Clothes are Always Tangled in Broader Social Struggles

September 25, 2023 4:02 AM

Instead, the version of prep that persists is the democratized, constantly reinvigorated version that these three works trace. Always a multiracial, multiethnic project, prep has been shaped by striving women and queer people as much as by the insouciant WASP college men supposedly synonymous with the style. Troublingly, white nationalists in polos and khakis are perhaps the latest group to claim prep, clearly to blend in with people who would look askance at brown shirts and steel-toe boots. The style’s insistent spread beyond campus has spawned so many reinventions and remixes that it can be hard to pinpoint any longer exactly what qualifies as prep. If prep is everywhere, can we still recognize it as distinct? from We're All Preppy Now [The New Republic; ungated]
posted by chavenet (55 comments total)

Reading the intro, I'm wondering how much it costs the author to get a meal at Newark Airport
posted by Brachinus at 5:17 AM on September 25, 2023 [24 favorites]

I memorized The Preppie Handbook first edition when I was a child and though it was part humour, it was also very rooted in fact, and the fact is that prep is not what you wear but how you act. The clothing is a uniform, allowing like to easily identify like, but.... prep is as prep does. If the clothing style is adopted more broadly, then true prep will choose other signifiers. [ sniffs broadly ]
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:26 AM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

“Look Muffy, it’s a post for us!”

(If memory serves, this echoes a pop up on the cover of the 1980s softcover edition of the Handbook.)

My memory of preppy clothing is mounting a fierce resistance to it. Preppy clothes were what my mother wanted me to wear, rather than shredded jeans and holey t-shirts. I have never been a fashion plate, nor especially interested in what I’m wearing beyond the texture, but I had friends who studied the Handbook so they could pop their collars just-so and shake their heads at those who failed to. Even then, as a kid, I sensed the Handbook codified a kind of wall between “us” and “them” and while I was considered an “us” I sure felt more like a “them.”
posted by Construction Concern at 5:38 AM on September 25, 2023 [11 favorites]

Anyone in this thread should check out Avery Trufleman's amazing, five-episode podcast arc about Ivy Style, starting here (as mentioned in TFA): https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/american-ivy-chapter-1

It's waaaay more absorbing than I expected.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:39 AM on September 25, 2023 [23 favorites]

And another essay/book review on the same topic: Costume Drama
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 5:45 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

My memory of preppy clothing is mounting a fierce resistance to it. Preppy clothes were what my mother wanted me to wear, rather than shredded jeans and holey t-shirts.

I feel this. I didn't really know how I was dressing, but I viscerally understood who I was being asked to dress like.
posted by mhoye at 5:49 AM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

There is a lot to unpack (pun?) in that essay - the early history of Jewish immigrants having a profound influence on early fashion (while often changing names to fit in), later struggles with classism and the huge role that Ivy League institutions played, and also some examination of the racism inherent in the system. Not so much about fast fashion, but perhaps that's a topic for a different essay.

For me, this was a trip down memory lane of what I used to wear, before I came out as queer. I have a mother who used to dress me in button downs from her favorite stores, or polo shirts, paired with the same khakis and Eddie Bauer slip-on shoes.

I'm free from that now.

To me, preppy doesn't represent queer - it represents that life I was forced to live for so many years, not caring about my own image or clothing choices. Now? It's sun dresses when I'm feeling girly, embroidered jeans and boots when I want a bit more of a down-to-business look. I find myself in queer spaces where the same preppy clothes that give others a chance to express gender diversity are the ones that used to be my prison.

So don't try to put me in a polo shirt or khakis. As I said to tigrrrlily recently while shopping for clothes, 'Death first.'
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:02 AM on September 25, 2023 [15 favorites]

I really enjoyed Avery Trufelman's podcast, which I didn't expect, because I also grew up believing that prep was the uniform of evil, or at least of shallowness. I was the kind of girl who wore a cloak or a surplus marching-band jacket over broomstick skirts. At my school, the derisive term for preps was "white hats" because they all had a school ball cap that seemed to never come off -- sometimes it was turning grey. Even the girl preps wore them, although preppy girls were sure to always have an extremely tight blonde ponytail in any case -- the before/after look for field hockey or lacrosse practice.

