0:00

I like the

0:01

Chapter seven.

0:03

Yeah. Like the whole end. The whole end. Yeah. Yeah.

0:05

Three four. Chapter

0:07

seven.

0:09

My favorite vintage shop in Brooklyn

0:11

is called Front General Store, and

0:13

it's not the cheapest, but

0:16

that's because they're pretty high end and they have

0:18

a lot of beautiful old designer stuff,

0:20

but my favorite part is in the

0:22

very back of

0:23

the store. And that's where they have all these

0:25

stunning historic garments

0:28

that feel like they should be in a museum. Like

0:30

authentic bomber jackets from World

0:32

War two and cowboy shirts from the nineteen

0:35

thirties,

0:36

But unlike a museum, you

0:38

can just touch these clothes. You can even

0:40

try them on. So I mostly

0:42

visit the shop as though it's a petting zoo and

0:44

one time I was

0:45

in the store just touching everything.

0:47

And I overheard a shop manager, lovingly

0:50

stroking some very unremarkable looking

0:53

old blue jeans.

0:55

These, he said,

0:58

were big e Levi's, Biggie

1:00

Levi's big difference is a capital e

1:02

red tab.

1:03

On the tab on the pocket where it says

1:05

Levi's, the letter

1:06

e, is capitalized. The difference

1:09

is the denim, the way they die, the

1:11

quality of course.

1:12

The shop manager, Hidya Sugawa,

1:14

the one who I was overhearing that day, said

1:16

that these genes are extremely rare.

1:19

We've had

1:20

stopped making them in nineteen seventy

1:22

one. That's when the thought quality

1:24

goes cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. So

1:27

even like the fiftieth jeans, that's like seven

1:29

years ago,

1:30

everything is intact and still, it's

1:32

a great indigo.

1:34

Hidea Segua is like an archivist

1:36

of clothing, and his expertise is

1:38

in American style.

1:40

American style, but tell the printed sweatshirt,

1:43

denim jeans.

1:44

He day himself also dresses in

1:46

classic American style. It's all

1:48

about coordinating

1:50

and putting stuff over something

1:53

plannoles and colors, coordinate

1:56

layers, exactly layering. layering.

1:58

That's what American people good at it.

2:00

Or

2:01

at least, that is what

2:02

Americans are supposed to be good at.

2:04

when I was living in Japan watching movies and

2:06

American thing, I was always looking

2:09

up to Americans like they're cooler

2:11

than us. But then came here,

2:14

start seeing that I was different from

2:16

what I was thinking, what I was expecting. You mean,

2:18

they're like, Americans weren't as cool as he

2:20

thought. Right. Hideo

2:22

first came to the US in the nineteen nineties,

2:24

and Americans were not doing well

2:26

fashion wise. Okay. You tackle your

2:29

wardrobe. Come on. This wardrobe is

2:31

After spending the twentieth century as

2:33

Ivy icons of the world, Americans

2:36

suddenly found themselves.

2:38

totally at a loss for what to wear.

2:41

So there is way too much casual

2:43

clothing in here. You could see our national

2:45

sartor real confusion play out in

2:47

shows like what not to wear and queer

2:50

eye for the straight guy, both of which came

2:52

out in two thousand three. Stop. Put

2:54

it back on the rack. In

2:56

the late twentieth century,

2:58

business casual had so thoroughly

3:00

taken over that rather than going to

3:02

place like Brooks Brothers to get fully suited

3:05

and taken care of,

3:06

Americans were sort of freewheeling it. They

3:08

were going to the mall to piece together outfits

3:11

and more or less shooting from the hip. and that

3:13

was a little sad. Good to me

3:15

like always America

3:16

have to be something we can

3:19

get inspired from.

3:21

So

3:22

that but is a little bit sad. America

3:25

had a culture of not caring

3:27

about fashion. A culture of not

3:30

learning. We

3:31

expected our style to come easily and

3:33

effortlessly and naturally, and that was

3:35

our whole thing. We were supposed look

3:38

cool because we didn't think about

3:39

looking cool. But

3:41

then when our national

3:42

dress code got totally casual

3:44

and clothing companies started skimping on quality,

3:47

and the mall became the de facto clothier,

3:50

we did not know where to look for help.

3:52

Americans were lost. Everyone forgot

3:54

how to dress. W. David Mark's author

3:56

of Amitura

3:56

says that this however

3:58

was not

3:59

the case in Japan, where

4:01

a lot of people were still

4:03

very into finding and wearing

4:06

high quality clothes. Japan

4:08

had not gone through that big dress down

4:11

and people still wear suits to work

4:13

and

4:14

the Ivy League scene was

4:16

still pretty big. Brooks Brothers was

4:18

well established. A lot of Japanese

4:21

consumers had in their own lifetimes needed

4:23

to teach themselves how to dress. And

4:26

this paid off in the development

4:27

of a real culture around

4:29

the study and cultivation of

4:32

style. And there was just

4:34

much more interest in clothing. And there's all these

4:36

magazines that kept the knowledge alive.

