spotted their clothes.” They found that overalls and jackets, commonly worn by working men, kept their outfits pristine, and the next year the entire Class of 1913 donned white coveralls. The Princetoniana web site (www.alumni.princeton.edu/~ptoniana/projects.asp) says that the first design on a jacket appeared in 1918. It was simple: a beer mug inscribed with the year 1918, and a head of foam. The insignias would quickly become more elaborate, however, and within 10 years the logo became a primary identifier of the senior class, summing up the experiences of its college years. In the late 1920s and ‘30s Prohibition and the Depression were common themes; 1938’s emblem, for a class headed to war, showed a dismayed tiger behind an eight ball — and from another perspective, the eight was centered in the sight of a gun. This musing on beer jackets was inspired by a picture and description of the Class of 1942’s insignia, one of the more involved and ingenious designs in beer jacket history. It was drawn by Henry Toll ’42, whose work I first encountered when editing a PAW article on the Class of 1942 during the war. Toll had a distinctive, angular, almost art deco-like style; his tigers look more like today’s harsh Japanese graphics than the cuddly cubs of late 20th-century Princeton years. When Toll’s beer jacket design appeared, Francis Broderick ’43 disparaged it in his May 1, 1942 On the Campus column disparagingly – “a poorly-executed mélange of the class’s interests” — but gave an excellent key to its many details. The logo featured, he wrote, “portraits of President Roosevelt, smoking a cigarette from a holder twice the size of his head, Churchill, munching a cigar as if it were his lunch, and Stalin, just looking idly off into space. There is a Tiger with a gun in one hand, indicating what the class holds in store for the Axis, which is portrayed by an ax (fasces) in the Tiger’s other hand. The ax and the gun form, almost inevitably, V-for-Victory. Down at the left, the Rising Sun is peering out of an oyster shell (Pearl Harbor). The top half of the shell was designed in the form of a football with 150s written on it to indicate the lightweight championship of last Fall. A winged book commemorates the 17 seniors who have already been graduated as a result of their own private accelerations. A Bulldog with four patched bruises recalls that 1942 saw the Elis defeated in four straight football seasons.” Whew. Although I have seen the design once or twice before, I could never have identified every item and its significance; even with Mr. Broderick’s crib sheet, it took me a long time to find Stalin (I believe he is at the very top, facing upward). And Mr. Broderick even failed to mention the black storms of war and the lightning bolts reading “42” above the Tiger’s head. Over the decades the jacket designs became less involved, more
“stylish and free form,” as the Princetoniana site puts
it. Our own class of ’89 jacket, which I’ll haul out
for my 15th reunion next month, simply has a Tiger climbing over
the back of the ill-cut white jacket. However dorky, at Princeton,
you just can’t fight tradition.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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