0:00

chapter five.

0:02

Kensekii

0:02

Shizu had come back to the United

0:05

States to film Ivy style. to

0:07

capture it and show everyone in Japan

0:09

what the look was really about. But

0:12

from the moment, Ashishu and his film crew

0:14

arrived on Harvard campus in nineteen

0:16

sixty five. life, it was clear,

0:19

something was different.

0:20

The expectation was that everyone

0:23

would be dressed in these Ivy suits. W.

0:25

David Marks author of Amitura. And

0:28

the kids start showing up and they're just wearing,

0:30

you know, dilapidated flip flops

0:32

and cutoffs the most

0:34

casual version of I believe so, you can imagine.

0:37

The zeitgeist had changed

0:39

so drastically by the mid sixties that

0:41

the classic Ivy look

0:43

was starting to seem like an endangered

0:45

species. And they just start melting down

0:47

because they're like, we can't find any

0:49

people that dressed the way we thought they would.

0:51

Achiazoo didn't know it, but only

0:53

a few months later, the

0:56

hippie would become a fixture

0:58

on the college campus.

0:59

They showed up on campus in May

1:01

nineteen sixty five. And by

1:03

fall nineteen sixty five, the Vietnam war

1:06

protests are really a full swing and you get

1:08

a lot of genes. So it's really

1:10

the last gasp of

1:12

what we now would understand as

1:15

traditional Ivy League style. It's just that

1:17

it's really really dressed down. And so

1:19

if you look through take IV, there's not really that many

1:21

photos people and ties and blazers. I was

1:23

actually looking at it today and it's mostly

1:26

people in stadium jackets and

1:28

cut offs and t shirts and tight jeans.

1:31

So similarly to how

1:33

men's clubs sort of like

1:35

fudge the street style photography

1:38

to make it look like Ivy was popular in

1:40

Japan.

1:41

Sheizu sort of zoomed

1:43

whatever iveness was

1:45

left on American College campuses in

1:47

nineteen sixty five and there was a little

1:49

bit left.

1:50

I think they rolled with it when

1:52

they were there. So they just tried to find as

1:54

many people's possible that looked the way

1:57

that they wanted them to look, and then they

1:59

filmed what the reality was.

2:01

there was kind of a big debate about could

2:04

we even use this? because, like, they

2:06

don't really address the way we want. But

2:09

over time, they start getting some good photos

2:11

and some good footage. They go to Dartmouth.

2:14

They go to Brown. They go to Columbia.

2:16

They go to New York for a couple of days and and shoot

2:18

that as well.

2:19

They get some footage of the

2:21

storefronts at the flagship Brooks Brothers.

2:23

They get a couple of Ivy graduates in

2:25

their gray flannel suits. You know, they sort

2:27

of cobble

2:27

it together. and they take some liberties.

2:30

In the film, there are some scenes that are

2:32

kind of semi dramatic where it's like

2:34

a kid drops all of his books on the way to class

2:37

and then he goes into class and the teacher's like,

2:40

don't be late for my class. Like and there's like a

2:42

party. I don't know. It's a little cheesy.

2:45

So they edit their films, montage

2:48

of moments from American collegiate

2:49

and post collegiate life.

2:51

And they edit the video and they're

2:53

like, yeah, it'd be maybe

2:55

be nice to make a photo book of this as well.

2:57

You

2:57

know, just as an accessory little companion

3:00

book to have. And as they're putting it

3:02

together, they thought a very clever title

3:04

would be Take Ivy, and

3:06

it was a pun on Dave

3:09

Rubik's Take Five. This

3:11

song is totally like the vibe

3:13

of Mid Central entry IV. And take five

3:15

was indeed recorded back in nineteen fifty

3:17

nine when Ashizu first encountered the

3:19

IV local. Think

3:22

five went on to become the highest selling jazz

3:24

single ever, so people

3:26

in Japan would know that the title

3:28

take IV was wordplay. It

3:31

makes way more sense in Japanese than it does in

3:33

English, but somewhat similar in Japanese. So

3:35

I call it take IV and they take

3:38

the video around all the retailers

3:40

in that Sellban jacket. Take Ivy

3:42

Wells produced as

3:44

one of their marketing tools. Bright

3:47

Banjacket Professor Masafumi Mandon

3:49

of the University of Sydney,

3:50

and they would use the

3:52

book and the film to

3:54

promote the ban jacket items throughout

3:56

Japan. But more importantly, they took it back to

3:58

the police. If you recall,

3:59

the biggest barrier to the style

4:02

that the kids who dared to wear Ivy

4:04

in Japan kept getting arrested and harassed

4:06

by the police who thought they were dressing like American

4:08

riffraff.

4:10

And so in the summer

4:12

of nineteen sixty five, Ashizu

4:14

put together a film screening at the Tsukiji

4:16

police station and showed take

4:19

ivy

4:19

to a couple dozen grizzled grilling

4:21

cops. And the police saw the video and they're

4:23

like, this is great. Okay. We get

4:25

it now. Unbelievably,

4:26

this totally worked. Like

4:28

the film was all it took. A top officer

4:30

turned to a shizu after the screening and said,

4:32

hey, this Ivy thing in the US

4:35

isn't so bad.

4:36

So this film basically helped

4:38

them overcome their branding

4:40

image. And from that point forward,

4:43

American style, especially this Iberia style in

4:45

Japan, just starts having incredible

4:47

momentum. And it was not because

4:49

Americans were just so great and cool.

4:51

They had nothing to do with we

4:54

love Americans and one just like Americans.

4:56

It's that the people who have access

4:58

to this thing, to these rare

5:01

styles and they are rare because no one's dressed like

5:03

an American. So I went just like an American.

5:05

What makes that cool is

5:08

that no one has access to it.