4:38

Japanese magazines taught about

4:41

how to shop. how to iron, how

4:43

to mend all in these really

4:45

in-depth

4:45

nerdy ways. That it's magazine

4:48

that is showing American vintage.

4:50

Hidia learned how to thrift and hunt

4:52

for vintage from a magazine and

4:54

not a niche

4:55

one. This was a mainstream Japanese

4:58

publication that specialized in

5:00

highlighting old American style.

5:03

Boom. Magazine. B00N

5:05

Boom. Magazine. listed images

5:08

of American garments and all their different

5:10

lines and capsule collections from different years.

5:12

And if you can find images of Boone Magazine,

5:15

it really looks like textbook

5:17

with all these labels from

5:19

different eras side by side,

5:21

teaching readers how to identify quality

5:24

and what the prices should be based on the year

5:26

of manufacture. I mean, this discourse

5:28

on clothing is like ribbonical. They

5:30

were showing the prices and also

5:33

all that the tags that it tells you what

5:35

errors and all, you know, difference. And

5:38

that's how people start learning And

5:40

that's how Hidea learned about stuff

5:42

like big e Levi's. That information

5:45

was out there in Japan. but

5:48

while the knowledge wasn't hard to find.

5:51

The clothes, however, those

5:53

had to be hunted down.

5:55

So

5:56

when Hida came to the US for the first time,

5:58

it was explicitly

6:00

to shop

6:01

to go by cool vintage

6:04

American clothes And that's when I

6:06

came to the state and I drove even seven

6:08

thousand miles around the country looking

6:11

for clothes, night of nineteen ninety.

6:14

Yeah. I dropped seven thousand miles for one month.

6:16

You

6:16

you just went you

6:18

took that big trip just to go shopping -- Yeah.

6:20

-- by yourself, for

6:21

the other guys. So for all people, total.

6:24

Were you gonna bring it all back and sell it?

6:26

Or Pretty much that time we are buying

6:28

stuff for yourself. because prices

6:30

are cheaper. Basically, Americans

6:33

had no idea what they had.

6:35

We didn't know about big e Levi's

6:37

or quality workwear We didn't learn

6:39

about materials or manufacturers. The

6:42

nineties were a time when as David

6:44

Marks writes. Americans flocked

6:47

to shiny new shopping malls. while

6:49

Japanese buyers haunted the American

6:52

Heartland's most antiquated and

6:54

leased profitable retailers. and

6:56

they made out like bandits. Nineteen

6:59

eighty nine nineteen nineties, you get like

7:01

454 bag of printed stuff.

7:03

including military sneakers,

7:06

denim for, like, sixty cents

7:08

to five bucks. as

7:11

David Marks writes in Amatura,

7:13

the consumer rush for vintage

7:15

clothing caused the

7:17

largest ever transfer of

7:19

garments from the United States

7:21

to Japan. Far beyond

7:23

the post war charity drives and military

7:26

shipments or even, contemporary brands

7:29

regular orders of new clothing. The

7:31

vintage rush was the largest

7:33

ever transfer of garments from the US

7:36

to Japan. How bananas is that?

7:38

Of course, nobody knows what we were

7:40

buying. And sometimes, like, the aging

7:42

guy with the long hair, with the engineered

7:44

boots, shows up in, like, Arkansas

7:47

or Alabama, there will

7:49

be a little suspicious. because

7:52

maybe they've never seen Asian people.

7:57

But at a shopping watch, it was great.

7:59

although

7:59

the vintage market couldn't stay

8:02

great for long. After

8:04

all, it was a finite supply

8:07

And most of these vintage clothes were floating

8:09

around in old shops that didn't have

8:11

computerized inventory systems.

8:13

So this ravenous appetite for vintage

8:15

in Japan naturally turned

8:17

into just making

8:20

new clothes that were vintage style.

8:23

Japan started to manufacture high

8:26

quality clothes domestically, a

8:29

lot of them following the Kata

8:31

of classic Ivy style. I

8:33

think for a long time, these Japanese manufacturers

8:36

would imitate things and try

8:38

to make the perfect recreations of Iodlee

8:41

style. And

8:41

it came to be that Japanese

8:44

made basics became

8:46

even higher quality and more

8:48

beautiful than the American styles

8:51

they had initially studied. So

8:53

much so that Americans fell

8:56

in love with them too. Love you.