(Incidentally Southern prep girls did not have names like "Muffy" or "Binky." It was more "Baxter" or "Gayden," maybe "Mary Fancy-Surname" or "Fancy-Surname Anne" -- always pronounced together. The guys had much the same kind of nicknames as the Northern preps, because they also hid enormous hereditary names. Saw a guy named Eudoxius Cincinnatus Something III once -- his son's name was Trey.)

Anyway, the podcast opened my eyes towards its reception in Japan and in the black community, which jolted loose my hostility. And to be honest, the mainstreamed prep look features a lot in my casual wear when I want to look reasonably fresh. After turning 40, I no longer have the confidence for a marching-band jacket. Or at least I don't know where it is anymore.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:04 AM on September 25, 2023 [9 favorites]

A navy polo and khakis used to be my go-to workwear because it was comfortable and I didn't have to worry about being over/under-dressed for like 90% of the situations I could ever find myself in.

Obviously I don't wear that anymore.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 6:08 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

“Yup, that’s preppy,” my 11-year-old daughter confirmed. Pressed to elaborate, she said, “Just … rich people stuff?” A friend of mine, a prep school grad herself, sees no disjunction in this turn; “preppy” is not how we defined it in the 1990s, but it is still what private school kids wear.

I think that's interesting. It makes sense, of course, but hard for my 90s mall brain to parse that evolution of language/fashion.
posted by the primroses were over at 6:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

To me, preppy doesn't represent queer - it represents that life I was forced to live for so many years, not caring about my own image or clothing choices.

I was just saying last night that one of the underappreciated aspects of transfeminine transition is that I never have to wear a fucking polo shirt again and apparently I'm not the only one!
posted by Pope Guilty at 6:14 AM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

In the early 2000s I visited a friend whose husband was at Harvard on a Fulbright, and I was kind of amazed to see guys walking around wearing khakis, polo shirts and sweaters draped over their shoulders with the sleeves knotted in front, like packs of villains from '80s comedies.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:21 AM on September 25, 2023 [25 favorites]

Polo shirts should be such a reasonable solution -- comfortable knits but with just enough of a collar to look "work-appropriate." But personally, and this probably stems from unresolved issues from high school where there were separated cliques of preps, jocks, skaters, etc., just like in a John Hughes movie, I just can't stand them. I don't like the way they look, and I refuse to wear them.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:26 AM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

I had to wear khakis and polo shirts as a kid when we visited the yacht club. I hated the yacht club. It was full of rich kids with bad attitudes and insufferable adults. I kind of liked sailing but loathed the culture surrounding it, which is brimming with racism and class disdain.

It is embarrassing that we were ever part of a yacht club. We certainly didn't belong, and that's not a bad thing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:01 AM on September 25, 2023 [7 favorites]

Polo shirts are incredibly unflattering on almost everyone!!!! The fabric doesn't have much body/presence but it's heavy enough to droop on the body. However, it doesn't cling - so outlines everything in the most unflattering way possible. The naff little collars don't frame the face the way dress shirt collars do, they don't gently open the way a sport collar would, etc etc. People who look "good" in polo shirts would look fantastic in almost anything else because their body and presence are successfully fighting the shirt. The point of the polo shirt is that it is resolutely unflattering because the people who wear them either don't have money and get put in a servile position (Best Buy employees) or are so rich that they don't need to look good (Donald Trump).

If you look good in a polo shirt, you will look so much better in a well-made tee or, ideally, a well-fitting button-front in a fabric with some shape and presence.

Brooks Brothers made a bunch of their money ripping off the US government in the civil war.