5:10

Ivy was rare and elite

5:12

and expensive. So kids were suddenly

5:14

scrambling to get whatever they could afford from then

5:17

jacket in the nineteen sixties. The

5:19

company was much smaller, so it

5:21

has a sense of privilege at that to

5:23

owning ban jacket items because

5:26

they could be a little bit on the expensive

5:29

side. But It was

5:31

very popular. Students would show

5:33

off van jacket ashtrays and key

5:35

chains, or it was really cool for

5:37

a group of young people to use,

5:39

like, a paper bag from van

5:41

jacket and, like, walking around

5:43

having areas.

5:45

Van jacket helped contemporary fashion

5:47

finally shed its stigma in Japan,

5:50

and Ivy style

5:51

introduced all these completely new

5:53

clothes. sweatshirt, for example,

5:55

which didn't exist in Japan before

5:58

or

5:58

like sneakers. So these

6:00

items introduced Japan

6:03

as a cool casual everyday wear.

6:05

So Ivy actually provided,

6:08

like, a first fashion, color

6:10

and fashion items for many young

6:12

men in Japan. And,

6:13

you know, the funny thing that

6:15

happens in every movie from all about

6:18

Eve to a star is born is that the newcomer

6:21

starts by copying.

6:22

and when they slowly beat the teacher

6:24

at their own game. So

6:27

the Japanese at this border are so good

6:29

at understanding American style. They understand

6:32

better and they're making manuals based

6:34

on the style faster than

6:37

Americans are.

6:38

Japan was two steps

6:41

ahead of America's

6:42

great preppy renaissance.

6:45

When Americans would start to make manuals

6:47

based on IV style, and try to

6:49

figure out exactly how to dress this

6:51

way. And one guide

6:54

in particular would extend beyond

6:56

Oxford shirts and Brooks Brothers to

6:58

reveal all the secrets

7:01

of the Ivy League elites until

7:03

every American had the right

7:05

to claim preppy identity

7:07

as their own.

7:12

I

7:12

just wanted to say thank you so much

7:14

to everyone

7:15

who has donated so far to our annual

7:17

radiotopia fundraiser. Seriously, thank

7:19

you. Thank you. Thank you.

7:20

We rely on a mix of sponsorships

7:21

and grants and individual donations

7:24

to keep our work going.

7:27

And this show reaches thousands

7:29

of

7:29

listeners every episode, but

7:31

it's just an elite and special few

7:33

who actually donate. And

7:35

if you'd like to join the club, It

7:37

would mean a lot.

7:38

Like, if just five percent of our

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but if you're able, consider

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7:50

Check it out at radiotopia

7:51

dot f m, and

7:53

thank you.

8:02

In the years leading up to nineteen eighty,

8:04

American fashion culture was moving

8:06

steadily inexorably towards

8:09

a massive, highly inspired,

8:11

preppy boom.

8:13

Nineteen eighty would be the year,

8:16

but

8:16

the preppy vibe shift had been

8:18

slowly, slowly buildings

8:20

since the early nineteen seventies. I

8:23

remember going to Europe, my first trip

8:25

to Europe, and all my

8:27

friends said, oh, you go to Europe. You have to

8:29

bring back a la la la carte. Men's wear

8:31

designer Jeffrey Banks will attest

8:33

that it used to be impossible to

8:35

find a knit collared tennis shirt

8:37

in the United States. In Europe,

8:39

these had been around since nineteen twenty

8:41

six when French tennis player Jean

8:43

Rene Lacoste decided to stop

8:45

playing tennis in long, sweaty dress

8:48

shirts like all the other tennis players did,

8:50

and he took up designing his own knitwear.

8:53

Lecost's shirts were again

8:55

very rare in the states, and they were often

8:57

used for actual tennis playing

9:00

until

9:01

Ralph Lauren

9:02

made his version of

9:04

the shirt. Around seventy two seventy three

9:06

Ralph came out with his shirt. The Ralph

9:08

Lauren polo shirt took

9:10

off almost immediately. And, of course, the

9:13

big hallmark his shirt was the plethora

9:15

of colors. You know, it went very quickly

9:17

from maybe twelve colors to thirty six,

9:19

forty colors, course now. god

9:21

knows how many colors there are. Ralph

9:23

didn't only popularize the style.

9:26

He made it a part of the preppy

9:28

cannon.

9:29

part of this new preppy

9:31

aesthetic that would be different

9:33

from Ivy. And of course,

9:35

the big thing in the mid seventies

9:38

was popping the collar up.

9:40

That was a real preppy thing that

9:42

you only saw real prepsters do.

9:44

So real prepsters as in people

9:47

who went to preparatory high

9:49

school, they have called themselves preppy

9:51

for a long time, at least since the nineteen

9:53

thirties. But only

9:55

real preppy's knew what crepidness

9:57

was because that world was just so

9:59

elite. Like, how could anyone

10:02

outside of this world even know that there

10:04

are these fancy high schools that are usually boarding

10:06

schools and look like tiny colleges. And

10:09

yet, the

10:11

word preppy

10:13

came into widespread use

10:15

around nineteen seventy. You have the waiting

10:18

for the ladies. Have your own library preppy?

10:20

Would you add to my The word preppy

10:22

was popularized

10:23

according to doctor Lauren DaVita

10:26

because it featured prominently in a

10:28

book and a movie

10:29

from nineteen seventy

10:31

called love story. Talking

10:33

legality preppy. I'm talking And in the

10:35

movie love story, the beautiful

10:37

and tragic Ali McGraw, as

10:39

Jenny, was in love with Ryan

10:42

O'Neil. Please watch your profanity, creepy.

10:44

And she would tease him repeatedly

10:46

by calling him prepping. wouldn't make you so sure

10:49

I went to prep school. He

10:51

looks stupid and rich. Truly,

10:53

it beats

10:53

me why this movie was so incredibly

10:55

popular. It's kind of smelting,

10:57

but it was a colossal hit.

10:59

I mean, to give you an idea of the

11:01

scope of its success. It was an

11:03

incredibly popular movie that gave rise

11:05

to one of my most favorite non

11:08

apparel trends. and that

11:10

is the popularity of the name Jenny.

11:13

I had multiple Gennys in every

11:15

single class I was in. So this

11:17

movie sort of launched the word preppy

11:20

like it launched the name Jenny. But

11:22

it also helped

11:24

romanticize that

11:27

New England collegiate style.