8:58

Really? Oh my god. veteran fashion

9:00

journalist, Terry Higgins, says that Japanese

9:03

companies like Uniqlo paid

9:05

attention to the subtleties of cut and

9:07

quality in a way that American

9:09

companies had mostly stopped doing.

9:11

A lot of American brands, a lot of things are really boxy.

9:13

And I think that one thing we all liked about Uniqlo

9:16

is is that the sweaters actually stopped

9:18

at the waist. I remember in two thousand

9:20

six, I took a pilgrimage to the SoHo

9:22

Uniqlo when it was the first to open in New

9:25

York city and it was this real scene

9:27

everyone was losing their minds over these

9:29

simple, affordable clothes. And

9:32

I remember thinking that Uniqlo

9:35

looked so Japanese to

9:37

me. It didn't even dawned on me that

9:39

this was an evolution and

9:41

an iteration on a mid century

9:43

American look.

9:45

And it wasn't only Uniqlo holding

9:47

up the torch of Ivy style in America.

9:50

And the aunts, a number of

9:52

new fashion blogs started to

9:54

pop up. Scans of Japanese magazine

9:56

started showing up on these blogs. those Japanese

9:59

magazines

9:59

like men's club that were showing how

10:02

to dress in American clothes. Japan

10:04

was just sitting on all this stuff and I think it

10:06

once that fashion blog kind of movement

10:09

started it really just seamlessly merge.

10:12

And one fashion blog called a

10:14

continuous lean discovered

10:16

the nineteen sixty five book

10:19

Take Ivy. It had been

10:21

a cult classic in Japan for a while now.

10:23

But when a continuous lien published

10:25

some scans of take Ivy on their

10:28

site, it blew up.

10:30

And people couldn't believe what they

10:32

were seeing.

10:33

These images of handsome mid

10:36

century Princeton students

10:37

wearing their weird layers of shirts

10:39

and sweaters and chinos surrounded by

10:41

all this Japanese writing. And then

10:43

in two thousand and ten, powerhousebooks in

10:46

Brooklyn did the first English edition. He'd

10:48

never been in English, and they did an English edition

10:50

and that was, you know, runaway bestseller.

10:52

And suddenly, people around the world were obsessing

10:55

over these Japanese images of American college

10:57

students from nineteen sixty five. In America,

10:59

it was time to go back

11:00

to basics. And basics

11:03

now meant some version

11:05

of Kensekiyishizu's version of

11:08

Ivy. American traditional style

11:10

is in some ways the most basic

11:12

style for men in Japan.

11:15

and that was what Mesquite She's a wanted

11:17

to do in first place. He just believed that young

11:19

people did not have a basic casual

11:21

style to follow. Like, he just wanted to

11:23

make the basic basic holding

11:26

that that Japan didn't have.

11:30

Kensekiya Shizu died on May

11:32

twenty fourth. two thousand five,

11:34

at the age of ninety three. At

11:37

the time of his death,

11:38

millions of Japanese students and

11:40

executives and employees and retirees

11:43

were following his principles of

11:45

Ivy style.

11:48

He had taught a generation how

11:50

to dress. And Before

11:52

he died, he went to a Uniqlo,

11:55

and he was walking around the Uniqlo, and

11:58

he said, this is what I wanted to do.

12:01

If you search for VAN jacket today,

12:03

you will find a Japanese company that got the

12:05

rights to the brand name. So VAN

12:07

jacket exists. but under different management

12:10

that has nothing to do with the Ashizu

12:12

family. And this version of

12:14

van jacket is making their versions

12:16

of Varsity jackets and chunky sweaters that

12:18

you're supposed to wear in layers and boat totes.

12:21

It's trying to do a modern take

12:23

on Ivy. And

12:25

I get it. I get the appeal. Ivy

12:28

is like vanilla ice cream and that

12:30

you could really dress it up as much as you want

12:32

and put anything on it.

12:33

but I've

12:36

never really liked Vanilla. For

12:38

all of Ivy's subtlety and ubiquity

12:41

and versatility, There's

12:43

a lot of contemporary baggage around

12:45

preppy clothes. And there's

12:47

personal baggage too, especially

12:50

if you went to middle school or high school

12:53

in the arts.

13:01

I

13:01

just wanted to say thank you so much

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to everyone who

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has donated so far to our annual radiotopia

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you. we

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rely on mix of sponsorships

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and grants and individual donations

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13:16

And This show reaches thousands

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of listeners

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would mean a lot.

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Like, if just five percent of our

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Check it out at radiotopia

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13:42

thank you.

