4F Hepcat wrote:

Preppie is clearly the marketing of an idealised, frivolous and yet thoroughly wholesome vision of youth.

If you compare to adverts from the boom period for Ivy, there's a maturity in the image being sold.

Which is why the current Ivy college kid obsession is just plain wrong !

4F Hepcat wrote:

Preppie is clearly the marketing of an idealised, frivolous and yet thoroughly wholesome vision of youth.

If you compare to adverts from the boom period for Ivy, there's a maturity in the image being sold.

Selling an idea of maturity and manhood to the young is a form of aspirational marketing. Particularly to young men on college campuses who futures and career paths are unsure.

SubtleCool wrote:

I suspect that, paradoxically for all the occasional angst on these fora, that clothes in the mainstream have almost now become ALL symbol. Symbolizing lifestyle, attitude, youth whatever rather than the qualities of cut, cloth, the roll of the collar which we do at least talk about here.

Perhaps this has happened over a long period but this is the world we are in now.

It was always thus.

The Thin Repp wrote:

I think some of the hostility toward prep is due to its flippant, irreverent attitude toward notions of appropriate dress. A man looks at a pair of bright pants and says "oh I could never be taken seriously in those!" Prep isn't concerned with being taken seriously because it arose from a kind of Ivy League resortwear that was designed to provide the wearer with a respite FROM being taken seriously, having spent much of his working life concerned with his professional appearance. Patch madras and yellow linen must have felt very different in a time when men were expected to leave the house most days in gray flannel.

That's an excellent point. The social and economic pressures to conform and obey as recent at a few decades ago would horrify us if we had to live under them today.

One For Bop wrote:

I disagree with Zach, in some ways, I think for me a big problem with Prep is the lack of attention to proper fit, or at least, stylish fit, guys with pants too long and to big, etc. then with a slim fit BD, just makes a terribly proportioned outfit.

I disagree with you. I've seen some of the looks which get praised around here and it doesn't all look good. It's okay on its own terms, but hardly universally or objectively good since fit is not as scientific as is often supposed or asserted.

Jimbo wrote:

What is never stressed in the OPH is looking good in your clothes.

I think the point they were making (which I know you know) was that you shouldn't spend any effort at all on clothing.

Jimbo wrote:

Where is the man in the Grey Flannel suit ?

He cheated on his wife, abandoned his children, offshored thousands of his neighbour's jobs, and voted and gave money to politicians who betrayed their own country while draping themselves in the flag.

Hard Bob Hank wrote:

I'm not sure about all of this.

I do not think of Ivy and Prep as diametrically opposed.

That strikes me as equally far from truth as if saying that these terms were simply synonymous...


I think that the way these words are used here by  Rob and by Zach are all about their different connotations...

People might have used the word "Preppie" back in the 50s without thinking of anything GTH/ loud or over the top, just as well as you might talk about "Ivy" today and mean something slightly dubious or even tasteless.

One problem is that people make choices about what they wear based on personal taste and then for reasons I don't understand attempt to retrospectively justify their choices. They should just say they made their choices based on personal taste. No further justification is needed. I've recently criticised FNB for making this fundamental mistake but I suspect it's fallen on deaf ears.

One For Bop wrote:

LSD It's a powerful tool

Good lord, what nonsense. The 60s are over.

Big Tony wrote:

One For Bop wrote:

LSD It's a powerful tool

Good lord, what nonsense. The 60s are over.

Take the quote in its full context, and it is obviously a joke???

Geezer Ivy is the way to go.  Confident, upbeat, sharp.

Entertainment industry rather than college inspired - but not hung up on jazz.

Nothing carved in stone either; or else it becomes a uniform. Your ties do not have to be striped and you can wear any watch you fancy.

I like this look. Muchly.

A nice absence of all the 'Ponce Ivy' I keep seeing.

^ There are skinhead roots.

It is more 'dress to impress' - fluid, without being a stickler for any tradition. Definitely not crumpled though.

Definitely not a uniform either. You would want to be ahead of the game.

Jimbo wrote:

Kingston1an wrote:

Geezer Ivy is the way to go.  Confident, upbeat, sharp.