11:30

Love story was one of the earliest in

11:33

a cavalcade of Ivy

11:35

infused movies and media

11:37

in the nineteen seventies. There

11:38

were a lot of movies in the seventies that

11:40

sell celebrated the period right before

11:42

the Candice Astination. Historian Rick

11:45

Pearlstein

11:45

says that throughout the seventies, there's

11:48

this wave of movies that

11:50

all take place

11:50

in the recent past.

11:53

Well, the Kennedy assassination was nineteen sixty

11:55

three. Right? So you have happy days and

11:57

Greece, you know, American graffiti. And

11:59

the Exorcist, you know, at the end of the Exorcist,

12:02

the girl who's possessed by a demon, the demon

12:04

kind of symbolizing what happens to your

12:06

daughters under the reign of the hippies. At

12:09

the end, she's dressed us like Jacky O.

12:11

Right? So this idea that there had been

12:13

this, you know, camelot, there had been this peaceful

12:16

ideal before everything went crazy.

12:18

That was part of what preppy clothing

12:20

was all about.

12:22

Another huge movie in this canon

12:25

was The Great Gatsby, which came

12:27

out in nineteen

12:27

seventy four. And

12:29

the designer Ralph Lauren did

12:32

all of the men's clothing

12:33

for that. They had spent the years since

12:35

their marriage drifting here and there

12:37

unrestfully wherever people played

12:40

polo. and we're rich together.

12:44

In this scene, Tom Buchanan is

12:46

literally on horseback playing polo.

12:49

wearing Ralph Lauren's stuff that

12:52

really helped make this whole

12:54

anachronistic look become popular.

12:56

That was

12:57

Ralph's breakout movie put him on

12:59

the map. Very, very important for him.

13:01

Men's Wear Designer and Ralph Lauren Biographer

13:03

Alan Flusser. I mean, it was perfect.

13:05

Ralph was doing Gatsby looking clothes to begin

13:08

with, so it wasn't a stretch, but it's,

13:10

you know, one of the better clothed

13:12

male dominated movies, there's

13:15

still stuff in that that people would wear

13:17

today.

13:19

Ralph, finally,

13:21

was in the movies. And

13:24

he continued to lean into his version

13:26

of cinematic americana.

13:28

He made advertisements that looked like

13:30

film stills. His

13:31

photo spreads captured his world

13:34

mid action. They showed a group

13:36

of beautiful well groomed teenagers

13:38

in

13:38

white tennis clothes leaning against a white

13:40

sports car, a couple on a

13:42

ski vacation in matching Ferrell

13:44

sweaters, mid laugh. a beautiful

13:47

blonde mother in pearl earrings

13:48

holding her beautiful blonde daughters.

13:51

No one has put more imagery.

13:54

I mean, when he did those double page

13:56

ads in the seventies and the New York

13:58

Times of these

13:59

images of wasp

14:02

aristocracy, you know, wearing

14:04

the clothes. and reinforced that

14:06

as an ideal. These ads were

14:08

a celebration of establishment. They

14:11

were celebrations of wealth. AND

14:14

THAT'S WHAT CONSUMERS WANTED.

14:16

PEOPLE MORE AND MORE WANT TO STUDY

14:18

BUSINESS. Reporter: BRUCE J. Schulman IS A PROFESSOR

14:21

OF HISTORY AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY and author

14:23

of the seventies, the changing

14:25

economic conditions of the nineteen

14:27

seventies, and the celebration

14:29

of the market and the entrepreneur as

14:32

the way to change the world, all

14:35

of those things help create demand

14:37

among young people to study business.

14:39

The economics of the nineteen seventies got

14:42

so deeply weird that the rulebook functionally

14:44

had to be thrown out the window because the rules

14:46

used to be so clear when the economy was

14:48

in recession and unemployment was high, inflation

14:50

was supposed to be low. When inflation was high,

14:52

usually meant the economy was overheating, and so employment

14:54

would be good, and there would be economic growth.

14:57

But

14:57

inexplicably, there

14:58

was inflation and stagnation at

15:00

the same time.

15:01

The phenomenon that was

15:03

then dubbed Stagflation and

15:06

seemed like it didn't fit any economic

15:08

models. It wasn't supposed to happen

15:11

that way. There were no rules to play by

15:13

anymore. Your money wasn't even safe in the

15:15

bank. if you kept your money

15:17

in a savings account at five percent,

15:20

when inflation was ten percent,

15:22

you were actually

15:24

losing money.

15:27

The stagflation of the nineteen

15:30

seventies

15:30

prompted a massive change

15:33

in how Americans related to their money.

15:35

This was the decade

15:37

that America went from a nation

15:39

of savers to a nation

15:41

of investors. So Chuck

15:43

Schwab would be a key figure

15:46

here. The middle class now had

15:48

a whole new way of thinking

15:50

about their wealth. after Ned Johnson

15:52

took over Fidelity Investments in nineteen

15:55

seventy two. They created the money

15:57

market mutual fund Fidelity

15:59

Investments.

15:59

mutual fund company.

16:02

With a money market mutual fund, it was easy

16:04

to put money into the market and take money

16:06

out of the market and investing with suddenly easy

16:08

and it was for everyone. They started to

16:10

direct market stocks and

16:12

mutual funds through advertising.

16:15

In newspapers and TV, you'd see

16:17

ads for one-eight hundred numbers that you could call

16:20

to make direct investments yourself.

16:21

Before that,

16:23

you did everything through your broker.