13:48

Some version of Ivy has

13:50

survived every way that trends

13:52

have worked. Over time, as

13:55

people followed trends

13:55

to look rich or look democratic

13:58

or look young or

13:59

look cool, an Oxford button

14:02

down and loafers

14:02

have remained viable options.

14:06

Ivy is on standby, as a put

14:08

together look, you can always wear

14:10

to date night or a job interview. It

14:13

is not a trend. It is just always

14:16

there.

14:17

just below the surface. And

14:19

yet there are moments when the look becomes

14:21

trendy. When it gets turned up

14:23

really preppy preppy with, like, multiple

14:26

popped collar I can tell you

14:28

that in nineteen eighty when the preppy book

14:30

came out, I was asked on

14:32

tour every day maybe

14:35

eight times a day depending on how many

14:37

interviews I I had to do.

14:40

What is a preppy, Lisa? Lisa

14:42

tell us what is a preppy Thirty

14:44

years after the preppy handbook, Lisa

14:46

Bernbach wrote a follow-up book called the

14:48

True Prep, and she took it

14:50

on tour to twenty eight cities And

14:53

this time, in

14:54

twenty ten, no one

14:56

asked her what a preppy was.

14:59

But

14:59

Lisa found that preppy

15:01

clothes were still as relevant

15:03

as ever. You know, the default

15:06

of a sweater, a shirt, and

15:09

a pair of pounds,

15:11

worn casually, deliberately,

15:14

unaffectedly, or affectedly?

15:18

That's how everybody dresses

15:20

now. Everybody. everywhere.

15:23

Preppy is a standard. An

15:26

inoffensive,

15:27

friendly, legible look.

15:31

And

15:31

this is what makes the style

15:34

so easily

15:36

weaponized. Probably

15:38

the most significant set of

15:40

documents on this particular topic

15:42

is the many, many, many leaked

15:45

chats of the organizers of

15:47

the unite right rally? The twenty seventeen

15:49

rally with the techie torches in Charlottesville.

15:52

I'm not gonna play the clip of the white

15:54

supremacist chanting Jews will not replace

15:56

us. But eventually, all

15:59

their organizing chats were

16:01

leaked. And a great deal

16:03

of what they were talking about was exactly how

16:05

they would like to appear. Taliban, the

16:07

author of Culture Warlords, my journey

16:09

into the dark web of white supremacy,

16:11

says that the rally organizers

16:13

were engaged in very

16:15

vigorous debate about the

16:17

messaging. What flags they

16:20

should carry? What symbols they should

16:22

use? would

16:22

they have a uniform and they did settle on uniform

16:25

and the uniform was khakis

16:28

and white shirts. So this very

16:31

consciously preppy

16:33

image. I mean, you can tell they really considered

16:36

fashion as a message because they're all

16:38

dressed weirdly identically

16:40

in their collared shirts.

16:41

Their aim was to say we're no longer

16:43

hiding in the shadows is the extreme right. We

16:45

are part of the political

16:48

landscape or undeniable, and

16:50

their way of expressing that,

16:52

a big part of it was to dress

16:54

respectively. as opposed to dressing

16:57

like brown shirts or militiamen or

16:59

punks.

17:00

And so the specific optics

17:03

goal of the khaki

17:04

shirts and all that was to

17:07

sort of blur the lines between the far right

17:09

and everybody else. And that line has been very

17:11

consciously moved. very often

17:14

by extremists who were dressed

17:16

to look like like young Republicans

17:18

like good reasonable neighbors.

17:22

And this has been a potent

17:24

strategic move for a while

17:26

now. Like, when David Duke ran for

17:28

governor

17:28

of Louisiana in nineteen ninety one,

17:31

he took off the clan hood and put on

17:33

a

17:33

blue blazer. And

17:35

I mean, he didn't win, but it

17:37

really helped him get taken seriously

17:39

as a viable candidate. Given how utterly

17:41

gormous and stupid the press

17:43

is,

17:44

putting on a polo

17:46

works.

17:47

If they're wearing normal

17:49

human clothes. There's often this,

17:51

like, and he was so normal

17:54

and he made past and he's just

17:56

like you and me, but he just happened

17:58

to have these quirky beliefs

17:59

like all Jews should die, and

18:02

we never let in another immigrant.

18:04

And, you know, but they have

18:07

this uniform of plausible deniability

18:09

and, like, it's very

18:11

much

18:12

not a coincidence that armor

18:15

is a preppy shirt. For

18:16

example, Tucker Carlson is

18:18

perhaps America's foremost preppy

18:21

fashion plate,

18:22

and Lisa Burbach always notices

18:24

preppy clothes in the news. Like

18:26

that horrible couple, the McCluskey's who

18:30

lived in Saint Louis and had guns

18:32

out in their front porch,

18:33

but he was wearing a Brooks Brothers

18:36

Polo shirt. Which

18:37

made me wonder, how is

18:39

Brooks Brothers doing these days?