There is a robust tradition of activist weirdos who wear more or less preppy clothes, usually on the plainer end, like button-downs and dress pants - often movement lawyers, but other nerds generally. This is my tradition. There is no movement tradition of wearing polo shirts, thank god.
posted by Frowner at 7:03 AM on September 25, 2023 [23 favorites]

Polos and jeans/khakis have been my look for as long as I can remember. I've never attached any meaning to it, I just liked the way I looked. Now I have to worry I'm sending a message that isn't "it looked good on the model in the catalog/website".
posted by tommasz at 7:06 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I grew up in Prep Central: most of my time in Eastern Connecticut, with excursions to my extended family based in the Buzzards' Bay area just before Cape Cod. This wasn't "preppy clothing", this was just clothing, like everyone around me wore. Maybe we shopped at TJ Maxx or Marshalls instead of at Brooks Brothers, but it was basic clothing that still looked put-together. And for a teenager who didn't give two shits about fashion (or, more like, I was secretly yearning to go back to the hippie/boho early 70s but it had JUST gone out of fashion), this suited me fine; I have a shirt, I have pants, I am not naked and that's all that counts.

It didn't register for me that this was "A Style" until college; the first guy I dated later confessed that he thought part of what caught his eye about me was that I "dressed preppy" like all the girls he'd seen back in his private high school, and he'd been homesick.

I still go that way sometimes - it's a good business-casual option, especially when you're job hunting and there may be a job interview sprung on you at any moment (I have khakis on today, with a nautical-stripe top and a navy cardigan over that; it's casual enough for the construction job I'm in, but dressy enough for a potential interview at the wind farm job I want). But now that boho style is ALSO a thing I also mix in peasant tops and big chunky necklaces and a crapton of scarves.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:06 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

> I kind of liked sailing but loathed the culture surrounding it, which is brimming with racism and class disdain.

That was and is golf for me. Perfectly good sport ruined by the shitty culture (hockey too, although in a different way).
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:23 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

There is a robust tradition of activist weirdos who wear more or less preppy clothes, usually on the plainer end, like button-downs and dress pants - often movement lawyers, but other nerds generally. This is my tradition.

Clark Kent: Investigative Reporter. Mild-mannered, exceptionally nerdy, and the guy who will write the expose that lands your criminal ass in jail.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:25 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Just showing up to say that I was dressed in preppy stuff a lot of the time as a kid, and as an adult now, it's comfortable and practical enough, and just....clothes, I guess.

Khakis and a button-down cotton shirt feel good to wear, and I can show up almost anywhere and not stick out. Maybe years of Catholic school uniforms primed me for this (I also feel OK in a tie), but it feel like what Grown-Ups wear. *shrug*
posted by wenestvedt at 7:27 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Clicked to post the link to Articles of Interest, glad to see I don't have to.
posted by suelac at 7:31 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Don't own (and never wear) polo shirts, not since the late 1960s Ban Lon went out of fashion.
posted by Rash at 7:40 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Because of when, where, who, and how I was growing up (1950s-60s, Main Line Philadelphia, WASP, went to private school and wore a uniform, though my family was not well to do and we did not “come out” or belong to country clubs), “prep” is just clothes. I’m wearing a pique polo right now and I have button down shirts in my closet. I wore khakis all summer (cargo because pockets) and I own a pair of deck shoes. Granted I dress like a preppy guy (because in my family women were pretty butch) but they were basically just clothes. I hasten to say I wear other things (right now a sweatshirt and Crocs, same general vibe) but if I don’t want to think about what I want to wear, apparently it’s prep that is my go to, the way my grandmother wore a house dress. In the 80s when it was pretentious I just figured it was because people were dressing like their parents or grandparents. The white supremacists wearing polos and khakis are nothing but arrivistes.
posted by Peach at 7:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Polo shirts are my go to work shirt in nice weather, long sleeve button downs when the weather starts to turn, and sweaters in winter. I was totally against all of these when I was a young pre punk. My uniform (and that of my friends) was logo t-shirt (mostly of your favorite band), plaid flannel shirt (unbuttoned over t) holey jeans, and waffle stompers. This was Phoenix in the 70's (yeah, it sounds boilingly inappropriate). The uniform went through slight changes as I discovered punk rock, and moved around. Interestingly, Ian of Minor Threat (and later of some awful jam band that some of you kids love) rehabilitated the polo shirt by making it de-rigueur for Straight Edge.
posted by evilDoug at 7:45 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Speak for yourself, Muffy. Plenty of us out here in the hinterlands don’t wear boat shoes, we wear boots.
posted by Ideefixe at 7:50 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

My mother was known as “Muff” in college.