16:25

And if you weren't the sort of

16:28

wealthy connected country club

16:30

sort who had a broker, then

16:32

you were probably not participating in

16:35

the stock or bond markets. So

16:37

this was totally new, the world that

16:39

used to be behind the wall of the country

16:41

club. behind the ivory tower was

16:43

now at your disposal. You

16:45

could plunge right into the market. And

16:48

why wouldn't you if you stood to risk losing money

16:50

in your bank account? Everyone

16:51

could succeed in business. College

16:54

business courses were oversubscribed, and

16:56

that was no accident. That

16:58

was a concerted effort

17:01

by business conservatives

17:04

who thought that they had lost

17:07

the war for the hearts and minds

17:09

of young Americans There was a

17:11

fear after the nineteen sixties that college

17:13

campuses had become too anti capitalist,

17:16

and so companies donated to new departments

17:18

that

17:18

would promote entrepreneurship and so

17:20

they began to fund and develop

17:23

business programs on

17:25

campuses across the United

17:28

States. as well as setting

17:30

up dozens of new business

17:32

oriented colleges. And

17:34

so there was this new message on college campuses.

17:36

especially after the disillusionment with the protests

17:38

of the nineteen sixties, that the social

17:40

activists wasn't going to be the one who saved America.

17:43

It was the upstart entrepreneur who

17:46

could really make a difference. You

17:47

get the development of what we might call

17:50

counter cultural capitalism. Think

17:52

of figures like the ice cream

17:54

makers, Ben and Jerry,

17:57

like the founders of Apple Computer.

18:01

Women's start getting in on the action as well

18:03

after the great strides made by the women's lip

18:05

movement, not only for the first time

18:07

do we have the majority of American

18:10

women working outside

18:13

the home, but really for

18:15

the first time we see significant numbers

18:18

of women pursuing careers.

18:21

So between nineteen seventy

18:23

and nineteen eighty five,

18:26

the professions really

18:28

open to women, and there's dramatic

18:31

growth. And so everyone is starting

18:33

to dress for business. In nineteen

18:35

seventy seven,

18:36

John T. Malloy, author of Dress for

18:38

Success, published a companion book for

18:40

women where he suggested that working women

18:42

should adopt a very sensible wardrobe using

18:45

the same principles as men. Neutrals,

18:47

separates, basics, things

18:49

that can be worn in multiple combinations.

18:52

Baylor professor Lauren DeVita again. Basically

18:54

trying to advocate a wardrobe that

18:57

emphasize utility and

18:59

value and function for the workplace

19:01

because we were getting more and more women in the workplace.

19:03

And dual income households

19:06

for the first time. And there's this

19:08

idea that by sheer force of

19:10

will, anyone could be

19:12

preppy.

19:13

Not just wear the clothes, but, like, live

19:15

the full money lifestyle. Trappy

19:18

Dumb is no longer a matter

19:20

of birth and connection,

19:23

but is somehow associated

19:25

less with inherited wealth, with

19:28

family, with background, with

19:30

waspiness and being in the country

19:32

for long time, and more with

19:35

meritocracy and entrepreneurship.

19:39

and

19:39

there was this slender little book that

19:41

could give away all the secrets

19:44

and show you how to talk the talk

19:46

and dress the dress. Can you describe

19:49

what we're looking at? We're looking at

19:51

a paper back book from

19:54

nineteen eighty. describing

19:57

all the aspects of a

19:59

craps

19:59

lifestyle.

20:01

Peter, my friend who was the

20:03

menswear buyer for that big brand can't name

20:05

and the one who initially showed me take Ivy

20:08

also has a copy

20:10

of the preppy handbook, where

20:12

he or she might go to school, the kinds

20:14

of things here she wears. And

20:16

so in some ways, the preppy handbook reminds

20:18

me of Take Ivy. It has all these rules

20:20

about how to behave and what to wear.

20:22

There's a list of brands and

20:24

it's like one, Wegens, two, beans rubber

20:26

moccasin, three Brooks Brothers Loafers.

20:28

It's like these are the shoes you must wear

20:30

and the rules are sort

20:31

of rigid. What to do and don't in an interview

20:33

for a prep school? But the biggest

20:36

difference between take IV

20:38

and the preppy handbook

20:40

is that

20:41

no American would admit to

20:43

slavishly following a rigid set

20:45

of pre made rules. So

20:47

the preppy handbook is all ostensibly.

20:51

A

20:51

joke. Why do you think you needed to

20:53

couch it in humor all

20:55

the rules?

20:58

Because what we were writing

21:00

about was a code that had never been

21:03

broken in public. So

21:05

in order to get away with that,

21:08

I think it had to be funny.

21:11

Was

21:11

anyone ever cross at you for

21:13

sort of unleashing all these secrets? Oh,

21:15

yes. But it often

21:17

came in the flavor of antisemitism. What

21:20

does she know?

21:21

you know, Goldberg, Bernbach,

21:24

whatever her name is. Lisa Bernbach

21:26

is another Jewish New Yorker, like

21:28

Ralph Lauren, like Richard Press. Like

21:31

me, and Lisa did go to a prep school,

21:33

and then she went to an Ivy League school, Brown,

21:36

which is the least preppy Ivy

21:38

League school, But when Lisa first heard the

21:40

word preppy, in the movie love story,

21:42

don't you have your own library preppy, which

21:44

I think is the quote Lisa identified

21:47

with the stereotype and she just got a kick out of it.

21:49

Kind of in the same way that I used to laugh about being

21:51

a hipster. The preppy culture was something

21:53

that glued my friends and me together,

21:55

but we all thought it was funny.

21:57

We thought it was really funny.

21:59

But it was

21:59

not Lisa's idea to write a

22:02

whole book about prepeas? It

22:04

was such a it's such a confusing

22:06

accident.

22:08

In nineteen eighty, Lisa Burbach was working

22:11

at the village voice. but

22:12

she had an idea for a book. I had

22:14

a meeting at Workman Publishing in

22:16

nineteen eighty to

22:19

pitch a book, a different book. about

22:21

light bulb jokes. You know, light bulb jokes

22:23

like how many podcasters does it take to screw

22:25

in a light bulb? One, but to understand

22:27

that. First, we have to go back in time. those

22:30

kinds of jokes. Workman publishing,

22:31

they they published

22:34

very quick, light,

22:37

GiftBooks, mostly. Not

22:39

to diminish them, but an editor at workman

22:41

publishing pulled Lisa aside and was basically

22:43

like, thank god you're here. They had wanted

22:46

to publish

22:46

a book called the preppy catalog,

22:48

but they needed a writer. The

22:50

fact that Lisa just showed up in their office

22:53

was schismet. Somebody even used

22:55

that word. It's schismet. because they had

22:57

approached about thirty

22:59

other writers who turned them down.

