Amazing stuff Beebs, thanks, posted an initial response, more to follow

sitting here in chilly California in white tee, farmer jeans USA, striped surf socks, wide leather brass C-buckle England, waiting for the fam to get its ass in gear for lunch

watching a hummingbird in its nest outside the Giant vibrator (kitche*n) window, reminds me of a good scene in George Roy Hill's Connecticut country comedy Funny Farm

need to put on my O'Connell's sweater or my Russell hoodie, it's cold here, should I be looking backward or looking forward?

I'll be damned. It worked!

(Sings)

I'm just a male crossdresser
Struggling with my bra
And looking out my
Giant vibrator window




Ok, it needs work

I like the stuff I came up with, that's what I relate to, I liked the clean-cut Ivy of the '60s, and as things evolved I liked California surf and skate and rock styles of the later '60s, and then liked funk and athletic styles of the early '70s, and then I liked the outdoorsy styles of the mid-to-late '70s, and the whole time these styles were tempered by the campus prep of school dress codes I had to abide by, which were basically buttoned shirts with collars, no jeans, no sneakers, and obligatory neckties, until the last year, when we were given a school logo polo shirt option.

this translated into Gant and Sero shirts, some chambray shirts, Levi's 519 cords, Clarks Wallabees and Desert Treks, and Sperry Top-Siders, with some repp ties from Burdine's, and the odd Brooks Brothers nicked from my father

my younger brothers had to wear some Brooksgate but I didn't have any of that stuff

I still like all of those things, and lots of other stuff as well; the period I like least is probably the pastels and neons and colorblocking of the mid-'80s

the snobby stuff from the Official Preppy Handbook was really taken up by snobby kids, but not all preppies are snobs; my friends came from all sorts of backgrounds but I had and have a ton of friends from the major boarding schools and none of them gave a damn about looking like textbook preppies because they were freed from the obligation of dressing the part by being the real thing .....

when I write about t-shirts, jean jackets, and sneakers at Ivy prep schools in the '70s and '80s, it is to dispel the myth that everybody there dressed in a monolithic preppy formulaic way ..... often it was that the preppier the person the greater the effort not to be a stereotype, in many cases ..... we laughed at overdone costume prep

I'm still wearing the same low-key stuff from Press, Andover, and Brooks, some of which I bought in the '70s and '80s

the most neo-Ivy I get is O'Connell's, which I only learned about on the internet in the early '00s, how would I have known about a shop in Buffalo?

in fact, the reason I got into J. Press and the Andover Shop was that those shops were literally across the street from where I lived at school, so they were convenient, and they had store charges, so I didn't need cash, and shopping there was too easy, I wasn't about to go shopping at the mall or anyplace else, I didn't like to shop, and I got everything else at the Co-Op and the Coop, they also had store charges and everything you could want from sunglasses to blank cassettes to textbooks to Wigwams to Top-Siders and Purcells; I only shopped for clothes at J. Press and the Co-Op and sporting goods stores; later I expanded to the Andover Shop and the Coop.  Hardly ever shopped at Brooks, didn't have a store account there, they were too big and officious, whereas Press and Andover were cinches.  Three or four stores, it was easy.

I bought my first J. Press shirts because I gave my high-school shirts to my freshman roommate, he was on scholarship and had nothing and my old shirts were suddenly too small, I was swimming a lot, so I gave him my old stuff and bought four new ones at $30 a pop and a month or two later my father called and told me to knock it off, which I did, but I had already bought two pairs of cords, a Shaggy Dog, two Viyella shirts, two scarves, and a tweed sport coat before I got busted, but by then I had the gear I needed to try to look older than 17 on those trips to New York, but of course I still looked my age regardless of the J. Press ... blucher mocs, Co-Op brand, made in Maine, because I didn't like shoes, only sneakers and moccasins ..... had a jeans jacket, a pea coat, a great ventile cloth down jacket, some Champion sweats and hoodies, Top-Siders, blucher mocs, Sperry cvos, Purcells, N!ke canvas tennies, and Foot-Joy squash shoes.  Tennis shorts from J. Press too.

I was into those shops for my own convenience years before the OPH was published ... went to Brooks Brothers to buy scarves, knit hats, and sweaters when I was freezing cold and happened to pass by the Back Bay Brooks, that was my first trip to Boston to visit a college girlfriend when I was in high school

when I was a guest in the houses of people who are staples in these pages and avatars of Ivy, families out of the history books, it was sometimes good form to wear the occasional ocbd and Shaggy Dog instead of a Grateful Dead t-shirt, and sometimes we complied with parental wishes, and sometimes we wore tweed sport coats when we were taken out to dinner, but we never were dressing to put anybody else down or to try to make ourselves seem rich, we knew we were just teenagers or youngsters in our early 20s ....

I always knew that it was lame to use clothing as a weapon, clothing is a great tool for living but I view it pragmatically