Last edited by AQG (2009-04-24 14:02:34)

Moved this post to chet's snobbery thread.

Last edited by AQG (2009-04-24 14:21:11)

Lots of thoughts on that, 66.  Unfortunately, I'm in the tenth ring of hell known as a Little League baseball game and they will have to keep until I have a full keyboard.

1966 is really on to something in my opinion.  In the 90s, the recurrent them of Ivy popped up in at least a couple of different guises.  Business casual drove the first one.  Suddenly, guys who wore really bad suits were told that they were liberated from them.  This caused mass confusion as they then had to figure out how to not wear the suits and still look fit to be trusted with money or products or whatever responsibility.  This ushered in what might be know as the Docker's era.  It was a Levis brand attached to chinos, polo and other shirts.  I think they even turned out some shoes.  It came to the rescue of all of these guys.  They unknowingly got rescued by a brand that picked up preppy/Ivy staples and marketed them out.  None of these guys would have self-identified as preppies, but that look was the lifeline.  Of course, they really didn't do it very well.  Shoes, belts and other accessories were often just dead wrong for the clothes.  Either they were too formal or just plain rubbish.  But that's not the point.  The influence came out strongly.

The second trend I noticed happened in the late 90s to early 00s.  Suits went to a slimmer lapel and body style.  Ties narrowed down, too.  There was a focus on leaner, harder cuts and colors.  Brooks did this with their SB3 suit.  My thought at the time was that the whole look was heavily influenced by the early 1960s.  It wasn't the same, to be sure.  The jackets were darted but the trousers went plain front.  Specific cues and details were different.  However, the overall effect was much more like what the 55-65 stuff than clothes from any other period in the 20th century.

Neither of these efforts was at all self-conciously preppy or Ivy, yet those influences reached the mass American market.  In the 80s and the 00s, it reached it in a much more self-aware way.  Yet before, during and after those times, the core of the preppy/Ivy look kept on moving along.  In America, that is.

'66 still makes a very good point about the old undercurrent though.

Chums,

this "son" business -- what haff you wrought, ol' Jim?

on Raff, as friends of his call him:  his strength (if he has one) seems to me that he is a good observer, for the most part:  a certain fanatical attention to detail, which I suppose comes with being an enthusiast of something.