23:01

So if they were going to do a book on

23:04

preemies, They needed an author.

23:06

They needed a bio for

23:08

the author, and they needed all that

23:10

information to go to press. and

23:13

they were going to press within a couple

23:15

of days. So

23:16

they sort of tossed this off to her. It wasn't very

23:18

high stakes for Workman Publishing. I mean,

23:20

It was seven thousand dollars that they were

23:22

committing to it. And they gave Lisa

23:24

ten weeks to write the book. To find photographer

23:27

and an illustrator to recruit people to

23:28

pose, to find the clothes they would wear.

23:31

It was a real hustle. It was

23:33

more writing, more responsibility, more

23:35

everything than I'd ever done in my life.

23:38

even the seven thousand dollars that was

23:40

more money than I'd ever seen at one time.

23:43

I was terrified and

23:45

I

23:46

I took it very very seriously.

23:49

Lisa and her coauthors felt a sense of

23:51

duty.

23:52

The four of them would have rigorous debates

23:54

about what to put in the book. Do you think we

23:56

really need to put the treat horn sneaker in?

23:58

Oh, yes. That's vital.

23:59

You know, we got very serious

24:02

about these things because we felt we had a responsibility.

24:05

to be truthful. They

24:06

imagine that their readers were about

24:08

to be intimately familiar with this world and

24:10

would be able to call them out

24:11

on mistakes. We were trying to make the seven

24:13

thousand people who read this book,

24:15

who went to Lumière's chafee,

24:18

Exeter andover, Saint Paul's,

24:20

etcetera, to give them

24:23

something to laugh about. And that

24:25

you could take to the bank and say, this

24:27

is all true. This is all real.

24:31

Even if it's written to be amusing,

24:33

there was nothing that we really made up.

24:36

It was gathering more than inventing.

24:39

Lisa did most of her

24:40

research over the phone, calling libraries

24:42

in her informal network of friends all

24:44

over the country,

24:46

and she found that a lot

24:48

of the preppy attitude towards

24:50

clothing was similar to Ivy.

24:52

There's modest date for one. You

24:55

don't announce how much you're spending.

24:57

you wear things till they basically

24:59

destruct. In Ivy style,

25:02

it was a subtle nod

25:03

that your khaki hems were frayed or

25:05

your sweater elbows were worn but

25:08

the preppy handbook pointed all that out

25:10

and explained it.

25:11

And the preppy handbook outright

25:13

says how women's wear is supposed

25:15

to borrow from the boys.

25:16

There it is. You might Androgyny,

25:19

men and women dress as much alike as

25:21

possible and clothes for either sex should

25:24

deny specifics of gender. So

25:26

in many

25:26

ways, preppy is the grandchild

25:29

of Ivy. It has the same

25:31

DNA. It's still casual and

25:33

forty, it's got loafers and collared

25:35

shirts and chinos and layers of sweaters.

25:38

Although,

25:38

preppy is much more playful and

25:40

colorful, a lot more lily polyps

25:42

or sun dresses and go to hell

25:43

weekend wear. But simultaneously, Preppy

25:47

is also a bit more rugged and outdoorsy

25:49

than traditional ivy. Like it

25:51

has more yellow bean elements. But

25:54

the biggest difference between Ivy

25:57

and Preppy is

25:59

that preppy

25:59

clothes are truly in service

26:02

of a lifestyle,

26:04

a certain philosophy of living.

26:08

And

26:08

that's different from Ivy. When

26:10

you talked about Ivy league in the

26:12

sixties, seventies, fifties, whenever, I

26:15

don't think

26:16

you necessarily extended the

26:18

edges to politics and

26:21

music and wealth

26:24

and travel and sexuality.

26:27

I think it was just a style

26:29

of clothing. And

26:30

so the preppy handbook really

26:32

got into the deep secret undergirding

26:35

philosophy of preppingness. so

26:38

that you can even think like

26:40

a preppy.

26:41

True intellectualism is

26:43

not petty. Not

26:46

at all. So downplaying one's

26:48

intelligence, being like George

26:50

w Bush, a gentleman c,

26:52

is much preppier than being

26:55

nerdy, scholar. Always

26:58

was, always will be. That again

27:00

is ostensibly a joke. But

27:01

really, it's quite a profound observation

27:04

and genuinely

27:04

useful thing to know.

27:06

Like, my friend Alison did not read

27:08

the preppy handbook because it's been out of print since

27:10

nineteen ninety five. but information

27:12

like that would have helped her at Princeton.

27:15

It was so hard. You know, I would like studies

27:17

so so badger. I would read all the all the hundred

27:20

pages of readings and still not have anything to say

27:22

like the

27:22

discussion groups.

27:23

because just didn't know how to do that

27:26

stuff. And then

27:28

it took me to, like, junior year to realize

27:30

like, oh, what you do is you read

27:32

the first chapter, you read the last

27:34

chapter, you googled author's name

27:37

you familiarize yourself, the other

27:39

stuff you've written, and then you come and decrease

27:41

up and have something interesting to say about, like, the other

27:43

shit. You learn how to bullshit. Yeah.

27:45

little bit. Yeah. You

27:48

know, preemies are are innately

27:50

charmers and social

27:53

beings.

27:53

But what is the united factor

27:56

of all preps across, you know,

27:58

all parts of the United States and maybe the

27:59

world?

28:01

Oh, oh, that.

28:05

What is it? It's a desire to

28:07

look

28:12

like you're at ease. I

28:15

think that's it more than anything. It's

28:18

not to look rich. It's

28:21

not to look educated.

28:24

It's not to look

28:26

smart.

28:27

It's not to look

28:30

studied.