Also boat shoes suck but I finally gave up because I kept hopefully buying them so I have a pair in my closet to stop me.
posted by Peach at 7:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

I love my boat shoes. They let you buy them even if you don't have boat -- no one even checks!
posted by paper chromatographologist at 7:57 AM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

for a long time I associated polo shirts with my dad and golf. My little brother and I were compelled to spend weekend afternoons with him as he tried to make us love the game. And, to be honest, there were things that I liked about golf, but I couldn't abide by the snobby attitudes and the way it consumed an entire afternoon. And my dad was a terrible coach, and a very ... flawed ... human being. The clothes that I wore were never clothes that I picked out for myself but were a collection of birthday and Christmas presents that I was given with the express purpose of wearing a given polo shirt or sweater on a golf course with my dad.

Eventually, I moved away and golf faded from my life. My fashion was very into t-shirts, jeans, hoodies, the usual tech nerd uniform. But at some point just around 30, I got into jobs that had some client work, and that usually required collared shirts, slacks, and sometimes a suit. My sense for menswear was a bit naive, but as my disposable income increased, I would treat myself to, say, a nice charcoal topcoat that could work with black jeans or grey slacks. I started wearing oxford cloth button downs regularly, and following menswear blogs like The Sartorialist or Put This On.

This all eventually culminated in the pandemic when everyone was shifting into athleisure and started selling their office clothes on eBay for cheap. I felt like going in the opposite direction and giving these nice wool tweed trousers or twill dress shirts a new home. Some people got into sourdough or home office makeovers: Closet Downsizing Ebay was my consumerist diversion from doomscrolling during the depths of the pandemic.

And in the midst of this, I started buying my own polo shirts. It's true what Frowner says about a lot of polo fits being bad, but if you do treat it like a t-shirt with a collar to frame your face and better shoulder lines it can certainly work, or at least it does for me. It feels a bit like reclamation, that I can take this symbol that I've long associated with toxic patterns of having to please my parents, and just play with it in a context that's completely independent of that.

I am also a fan of Articles of Interest and binged on American Ivy over the holidays, and I particularly found this segment of an interview between Avery Trufelman and Dallas Penn later in the series resonant:

Penn: "This is aspirational apparel. And to be honest with you. You know, no one's really aspiring to be black. Not in the way America would. Would treat you. No not like that."

Avery: "But I mean, it's not like you were trying to look white?"

Dallas: "No, no, no. I was trying to look free. And and when I say this, I mean, what it really goes to is someone who has total command of their time and resources. I think. Polo Ralph Lauren has always been made for working-class, poor people to feel a bit of wealth in, to feel a bit of kind of a transference from their current economic state. And what polo speaks to is lifestyle. And the ability to kind of, you know, do shit on your own terms when you want to."

Being middle aged and lucky enough to have savings, some disposable income and freedom from the pressure to please my family, that is also all me being free, and that is related to how I started wearing polo shirts again.