Entertainment industry rather than college inspired - but not hung up on jazz.

Nothing carved in stone either; or else it becomes a uniform. Your ties do not have to be striped and you can wear any watch you fancy.

Brother - Geezer Ivy needs a manifesto - Fancy a stab ?

I see it as Ivy with 'Nah muckin' abaht' ... Am I close ?

Kingston1an wrote:

^ There are skinhead roots.

It is more 'dress to impress' - fluid, without being a stickler for any tradition. Definitely not crumpled though.

Definitely not a uniform either. You would want to be ahead of the game.

I still like to wear a Harrington with a check button down, levis, loafers and red socks occasionally. What's wrong with that? 

You don't like it I'll nut ya!

Big Tony wrote:

The Thin Repp wrote:

Prep is unlike Ivy and Trad because Prep doesn't give a shit about the past and doesn't want to. Trad longs for a time when men were men, when the world was responsible and moral, when quality was quality and America was America.  The pantheon of Trad heroes contains a high number of politicians and businessmen. Ivyists seek to relive, re-experience, or take some small part in the time of America's great contributions to both high culture and "good" consumerist culture. Both styles seem to want to indicate that the present is fallen and insufficient, that American culture, be it morally, politically, or artistically, culturally, has fallen from the state of grace in which it once existed.

I find that to be a negative way of thinking about life and I hope that's not how most Ivy fans think about things.!

Zach deals in vintage clothing. Second hand and deadstock stuff, mainly from the Boom Years.

I don't believe he is a cultural pessimist in general.

I can't speak for him, I can only speak for myself, but I suppose that for several reasons, mainly cost cutting, cheap labour and outsourcing, the quality in clothing and shoe manufacture went downhill, especially in the lower to medium range...  Nevertheless, I'm pretty sure that's not just an American phenomenon.

I don't want to talk about The Decline of the West or The Downfall of the Occident. And I don't even want to go on about how amazing fashion, music, life in general, everything must have been in the 50s/60s, even though Jazz, R&B, Pop etc. from that era is the main part of my record collection...

I'm not sure though, if America back then was in a state of grace, morally...

I don't share the orthodox Marxist view of a linear historical development, and I don't believe that it's all decline or downfall... but I'm drifting off again...

I merely believe that the average American male was better dressed back then.

Big Tony wrote:

The Thin Repp wrote:

Prep can take the past and fuck with it (a little or a lot) because it doesn't want to re-inhabit the past. The current moment is just fine for Prep. It is a youth style just like Ivy was in the 1960s, and youth styles tend not to remind the wearer that one day they will be old by imploring them to seek timeless clothing. Prep says "wear green pants because you're young and fit and handsome, and yeah, you can pull it off, don't worry, it's summer and that girl over there has green pants too." Is it a mass market thing? Of course. But there is cheap mass-market Prep and esoteric, expensive connoisseur Prep just as there was cheap mass-market Ivy and expensive esoteric connoisseur Ivy. 

One of the fascinating things about old Ivy ads is the amount of lifestyle-ism that is present (a 1950s invention, modern advertising). Think of names like Arrow "Cum Laude," and PhD (Philosophy of Dress) and "Cricketeer Young Executive" and tell me they didn't promise belonging to the culture of the educated and the prosperous. Even more straightforward Ivy ads assured the potential buyer that he was buying "authentic" Ivy, that this purchase assured his membership to the cognoscenti of this new style, that he could be the BMOC by buying a shirt.

The name Ivy League is an aspirational name. They didn't call them "State School Clothes" afterall.

Those three paragraphs are true, in my opinion, and I've always seen things that way which I why I don't understand why the Ivy guys always attack preppy styles. Who cares? Just do your own thing. Not everything has to have deep cultural or class significance, especially something as superficial as clothing!

I'm with Zach on this, too.

I don't attack preppy styles. I just can't get crazy over some of these exaggerations, and some of the affectations nowadays associated with preppy... and, as nice as the Official Preppy Handbook may be... I think it's hilarious when some people take a faux handbook as gospel and learn all the rules by heart, when they cannot read it as satire. Moose has said that he actually got a copy where most of the items/ rules where ticked off!!!