28:31

That should be the opposite of it. It's

28:33

to look like your life

28:35

is easy. You

28:37

can sort of just

28:40

slide from one thing to the

28:42

next

28:42

from class to

28:44

class, from

28:46

desk to date, to

28:49

whatever whatever opportunity

28:52

presents itself, and and you'll be

28:54

okay somehow.

28:59

So Lisa had done all of her preppy

29:01

research in an exhausting ten

29:03

week dash. It was late by two weeks

29:06

at consensus. Twelve week dash. I

29:08

remember asking Peter Workman who,

29:10

on the company, would I need

29:13

to reserve some time to

29:15

help promote the book and

29:17

he laughed

29:18

at me like tour,

29:21

you know, and I was so embarrassed

29:23

I remember It

29:25

took courage

29:26

for me to ask him, and he laughed

29:28

at me. And the

29:30

book that they were counting on to be

29:32

the big success that year was called

29:34

Mount sounds, how to make funny noises

29:36

with your mouth. The preppy handbook

29:39

was a last minute addition to

29:41

their catalog and No

29:43

one had any idea that it would

29:46

hit a nerve. You know? It

29:48

ran away. How

29:49

many? From

29:51

two point three million.

29:53

what love

29:58

By the way, if you wanna see pictures

29:59

of any of the clothes I talk about on the show,

30:02

including the Jeans of the Future, along

30:04

with show notes, links, and complete

30:06

transcripts. Go to

30:08

articles of interest dot substack

30:10

dot com. That's right. It's a newsletter.articles

30:13

of interest dot substack dot

30:15

com.

30:17

it it

30:23

don't

30:23

want you to think that I forgot the promise I made to you.

30:26

I told you I would tell you about the American Presidents

30:28

who did not wear Brooks Brothers because the fun

30:30

fact was that since Brooks Brothers has been in business

30:32

only two American presidents have not worn

30:34

their suits. The first

30:36

president who avoided Brooks Brothers

30:39

did

30:39

so because he did not want to look

30:41

like other presidents Brooks

30:42

Brothers

30:43

was too fancy for

30:45

him.

30:46

And Jimmy Carter's commercials

30:48

showed him in flannel shirts. Historian

30:51

and Author Rick Pearlstein says humility

30:54

was a hallmark of the Carter administration.

30:56

From the moment Jimmy Carter was sworn in

30:58

in nineteen seventy seven, on his inauguration

31:00

day, he very famously instead

31:02

of wearing formal wear, which is what every

31:05

previous president had done. or

31:07

a normal suit that he had bought off

31:09

the rack. Carter sold himself as a

31:11

humble man of the people, but his approach

31:13

to restoring turbulent nineteen

31:15

seventies America really did not go over

31:17

well. So his response to the oil crisis

31:20

was basically to say, let's Let's

31:22

do more with glass. Carter's message

31:24

was sacrifice. When

31:26

gasoline prices shot up, Carter

31:28

forced White House staff to give up their chauffeur

31:31

limos. Carter tried to sell the presidential

31:33

yacht. He

31:34

urged Americans to carpool and

31:36

to close gas stations on Sundays. He

31:38

was basically like, well, times are

31:40

hard and we all have to buckle up

31:42

and suffer through it. But

31:44

the eventual Rip Ronen success

31:47

of the preppy

31:47

handbook would be proof that Americans

31:49

were not in the mood. for austerity.

31:52

They wanted

31:54

to shop -- That sweater -- Oh, yeah.

31:56

-- on page one forty

31:58

eight. was so popular

31:59

or we made it so popular

32:02

that L. L. Bean opened a new

32:04

factory just to accommodate

32:06

the preppy garb that

32:08

we recommended. Lisa Bernbach's

32:10

book was so important. Everybody

32:13

on college campuses was reading it Patricia

32:15

Mears, curator of the museum at FIT.

32:17

And it was hysterical, you know,

32:19

but it put into your mindset

32:21

even though I was not from a

32:23

preppy background, I didn't go to a prep school this

32:25

I was like, wow, this is fabulous. At

32:27

the same time, I loved

32:28

what Ralph Lauren was doing. His catalogs were

32:30

beautiful, my god. They were so romantic. think

32:33

it was nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty. His

32:35

catalogs were coming out, and it just

32:37

crystallized what was going on. Ralph

32:39

Lauren had already set the fuse. and

32:41

the preppy handbook lit the match just

32:44

in time for the year nineteen

32:46

eighty. I started college in nineteen seventy

32:48

nine. and literally Avery, it

32:50

was the look of the the next year.

32:53

The Ivy look was becoming increasingly

32:55

important throughout the eighties. By the time I graduated,

32:58

I think that probably half the kids wore

33:00

that style. Almost everyone I talked

33:02

to said something similar, that they themselves started

33:04

wearing

33:04

pink polos or they read the preppy handbook

33:07

or everyone around them did. The preppy

33:09

handbook was the thing that said, here's the

33:11

way to look. Here's the way for young people to

33:13

redirect themselves.

33:14

I think it was just an overall

33:16

cultural shift, people were turning away from

33:18

the troubles of the seventies. They wanted a new

33:20

direction, and it was embodied in somebody

33:22

like Ronald Reagan. I think he actually was

33:24

probably as important if not more so than

33:27

something like the preppy handbook.

33:30

In nineteen

33:31

eighty, the year the preppy handbook

33:33

came out America elected

33:35

the other twentieth century

33:36

president who did not wear Brooks Brothers.

33:39

We must act today in order

33:41

to preserve tomorrow. Don't forget

33:43

that he was the guy who coined the slogan in nineteen

33:45

eighty. Make America great again. Historian

33:48

Rick Pearlstein, author of Reagan Land,

33:49

says that Reagan issued

33:51

Brooks for the opposite reason from

33:53

Jimmy Carter. Because he was a

33:55

step above Brooks Brothers.

