Sitting on a summer day.

Sitting outside in my tiny backyard with the dog, a beautiful cocker spaniel, sniffing around the edges of the fence its hard not to reminisce about summers ages ago. Cook outs with friends and family, family road trips to New England to visit family, and of course just the laziness of summer that still sets in despite having grown up and no longer having a summer break.

Having been raised in the south for most of my life I have a tall, cold glass if iced tea on hand, although I can never bring myself to make it as sweetie as most in the south crave. And in my other hand I have my Nook on which I'm rereading some classics this summer, tonight its Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Its always fun to revisit the classics a little bit during the summer, again kind of reminding me of summer reading lists and the like.

(sigh)

Life is hectic, a long worry it seems like at time, but evenings like this, with the sun having come back out of a thunderstorm, really make life worth living.

Look Ma I Can Write!

Did you think this blog was a goner? I sure did. Life threw a whole bag of lemons at me, it took me nearly a year to dodge all of them but I'm finally sitting pretty surrounded by pitchers of perfect lemonade.

With that said my blogging will commence once more and this blog and finally (FINALLY!) get the regular update love that it needs.

Subscribe to me via RSS or check back here for the lastest and greatest thoughts on all things preppy, I look forward to it and hope you do too.

College Town fun with Brooks Brothers

Today has been a nice day down memory lane. This morning I went through the mail and found the latest and therefore greatest Brooks Brothers catalog and flipped through its pages. The catalog is entitled Back to Campus, Back To Town and details in a nicely written intro BBs use of "trunk shows" by their salesmen at university hotels to get the college kids interested in BB's trademark ueber-prep style. Looking through the catalog at the beautifully shot pictures of beautiful people in beautiful clothes I couldn't help but become nostalgic for my days at university. True I wasn't as beautiful as the people in the pictures, my university wasn't 300 years old, but still the clothes kinda looked the same. Memories of college are sweet and at this point four and a half years away and are likewise foggy enough to be idealized. It was a good time though, full of high jinks and fascinating people I will never forget.

Seems like a bit much to get from a Brooks Brothers catalog doesn't it? I'm happy I had a nice warm/fuzzy morning and also saw some great BBs pieces I've gotta have sometime soon. All in all, thank you Brooks Brothers.

What It Means to Be Preppy

Welcome to my new blog, The Preppy Blog. The whole point of this journal is to define what preppy is, what preppy is not, and to have fun doing it.

The first order of business is to define what the word Preppy is and means.
According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary Preppy is defined as:

1 : a student at or a graduate of a preparatory school

2 : a person deemed to dress or behave like a preppy

Isn't it fun how the second definition uses the term to define itself, this is part of the problem in that preppy is somewhat of an amorphous concept, but more on that part later on. The origin of the word comes from the term used to identify a "student or graduate of a preparatory (prep) school". The concept of a prep began in the 1950s and really solidified in the 1960s as a unique culture primarily among the East Coast and New England elites. I peg the '60s as when the prep ideal was really set into stone because in 1965 a book of photography called Take Ivy with photos by Teruyoshi Hayashida. This book has since become an icon in the preppy world, copies had been sold for hundreds of dollars and has recently and finally been publish in english. Take Ivy follows several young men at Ivy League colleges and their amazing fashions and lifestyle. These guys were true New England preps through and through and the pictures are beautifully shot, I highly recommend it. Of course preps can exist pretty much anywhere in the United States however the largest clusters of preps are to be found in the New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island) as well in DC and Virginia.

But still, what truly makes someone Preppy? Preppy is a style and mode of dressing as well as a state of mind. As a state of mind being preppy is having a strong belief in tradition in all faucets of life, believing in a set standard of moral and social ideals, as well as a heavy emphasis on the importance of education (especially of higher education) and the benefits that brings. Often you see Preppy groups of people in older states, their families having long since emigrated. They have long standing familial traditions, often come from a moneyed or higher middle class background, or the individual prep's family does at least.

I grew up thinking that preppy meant that you shopped at A&F, American Eagle, or Hollister and had something of a snotty and cruel attitude. This is a completely false image created by the teen pop-culture of the late 1990s/early 2000s and by those very retailers mentioned above. Interestingly A&F, AE, and Hollister, to name a few of the nouveau preppy clothiers, do not necessarily sell preppy clothes. Rather those retailers and others like them sell a manufactured and false ideal and pedigree of what preppy style and clothes are all about. Yes preppy people would wear worn clothes (ie distressed chinos or rugby shirts) but only because THEY actually wore them down to distress and only then would wear them at the appropriate time and place.

The basics of preppy fashion come from a number of places. The standard uniform of button down shirts, tie (when appropriate), coat (when appropriate), chinos, and leather lace-ups or loafers was born out of the official and unofficial uniforms of prep schools and colleges. Likewise the less formal uniform of polos or rugby shirts, madras or chino shorts, and boat shoes are the result of sports clothes (polos and rugbys) being taken off the field and also of people using what they had on hand (boat shoes were originally for boats, shocking I know). As you can see preppy fashion is defined by ideals that are traditional, somewhat conservative, and demands an unusual attention to detail that is ingrained in preps.

Now what of the stereotype of preps as mean and snotty? I'll admit that yes this does rear its head from time to time in the preppy world. This behavior is a result of the same people going to the same schools, having the same extracirciulars, and never leaving their circle of friends and family. Of course these tight knit clusters of old-line preps do have a dislike of people that are different but every type of group or social class has negative factions within it. The snotty stereotype is kind of funny because a true prep is defined by not being snotty, of being gracious and polite to everyone regardless of who they are and where they come from. Understated graciousness is a term that I think would describe the underlying social philosophy of preps. Also more and more as prepdom is defined less and less by your family and schooling and more by your values, aspirations, taste, and attitudes these negative qualities are negated. In this modern world people like me, 18-30, grew up with the ideal of the prep and have taken it, modernized it, and have made it a more inclusive world.

And that is what this blog is about, the Preppy World. I am here not to just talk about preppy clothes (there are enough fashion only preppy blogs) but to comment on and show the entire world what the Preppy World looks like inside and out.

So close to official posting.....

I'm getting nearer to the hard launch of this blog, I'm still trying to get all the details in perfectly before I start the earnest posting. I've got the design down and just got done putting together the link lists.

All I have to do now is edit the first post and well post it.

FYTTU99ATU7K