But with that said, I don't wear any Ralph Lauren. That stuff is way too preppy for me.
posted by bl1nk at 7:59 AM on September 25, 2023 [8 favorites]

According to the NYT,the author also sold Lululemon. Tells me all I need to know.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:04 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Alright, Ideefixe, I'll bite: what does that tell you? That... athleisure brands exist?
posted by sagc at 8:08 AM on September 25, 2023 [5 favorites]

My wife had to buy a few basic black polo shirts for a work function about a year ago, and they were completely unavailable in any store. They had a few with wild stripes, and some navy ones for school uniforms, but they were only available in children's sizes. I also thought polo shirts were a generic 'uniform', but apparently not. They did have some for men, but they fit her like men's shirts until she could get some on-line.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:09 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Lands End and LL Bean always have them. Ask me how I know.
posted by Peach at 8:39 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

ugh. I did wear polo shirts in middle school in the early 80s, before I had a sense of personal style. they were very popular right then. for my best friend in high school the handbook was a bible and she still lives and dresses in that lifestyle. I however have been refining my scruffy goth witch esthetic for decades now. not a collar to pop in sight. (and no damn pastels, ugh!)
posted by supermedusa at 8:45 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

From the article: By the early 1990s, the 124-page book, which took 8,000 rolls of film per catalog to shoot, was mailed to three million households 14 times a year.

I wore a lot of J. Crew for a year or two, when I was trying to fit in / emulate the style at my private high school. The day of the J. Crew catalog delivery was hilarious, everyone poring over the new looks and giggling over the silly names for tan or light blue.

I think my preppiest look involved gingham shorts? I never got into rugby shirts (I still don't really know what rugby is) but I still have a fondness for preppy pastels and keep on thrifting pairs of boat shoes even though they do not make sense for anything in my wardrobe.

In retrospect, I should have known J. Crew was not for me because the proportions were exactly the opposite for my long torso short arms body. Button-downs looked like I was wearing a parents' shirt as a kid playing dress up, with floppy cuffs way longer than my hands and oddly short shirt hems.
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:51 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I do miss the comprehensiveness of catalogs, even as I recoil at the paper consumption. Sheesh, how do people even make collages anymore, without an endless supply of news magazines and catalogs.

From the article:

He set up his J. Press shops in Ivy League towns, starting with New Haven in 1902. The J. Press catalog became almost an encyclopedia of Ivy style, illustrating its fundamentals and informing readers of small modifications from year to year...

The look was at this point known as Ivy style. (The term “preppy” only entered common parlance with the release of the 1970 film Love Story.) And it was not a canny designer, but federal education policy that fueled its next expansion: The 1944 G.I. Bill dramatically increased the number of college students and variegated their socioeconomic composition. These new, non-elite additions to campus adopted and adapted collegiate style.

posted by spamandkimchi at 9:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Just today I was trying to describe the social class that goes to my Spin gym and the word I thought of was Yuppie and then I thought, there's no such thing as yuppies anymore, this is just what middle class and upper class people all are now.
posted by latkes at 9:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

I still don't really know what rugby is

Rugby is essentially the cousin of American and European football. Like American football it involves two opposed teams of men or women trying to move a ball from one end of the field to the other, while the opposing team tries to tackle and bring down the ball carrier, and the ball carrier tries to pass the ball to a teammate before they go down.

Unlike American football, there are no pads, which may make the sport seem more dangerous to some, actually makes it safer in general, since you don't have a helmet or shoulder pads that you can turn into a battering ram and there's generally fewer high speed open field collisions. Without pads, the only garment that a rugby player has as a uniform are a pair of shorts and a rugby shirt.

Rugby shirts are essentially these super rugged long sleeve cotton collared shirts that are designed to take the punishment of the wearer being yanked, grabbed or tackled; trampled beneath the cleats of their teammates or caked in the thick mud of a rain soaked game. I played rugby in both high school and in university, and it was a fun sport, but I got out while I still had all of my teeth. A proper rugby shirt is about the hardest wearing and most durable garment I may have ever owned, but I stopped wearing them after I stopped playing. It's the same reason that I don't wear a bike jersey when I'm not riding a bike. Just doesn't feel right if it isn't accompanied with bruises, sweat, dirty fingernails and grass stains all over my socks.
posted by bl1nk at 10:10 AM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm sufficiently utilitarian about clothes that I could conceivably have just rolled with "vaguely prep" my whole life if Catholic schools and fast food job uniforms hadn't instilled a hatred of navy blue, khaki pants and polo shirts in me. They're perfectly serviceable clothes that function well across a number of contexts, which appeals to me in principle (and navy blue probably looks better on me than black, to an objective eye), but for me personally, they are the opposite of things I can put on and mostly forget about, which is what I want for my day-to-day.
posted by EvaDestruction at 10:36 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

"villains from '80s comedies" a.k.a. Gavin Newsom-ing.
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:05 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

According to the NYT,the author also sold Lululemon. Tells me all I need to know.

