Love this:

http://www.reyns.com/SC101_Services/SC101_Shopper/showItem.php?menuId=15&itemNum=289

I remember the first time I saw the Beach Boys in Pendletons - a complete culture shock for me - Pendletons on the beach! Before then I had them firmly established in my mind as Campus classics or Log cabin wear.

Didn't Pendleton do a Beach Boys special a couple of years ago recreating the shirt they wore?

On the Mod front Keith Moon was a big Jan & Dean fan I believe and then there was that early-ish Who cover of Barbara Anne...

Hawaii Trad! Try explaining that to the AAAC Trad east coast establishment.

Pendleton’s serve a utilitarian purpose on the beach in California. It’s not always warm & sunny on the beach. And at this time of year the water is cold (Pacific current runs north to south).

So when you strip out of your wetsuit after a surf session you want to put on something warm. The weight of a Pendleton is perfect.

By the way—the Beach Boy’s didn’t surf. But it was important to their handler’s to make them look like they did.

Preppy/Trad are convienient marketing boxes to drop a syle into.

The Ivy League look evolved over a number of years (decades) long before a fashion industry existed as we know it now.

By the early 60s it was almost fully formed.

Mid 60's onwards fashion visited Swinging London, then San Fransisco, then Woodstock, then Studio 54 and ended up back in Punky London in the late 70's. The fashion industry had basically been chasing what was going on in the "streets". That was to change.

Late 70s early eighties is when the marketeers started to take control and there was more large scale product placement in the movies, Annie Hall, America Gigolo the two biggest and widespread celebrity endorsement.

Yes, both had existed before, but not on this scale.

There is little money in Punk Fashion and the industry had to smarten up if it was going to make cash. In the US, you had Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger (just starting) all basically singing from the same song sheet, but different verses. The song was "Ivy League". And why shouldn't they have their roots in Ivy League and be influenced by it, the were all born in the NE States and grew up with it.

But it had to be repackaged, mid 60's we had hippie, then yippies, disco, punks. The tag Ivy League was too stuffy, retro and perochial and the marketeers wanted to go global to a young audience. That is how the term Preppy was born.

If there is a moral or a lesson to be learnt. Dress the same way and every 15 years the industry will make you the height of fashion!

I have compressed this general evolution into as few a words as possible.

RH

Neat stuff guys.