33:57

Reagan was a movie star. He had

33:59

Hollywood

33:59

Taylor's. And

34:01

once again, you can see this

34:03

change in dress right at the moment

34:05

of the inauguration. But I will faithfully

34:07

execute the Office of President of the United

34:09

States. not only does he wear formal wear,

34:11

but he wears like kind of the right kind of formal

34:14

wear, but he's not gonna wear evening wear because

34:16

it's the afternoon. So he wears something

34:18

called a strolling suit. And it was just this

34:20

complete transformation of what

34:22

kind of symbols that

34:24

the leader was trying to project to the country.

34:27

we're back to hierarchy authority

34:31

or unquote class.

34:35

America had elected an aristocratic

34:38

president. I mean basically he was like a king,

34:40

where he was the closest America

34:41

could come to a king, which is a celebrity.

34:44

Government is the problem. And

34:46

in this very regal, courtly way,

34:48

Reagan's idea of supply side economics

34:50

is like, no blesso bleach. Like

34:53

if you make a lot of money, you're a morally

34:55

worthy person who can be counted on to share it

34:57

with everyone else. You don't need to enforce

34:58

that with taxes, And, you know,

35:01

Ronald Reagan was very explicit that

35:03

the problem with progressive taxes

35:06

is it gives money to people who aren't productive.

35:09

right, who don't deserve rewards

35:11

because they don't have money, and the reason they don't

35:13

have money is because they're unworthy people, they don't

35:15

work hard. that money is

35:17

kind of a symbol of not

35:19

just luck, but character. And

35:22

character is symbolized by dressing

35:25

properly by showing quote unquote, i

35:27

class. I mean, that word class is very

35:29

powerful.

35:30

Class. This

35:32

is the accidental subtext

35:35

of the preppy handbook.

35:36

It pulled back the curtain on the

35:38

world of class signifiers

35:40

and it made Americans aware that they were

35:43

being read and judged by

35:45

how they tied their tie or what

35:48

kinds of shoes they had or whether or

35:50

not they wore a belt. So suddenly,

35:53

everything becomes a

35:55

visible manifestation

35:57

of status markers. Whereas

35:59

in the

35:59

nineteen sixties, consumers were told

36:02

to buy products to prove how free

36:04

and independent and young they were

36:06

In

36:06

the nineteen eighties, the

36:08

motives changed again. Now it

36:10

was, you know, can we buy this idea of

36:13

class that we're sophisticated,

36:16

that

36:17

we have moral worth.

36:19

If you go back in, like, read old magazines

36:21

or if you look at anything from the nineteen eighties,

36:23

when prep was ascending, you see the

36:25

word privilege in so many advertisements.

36:28

Like, you have the privilege to have this credit card.

36:30

You deserve this. GQ contributor,

36:32

Jason Diamond. It's very interesting.

36:35

Like, we were just trying to really buy into this

36:37

idea that we had culture,

36:39

but it was more that you had to buy it. maybe

36:41

that's how it's always been in some way or another,

36:43

but in the eighties, you're just kind of like

36:45

screw it. We're just gonna say it. Like, you could buy

36:47

into this culture. If you have enough money to buy

36:50

a Rolex, people are gonna look at you a different way.

36:52

If you have enough money to eat here, people are gonna

36:54

look at you a different way. And if you wear a certain

36:56

clothes, people are gonna look at you a different way.

36:58

and the preppy handbook inspired a bunch

37:00

of knock off handbooks. The official Jewish

37:03

American Princess handbook. Oh my god. So

37:05

the handbook thing became a big craze after

37:07

as well as a whole rash of books

37:09

about class

37:11

and status. This one is kinda

37:13

funny. It's Paul Fussel's

37:15

class. Okay. It came out

37:18

around the same time as the preppy handbook. Paul

37:20

Fossil writes about all these class signifiers

37:22

like not smoking at all is

37:24

very upper class, but in

37:26

any way calling attention to one's

37:28

abstinence drops one to middle

37:30

last immediately. It's a very

37:32

weird book, but and it's it's

37:35

I don't consider it correct, but

37:37

I think he was sort of onto something.

37:40

as Hussle writes. It is a

37:42

rare American who doesn't secretly

37:45

want to be upper middle class.

37:47

It's in large part the class depicted in Lisa

37:49

Bernbach and others official preppy

37:51

handbook. That's significantly popular

37:54

artifact of nineteen eighty. And

37:56

it is the class celebrated also in

37:58

the nineteen seventy

37:59

Ivy Idyllic film, Love

38:02

Story. who wouldn't

38:03

want to be in a class so

38:05

free and secure and

38:07

amusing.

38:09

Especially since Now with the handbook,

38:11

the keys to the kingdom were right there to grab

38:14

and there were images of preppedness everywhere.

38:16

The ascension of Ralph Lauren becoming,

38:18

you know, a nationwide brand

38:20

and him kind of taking these Wasabi styles

38:23

to the masses. And then also, I think another

38:25

really big part of it at the same time was

38:27

the popularity of the Brideshead revisited

38:30

adaptation, I think, came out in nineteen eighty

38:32

one.

38:32

Brideshead revisited. This is a TV

38:34

show based on book by evil in

38:36

wa, one of the bright young people.

38:39

So not only was there American mid

38:41

century Ivy in the air, simultaneously

38:44

there was nineteen twenties English

38:46

proto IV fashion on TV.

38:48

Huge hit overseas in

38:50

Europe But then when it came to America,

38:52

it was, like, massive. Like, the styles

38:54

in it were, like, so popular that, I

38:56

think, like, Bloomingdale's did their entire window

38:58

based off of it. There was a lot of Ralph Lauren stuff.

39:01

Altogether, it just made

39:02

Ivy seem like the look

39:04

of all romantic times passed

39:06

across all decades.

39:08

the way that

39:09

everybody used to dress before the world got

39:11

so messy and complicated.

39:14

So the preppy look had a massive

39:16

appeal in the nineteen eighties. And

39:19

yet the funny thing is that

39:21

that is not really what I think of when I think

39:23

of the eighties. When I think

39:25

of the eighties, I think of like big

39:28

hair and bright colors and muscle

39:30

shirts and crop tops.

39:32

But the preppy boom was ever sense

39:34

that maybe consumers did not want

39:36

the neon and the hairspray. Maybe

39:39

they wanted something a little more neutral.