Are you going to share with the rest of the class, young man?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:19 AM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

My inner '90s skater/alt kid is screaming but, yeah, if "prep" is as simple as polos and khakis -- the default "office casual" -- I guess I am somewhat preppy and so are a lot of us. I have kind of shifted away from this style in recent years, because I don't actually like it that much, but it is an easy "uniform" to don when I don't have the time or mental energy to think too hard about what to wear to work.
posted by asnider at 11:51 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

A lot of the comments in this resonate with me, in particular:

while I was considered an “us” I sure felt more like a “them.”

And there are a lot of reasons for that and one of them is that I am transgender and always felt very other so for that and other body and family reasons (my family is INCREDIBLY WASPy) I have a very complicated relationship with clothes. It's been such a relief to me to come out and dress like a boring straight guy (which I am), and sometimes that involves khakis and polo shirts and you know what? It's great. It makes me feel like me (not as much as jeans and a t-shirt but close enough for non-jean occasions).

Related, I think it's appropriate and very funny that Pope Guilty and I have had opposite experiences with polo shirts (:
posted by an octopus IRL at 12:04 PM on September 25, 2023 [6 favorites]

I don't know really but the epic of the polo shirt is when you have so many, wear them out, you can use them to clean your car. there's nothing that says austerity than using a polo shift to clean your dipstick.
posted by clavdivs at 2:49 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I was never into preppy, but damn if polos aren’t comfortable as hell. I have polos in my closet that are probably older than many of you, and I will never stop wearing them, fascists be damned.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:56 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

I was a fan of the well worn, oversized, cozy/comfy rugby shirt.
posted by nikoniko at 4:13 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

Polo Ralph Lauren has always been made for working-class, poor people to feel a bit of wealth in

Does this series touch on the Lo Lifes?
posted by atoxyl at 8:32 PM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

Troublingly, white nationalists in polos and khakis are perhaps the latest group to claim prep

I feel like I am missing something obvious here, but…weren’t they kind of the first group to claim prep?

As for the Lululemon stuff, that’s probably because lulu was founded by a misogynist jerk, and for a long time made employees do highly suspect Landmark training. They’re quite a bit better now, according to my partner, who’s a product developer there.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:15 PM on September 25, 2023 [4 favorites]

I was a fan of the well worn, oversized, cozy/comfy rugby shirt.

Oh, yeah. Wayyyy back in the 90s (I think) I bought a wonderful rugby shirt at The Gap. Sturdy, substantial, really well made, comfortable, no logos. I lived in that thing for ages. I’d love to find another one just like it.

~Troublingly, white nationalists in polos and khakis are perhaps the latest group to claim prep
~I feel like I am missing something obvious here, but…weren’t they kind of the first group to claim prep?

Only if you take a rigid, classist view of people, I guess. The people I knew who were OG prep (like, it was just the multi-generational family style) were also some of the most liberal folks I knew.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:59 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does this series touch on the Lo Lifes?

Yes. The quote that I used is actually from the episode where Trufelman delves into Lo Head culture and the streetwear remixing of Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. When I mentioned Dallas Penn as the person that I was quoting, I should've added a hyperlink so you'd know it was Dallas "LO Robin Hood" Penn.
posted by bl1nk at 6:14 AM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

My daughter's high school field hockey teammates are all loving rugby shirts this year, soooo I guess those are back?
posted by wenestvedt at 6:43 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Back in the 80s, my wife and I drifted into prep clothes. She had worked as an au pair/governess in CT and NY, the style seemed to fit her. We were young, polo style shirts hung well on us. In addition we were living in a rural area where most dressed in western wear. It certainly made us stand out. A wardrobe of button-down shirts, khakis, and polo shirts was fine for my work. I was doing a lot of political volunteering at the time and showing up at an event/convention/caucus in a navy blazer, khakis, and a blue-button down shirt got me immediately taken seriously by out-of-state politicos or press. And rugby shirts? Damn. Lands End used to make ones that were indestructible. I wish to hell I could find the equivalent now.