18:41

Did you shop at Brooks Brothers before?

18:43

No. I did not. Honestly, I

18:45

did not. I was not a Brooks Shopper.

18:48

And when did you become the CEO of Brooks?

18:50

I can't I became CEO in September

18:53

of twenty twenty, right when we purchased

18:55

the company. In the thick of the pandemic,

18:57

Brooks Brothers was bought for three hundred

18:59

twenty five million dollars, less

19:02

than half of what Marks and Spencer paid

19:04

for it. It was bought by Spark

19:06

Group who owns a bunch of other brands.

19:08

There's Nauticai Herbstahl Forever twenty one,

19:11

Eddie Bauer, Reebok, Brooks was

19:13

the old dog in the group. And so when I first

19:15

started working on the brand, I was

19:17

just thinking to myself we have to make this brand

19:19

work. Ken O'Hashi is the CEO

19:21

of Brooks Brothers. And obviously,

19:23

I'm the first minority ever. It's

19:25

obviously always been run by white man. and

19:27

now you have a gay Asian CEO running it,

19:29

which is, you know, interesting in a lot of

19:31

ways. And I have to say the clothes Brooks has been

19:34

making lately under the artistic direction

19:36

of Michael Bastian are really fun

19:38

and bold. To me, it's all very cheeky

19:41

like twenty ten's vampire weekend

19:43

looking. And when we purchased the company,

19:45

the company really, really got narrow and

19:47

focused. It wasn't really a lifestyle brand.

19:50

At the end of the day, it was a dress shirt and suiting

19:52

And that's what people really knew

19:54

about Brooks Brothers. And historically, it wasn't

19:56

always the case. Right? Right. Basically, this

19:58

pioneer of sportswear is trying

20:00

to get back into the game that they created.

20:03

Getting back to Brooks Brothers of eighty years

20:05

ago, it was really about a full

20:07

lifestyle collection and we're finally

20:09

moving in that direction.

20:10

So what is the I mean, the question is,

20:12

like, what is the lifestyle? Is it

20:16

how preppy is it? No. I think

20:18

it's a it's I think it's a modern act

20:20

active full lifestyle. You

20:23

know, I don't wanna label things. I'm not

20:25

sure the word preppy

20:27

is a word that is used as

20:29

frequently anymore? I mean, sure,

20:32

call it whatever you want, but Brooks is playing

20:34

with a lot of Oxford button downs and cable

20:36

nets. and blazers and madras. It

20:38

feels a little antiquated to to

20:40

say preppy. It it feels a little exclusive, and

20:42

we're certainly not that. We wanna make sure that we're

20:44

inclusive. Under Ken O'Hashi's leadership,

20:47

Brooks now offers

20:48

more women's clothes, and they expanded

20:50

the men's sizing.

20:51

One of the first things I did when I joined the company

20:53

is I we graded all product on tech small

20:55

because I wanted an entry point for everyone.

20:57

This kind of sizing is super helpful for trans

21:00

men. I also think that there's something happening

21:02

with UNSEX dressing. where things

21:04

are more genderless and I think Brooks like plays

21:06

perfectly into that. So this

21:08

is the challenge for Brooks Brothers. They

21:11

have to update and still

21:13

not lose track of their old guard.

21:15

In a big way, we really care about our our

21:17

loyal customer because over two thirds

21:19

of our transactions are actually done through a

21:21

Brooks Brothers loyalty member,

21:24

which is a huge, huge number.

21:26

But at the same time, we really have to be

21:28

thinking about like putting

21:30

Brooks Brothers through a modern lens and a lot

21:32

that has to do with sportswear and thinking

21:35

about sportswear and trends there opponent. Which

21:37

is to say sweat pants? I I

21:39

think listen. If we do we do

21:41

do sweat pants, but we do in our way.

21:43

I mean, it's a very, very soft look.

21:45

double p k sweatpants. You can

21:47

get it monogrammed. Right? And twenty

21:49

five percent of our sweats are actually monogrammed.

21:51

The customer chooses to get their sweatpants monogram.

21:54

So we know we have a we

21:56

have a special customer. Their

21:59

special

21:59

customer.

21:59

This

22:01

is Brooks Brothers blessing and

22:03

its curse. because while it means

22:05

they have this roster of long term

22:07

die hard loyalty members, a

22:09

legacy company like Brooks

22:11

Brothers. will

22:13

always also be measured

22:15

against the way they

22:17

used to be. The people

22:19

who wore Brooks Brothers years and years and years

22:21

ago I don't wanna hear from them. Veterans fashion

22:23

journalist, Terry

22:24

Adkins. Because they're just gonna complain

22:27

because they're gonna complain and also

22:29

to what happens, the memory gets really weird

22:31

because people start to think. They can't

22:33

were made so much better than that. Yeah. Yeah. Everything

22:35

was much so much better than. Sure.