39:42

a little more serious. The

39:44

French philosopher, Gio le Povetski,

39:46

has said that modern fashion has had

39:49

two stages. It was about status

39:51

and designers until nineteen sixty, and then

39:53

it was about looking young and looking cool.

39:56

But Lipofedsky also argues that

39:58

in the nineteen eighties,

39:59

we entered a third chapter

40:02

of modern fashion. And

40:04

it was a revolution much quieter

40:06

and more subtle than peacock revolution

40:09

because most consumers didn't realize that it even

40:11

happened. One

40:12

thing that we don't talk about

40:15

is there's this whole event that

40:17

happened in the eighties. Baylor professor Lauren

40:19

DaVita again. And basically, in the nineteen

40:21

eighties, the fashion industry kept

40:23

churning

40:23

out new, wild, fashiony

40:26

looks fashion design attempted

40:28

to push a look called high femininity on

40:32

the female consumer populace.

40:34

and it was this sometimes it

40:36

was called through through. This

40:39

was very

40:40

much in reaction to the sort of androgyny

40:42

that dress for success in the preppy handbook

40:44

we're advocating for. Fruit

40:46

Fruit was

40:47

high, high for amenity. Corset

40:50

spussier's, very short micro

40:52

minis,

40:52

and fruit fruit skirts.

40:55

This fruit fruit look was on all the runways

40:57

in nineteen

40:58

eighty seven. A newspaper add for

41:00

Bloomingdale's screamed short in

41:02

three inch type. Liz Claiborne

41:04

dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to

41:06

shorten skirts that were already in production

41:08

for that fall. And women rejected

41:11

it and mass

41:13

rejected it because it was just

41:15

too extreme.

41:16

Women were like, no, absolutely not.

41:18

I have a job. I work. I'm not gonna

41:20

wear a mini skirt and a corset.

41:22

Actually, Nina Totemburger got on the air

41:24

at NPR and urged women not to buy

41:27

into the hype, but they barely needed

41:29

the urging. Tons of merchandise

41:31

went unpurchased. And really,

41:34

the bottom kind of fell out of

41:36

the fashion industry briefly. And the financial

41:38

repercussions were huge. Retailers had

41:40

to take a heavy hit on markdowns.

41:43

In the eighties, by and large,

41:45

women decided to do what men had

41:47

done the decade before, which

41:49

is, They

41:50

decided not to care about keeping

41:52

up with fashion. All consumers

41:54

seemed to be adopting their own practical

41:57

subtle uniforms. for their own

41:59

lives

41:59

and their own needs. And they

42:02

could do that because the consumer

42:04

was more affluent than ever before.

42:06

And with affluence comes

42:08

power. And with

42:11

this affluence, we start

42:13

seeing that designers

42:16

lose their ability to dictate

42:18

to their consumers what they

42:22

should be wearing. And instead,

42:24

people are insisting no, you give

42:26

me what I want.

42:28

And this is the era

42:30

when the trend forecasting industry

42:33

really

42:33

grows. Yes, the

42:35

industry grew powerfully

42:37

in the eighties in an attempt to

42:39

help retailers minimize their

42:41

losses.

42:42

Lifestyle gurus and forecasting

42:44

companies emerged to tell manufacturers

42:46

of cars, of technology, of clothing,

42:49

what the future would be and what consumers

42:52

would want.

42:53

So there is a bit of a chicken

42:55

and egg aspect to

42:57

it. Is it popular because

42:59

it's available everywhere

43:02

or is it available everywhere because

43:04

it's

43:04

going to be popular. The

43:06

hallmark of the third phase

43:09

of modern fashion is

43:10

that it is full of multiple competing

43:12

simultaneous looks

43:14

that are all in at the same time.

43:17

And it leads to a phenomenon known

43:20

as

43:20

collective selection.

43:22

And collective selection is when

43:24

we choose from sets

43:27

of competing styles. The ones that are

43:29

most in sync with

43:31

our tastes. There are few

43:34

different sets of trends that

43:36

are in at any given time and we

43:38

embrace the ones that resonate with us and we

43:40

reject those that don't.

43:42

And overall, this meant

43:44

that the safest bet for any

43:46

clothing company was to play it conservative.

43:50

To design, to the most sellable,

43:52

common denominator, and make garments

43:54

that were neutral and timeless and

43:57

appropriate. And some

43:59

version

43:59

of Preppy or Ivy fit

44:02

right into that. So much so

44:04

that in nineteen

44:05

eighty three, A company

44:07

called Popular Merchandise Inc.

44:09

did a preppy rebrand and became

44:12

Jay Crew.

44:14

So by the nineteen

44:15

eighties, in both the United States

44:18

and Japan, preppy

44:20

was

44:20

so palatable so easy

44:22

to wear, so common that

44:25

both countries

44:25

settled into this sort of

44:27

new

44:27

neutrality. And

44:30

this was about to be the first time

44:32

that one single style was

44:34

in opposite sides

44:37

of the planet. But

44:40

then out of that,

44:41

both countries were about to

44:43

generate some

44:44

of most significant and original style

44:47

movements of the twentieth century. and

44:49

both of these movements would have their

44:51

lineage

44:53

in preppy clothes.

45:11

Article of interest is a proud member of radiotopia

45:14

from PRX. written cut and performed by

45:16

Avery truffle in. Kelly Prime edits the scripts.

45:19

Ian Cost does mixing mastering and sound design.

45:21

Jessica Serrano checks all the fact The

45:22

logo art is by Helen Shew of Sang, a photo

45:25

by Nadie Wynn Barnes. The theme songs are

45:27

by Sasamie with a collegiate reinterpretation by

45:29

the B'eslabs, the Tufts University, Acapella

45:31

Group. with additional music by me and

45:33

Ray Royal. The voice

45:34

of Paul Fussell was Jesse Thorne and

45:36

special thanks this episode

45:37

to Lyle Becker and Jason Stewart. With

45:39

gratitude forever, to Roman Mars.

45:57

Radio tip. from

46:01

PRX.