These days I am a retired old fool and I think I have maybe two polo-style shirts. I wear mostly t-shirts and three-quarter baseball shirts and well-worn jeans. But I do kind of miss those days when I was fit and could command attention walking into a smoky back-room to cut some nonsense from a platform. I should do a search for well-made rugby shirts but they probably cost a fortune.
posted by Ber at 8:52 AM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think at least 80% of people who dress "preppy" are just not very into fashion, which seems ok to me? I'm not very into fashion, but I don't like to spend money on things that make me look bad, so prep is not for me. I grew up in the south, in the early aughts, when the Gap's sales were at their low ebb. When I was a teenager, guys were sometimes preppy. Girls (in my pocket of the suburban south) were definitely more "jeans and a cute top" types. In college, several classmates from California (who I guess spent their high school years in tracksuits) wonderingly described this as "dressing up every day," which still cracks me up.

My early attempts at business casual were the most preppy I ever dressed, and I don't remember these styles fondly; I looked terrible. I think business casual has gotten a little better -- everyone looks weird in Everlane! so that's kind of democratic of them -- but to this day I only have one pair of khakis tucked away in my closet. They're very old pants from a Ralph Lauren diffusion line. Picture very noughties-era, form-fitting "khakis" that flare at the ankle and look like they were designed by someone who was trying to enrage the VP who enforces dress codes at a local high school. I haven't worn them in years because...well, I just described them to you.

I never could bring myself to get rid of them because I look kind of amazing in them?? So I guess they're proof that I didn't entirely "miss" prep, because khakis do still feel like an essential wardrobe staple...even if I haven't worn a pair of them in more than a decade. But it does feel like all the clothes I own that technically could be described as prep (button down shirt, blazer, khakis) have have been altered in a way to subvert the prep uniform (very oversized shirt, nonstandard blazer, weirdly suggestive khakis). They exist more as a response to prep than an example of it.
posted by grandiloquiet at 10:59 AM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

The prep look let me hide my meth addiction until I grew too small for my existing wardrobe.
posted by infinitewindow at 12:54 PM on September 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

I have many feelings about the preppy look but mostly I just hate the way I look in it, unless it's a plain crewneck sweater. I shudder at the image of myself in a polo shirt.

But this brought up a memory: The 1944 G.I. Bill dramatically increased the number of college students and variegated their socioeconomic composition.

My father grew up very poor, the oldest of 13, and in the early 60s he was a grad student in economics at Cornell, on the GI Bill, with 4 kids. His friends were variegated in their socioeconomic and racial composition, many also with kids, but they all wore khakis and polo shirts, specifically, LaCoste shirts, or as we kids knew them, alligator shirts. In fact I thought men wore alligator shirts so that kids would know they were safe (I was 5, no harm ever came to me from a person of any kind who was wearing an alligator shirt).
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:13 PM on September 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

In the 80s, people who dressed like this (preps) used to beat up people who looked like me and my friends (punks), so I have no love for this aesthetic. At the time it was definitely a sign that those people loved Ronald Reagan, football, and barfing on their neighbors' lawns after raging keggers. I'm sure for a particular group of kids in the Bay Area in the 80's being preppy was just aping a subculture, but from my experience going to a college prep middle school where many of my classmates aspired to Stanford at the very least, a large part of that was being awful to any non-conformist people they ran across.

(Edited to add: Just a general observation, not a response to you maggiemaggie.)
posted by oneirodynia at 7:56 PM on September 26, 2023 [2 favorites]