22:37

In the past, garments were more durable

22:40

and better constructed. but

22:42

not necessarily in a way that would

22:44

feel good to most people today,

22:47

not in comparison to the soft

22:49

stretchy clothes our modern bodies

22:51

have gotten accustomed to. You don't

22:53

really want the old clothes. The

22:55

old clothes. the way the fabrics

22:57

were, the things were stiff, people were

23:00

not comfortable in a lot of those clothes.

23:02

People now, they need something with stretch,

23:04

they need something that's gonna fit Do

23:06

you want that? But you want a version

23:08

that is so in other words, you want it to look

23:10

the part. You want it to have all the detail.

23:13

But you don't wanna It's

23:15

literal nostalgia. It's a better

23:17

version of the pack. Exactly. Yeah. It's literal

23:19

not that's a good that's a good term. It's literal

23:21

not dollars. You don't want the real off

23:23

anything because

23:25

it's not functional. What

23:28

Brooks Brothers is trying to do

23:30

and

23:30

what a lot of companies are trying to do

23:33

is

23:33

revisit the past in

23:35

a new way. That's

23:36

the whole genius of Ralph Lauren that this

23:39

brand is constantly recycling

23:41

and revisiting and reviving and

23:43

revamping

23:44

old styles in

23:46

new varieties and fabrics and colors.

23:49

That's what has kept Ralph

23:51

afloat

23:52

all these decades. How has

23:54

he been able to with stand the

23:57

storm inside the space that

23:59

seemingly

23:59

no one else could get through. Low head Dallas

24:02

Penn. No one has been able to

24:04

get this kind of run. Do you think it's

24:06

because he sort of

24:08

hitched his wagon to preppy? He

24:10

hitched his wagon to nostalgia. And

24:13

preppy is part of it. but

24:15

he hitched his wagon solidly to

24:18

nostalgia.

24:20

And

24:22

this is what preppy has

24:25

been about. It's what

24:27

it's always been about. And

24:29

it's what fashion as an industry

24:31

has banked on.

24:33

Nostalgia. Originally,

24:36

Ivy was about wearing college clothes to

24:38

remember what a great time you had in college.

24:41

In

24:41

the nineteen fifties, Ivy was about remembering

24:43

how simple life was in the nineteen

24:46

twenties. And in the nineteen sixties,

24:48

the entirety of the past was romanticized.

24:51

including according to Thomas

24:53

Frank, the nineteen fifties.

24:55

Shana Nau played at Woodstock.

24:57

Shana Nau is the doop revival

24:59

band that famously would go on to do

25:01

the soundtrack for Greece. The sixties

25:03

weren't even over before they were

25:06

people were already nostalgic wasn't

25:08

nineteen fifties, you know?

25:10

And in the nineteen seventies, movies

25:12

romanticized the time before

25:14

JFK and MLK were assassinated. And

25:16

in the nineteen eighties, Ivy was about remembering

25:19

some hazy nebulous time when

25:21

America was great. And that eighties

25:23

boom was why? When Andre

25:26

Benjamin was growing up in Atlanta, his

25:28

schoolmates were, quote, wearing

25:30

two or three polo shirts at a time.

25:33

And

25:33

when Andre Benjamin became Andre three

25:35

thousand and started wearing preppy

25:37

clothes to reference his youth, and he

25:40

became a part of the culture a vampire

25:42

weekend and gossip girl and Kanye West

25:44

in his college dropout phase, that

25:47

became the preppy background of

25:49

my youth in the early aughts.

25:52

It's

25:52

like Ivy is stuck in its own

25:54

feedback loop where every

25:56

generation grows up with some version

25:58

of it that turns into their

25:59

own form of nostalgia.

26:03

Nastasia has an

26:05

incredibly powerful effect

26:08

on fashion for a variety of ways. Dr.

26:10

Lauren DaVita of Baylor University.

26:12

Nastasia is when

26:15

we look back at an era

26:18

fondly,

26:19

glossing over the

26:21

bad parts, and

26:23

remembering

26:25

through REL's colored glasses. the

26:27

good parts and ignoring

26:28

the unpleasantness

26:30

associated with that

26:33

era.

26:34

I see a lot of nostalgia for

26:36

the early two thousands now. And honestly,

26:39

sometimes I feel it too,

26:40

like, things were so much easier when

26:42

we had flipped phones and no

26:43

social media. But the other

26:45

day, I stumbled upon this beautifully excoriating

26:48

speech against the war on terror that Arndati

26:50

Roy gave in two thousand

26:51

two.

26:52

To fuel yet another war,

26:54

this time against Iraq, by cynically

26:56

manipulating people's grief, is

26:59

to cheapen and devalue grief.

27:01

And

27:01

I was like, oh, right.

27:04

That was a really scary time. We were pouring

27:06

all this money into this endless war, and we didn't

27:08

know why And there was so much fear

27:10

in paranoia and enforced patriotism

27:13

everywhere. But

27:15

I see the clothes from that era for sale.

27:18

I see the track suits and the low rise jeans

27:20

and the crop tops and none

27:22

of the fear or the guilt or

27:24

the paranoia. It would be almost

27:27

impossible to expect a line

27:29

that highlighted the ugliness of

27:31

a prior era to sell

27:33

very well. Fashion

27:36

is a terrible way to reckon

27:38

with complexity. There's really

27:40

so little room for nuance. Like,

27:42

sure, maybe on a runway show

27:44

or in a museum, you can try to show something

27:47

that's confusing or difficult or

27:49

unpalatable

27:51

But by and large,

27:53

fashion is a commercial art,

27:56

which means it has to be appealing.

27:59

So that's

27:59

sort of the trade off with nostalgia.

28:03

We accept that we're highlighting the

28:05

good and overlooking the bat of the era

28:07

because we don't want our fashion to

28:09

make us feel bad. So you

28:11

just have to accept that in the nostalgia

28:14

effect, something is going to get left

28:16

out of the story.

28:18

Case in point, when I tried to ask the CEO

28:20

of Brooks Brothers about the company's history making

28:22

livery, which was worn in some cases

28:24

by enslaved people, Their PR

28:26

person who was sitting there in the room immediately

28:29

stopped me and didn't want us to talk about that on

28:31

record. Fashion is

28:33

revisionist. And

28:35

Ivy,

28:36

cheerful, legible, Ivy,

28:39

has always been a look that has

28:41

masked some sort of loss

28:43

or instability or injustice.

28:46

And

28:46

yet each time it comes back, it

28:48

comes carrying a longing.

28:50

for some

28:52

other better

28:53

time.

28:54

These good memories of this simpler,

28:57

happier time in their life are

29:00

triggered and the nostalgia effect

29:02

actually makes consumers more

29:05

willing to spend money to

29:07

enjoy this sense of shared community

29:09

and nostalgia. And

29:11

this all makes sense in theory.

29:13

But

29:14

on an individual level, I don't

29:16

feel a

29:16

lot of shared community and nostalgia

29:19

in preppy clothes.

29:20

As I have been saying over and over,

29:22

I did not wear these clothes. I did not

29:24

identify this way,

29:26

but maybe I fucking should.

29:29

This

29:29

is how I put it to Lisa Burmbach. I

29:32

I started my project from

29:34

a place of curiosity and I considered myself

29:36

an out Snyder was like, oh, I'm really curious about

29:38

Ivy style and collegiate style and what it

29:40

became.

29:40

And then reading your book, I was like,

29:43

oh, Am I a preppy? It

29:46

took you a long enough time to say

29:48

it.

29:48

I feel so embarrassed to say this like

29:50

it's some revelation, but when I actually looked

29:53

at the criteria laid out in the preppy

29:55

handbook.

29:56

The aesthetics didn't matter

29:58

so

29:58

much as the raw reality.

30:01

which is that I went

30:03

to prep school.

30:06

I, Avery

30:07

Truffleman, and

30:09

PREPIE.

30:14

By

30:16

the way, if you wanna see pictures of any

30:18

of the clothes

30:18

I talk about on the show, including the

30:20

genes of the future, along with show notes,

30:23

links, and

30:23

complete transcripts. Go to

30:26

articles of interest dot sub

30:28

stack dot com. That's right. It's a

30:30

newsletter, articles of interest

30:32

dot sub stack dot com.

30:35

the

30:42

I am so sorry. This really,

30:44

truly was not anything I was

30:46

intending to hide. I mean, I probably

30:48

should have told you earlier, but really, as

30:50

I

30:50

said to Lisa,

30:52

I stupidly thought it didn't matter. I

30:54

didn't think going to prep school

30:56

made me any sort of expert in

30:58

Ivy because I mostly

30:59

tried not to engage with

31:01

that whole culture. I haven't been here in

31:04

thirteen years. But Lisa Bernbach

31:06

made me realize I should just be honest with you.

31:09

Even though I know you're probably

31:11

judging me because I definitely judged

31:14

all the other kids when I first went to prep

31:16

school in high school. So the

31:18

the the vibe that so if you think of your

31:20

time capsule, right, if you think about what

31:22

the kids in two thousand

31:24

five, two thousand nine, we're wearing. that was your

31:26

tenure here. Right? You started in the fall of o five.

31:28

Right? because you were new in ninth grade. Yes.

31:30

Right? So

31:31

564 No. 67I

31:34

have a good memory. The principal of my high school,

31:37

or as we would say, the head of

31:39

the upper school, is still there. I

31:41

mean, do you find in the time that you've been here,

31:43

some classes have been like preppier than

31:45

others? Absolutely. Apparently, two thousand

31:47

four was a real preppy peak.

31:49

lots of cable knits and sweaters and lots

31:51

of, like, color popping. And I joked

31:53

about, like, the people who wear, like, three polo shirts

31:55

on top of each other. That was the thing. That was definitely

31:58

a vibe in the two thousands. And I remember

31:59

seeing all this collar popping when I

32:02

first arrived and was like, oh, wow. I

32:04

don't know if I can handle this.

32:06

But truly, There

32:07

wasn't much room for self expression

32:09

outside of prepiness because my prep

32:11

school had a really strict dress code. There

32:13

were no jeans, no sneakers, no shirts

32:15

with writing on them, no short skirts, shoulders

32:17

had to be covered, shirts had to be tucked in.

32:20

And within these confines,

32:23

Preppy clothing was the path of

32:25

least resistance. And

32:27

so I resolved to

32:29

take the path of most resistance

32:32

You were a button pusher though because you had a different

32:34

style. The red beret. Avery's

32:37

red beret. I remember was that that was a look. Right?

32:39

I don't remember a red beret, but

32:41

I

32:41

trust my principal's memory better than mine actually.

32:43

I wouldn't be surprised.

32:45

In those days, I would try anything.

32:48

everything to avoid wearing

32:50

preppy clothes.

32:52

I wore cowboy boots, I wore vintage

32:54

flapper dresses, I wore long hippie beads,

32:57

Often, I wore all these things all at once. If

32:59

my outfits were a sentence, it

33:02

would say colorless green ideas

33:04

sleep furiously.

33:06

My clothes were experimental to put it

33:08

nicely, but truly they were a little bit

33:10

eligible. And

33:12

this was definitely, first and foremost,

33:14

some classic teenage rebellion. I

33:16

didn't want to be like everybody else and I wanted

33:18

to think I was different. But

33:21

I also think when I was seventeen, I

33:23

was coming into a larger awareness. These

33:26

were the years leading up to occupy Wall

33:28

Street. was reading about the gaping

33:30

inequality in the world all around me.

33:33

And

33:33

here I was in private school. I

33:35

was very aware of my position. I was

33:37

ashamed of it.

33:38

And preppy clothes

33:40

to me were elitism

33:42

and obliviousness incarnate.

33:45

I hated them.

33:47

And

33:47

so I was pretty surprised when

33:50

I went back to visit campus that my prep school

33:52

had gotten rid of the dress code almost

33:54

entirely. There

33:55

were a lot of kids walking around in athleisure.

33:58

This was because of the pandemic.

33:59

We very intentionally said

34:02

just get back here. You're coming back to

34:05

a mask. You're coming back to weekly testing,

34:07

but it was talent challenging. So we kind of said,

34:10

let casual sort of prevail. The

34:13

school has since been working on reinstituting

34:15

some kind of dress code. and they're having a

34:17

lot of talks to consider what would be

34:19

comfortable and expressive and

34:22

inclusive. But, no, I don't I don't I

34:24

wouldn't expunge the preppy look if

34:26

I were starting from scratch because I think it's

34:28

functional. I think it works.

34:30

I think it's actually within reason it's an

34:32

accessible dress code too. Right? I mean, like,

34:35

yes, you can go out and spend eighty five

34:37

dollars on an expensive polo

34:39

shirt, but you can also get a three pack

34:41

of them for ten bucks. So it's I think it's

34:43

an accessible look. I think and

34:45

I mean, it's important because you want it you

34:48

belong in matters. Right? Before

34:50

making this series, belonging

34:52

was probably one of the very last words

34:54

I would have ever chosen to associate

34:56

with preppy clothes. I found the

34:58

style as alienating and exclusive

35:01

as the boardrooms and country clubs where

35:03

I imagined these clothes were worn.

35:06

but

35:06

it wasn't until actually

35:08

doing this research, seeing

35:10

how many people have taken this look and

35:12

made it their own that I saw

35:14

it has actually indeed meant

35:16

belonging to so many different people.

35:19

You know, Ivy League style again has this image

35:21

of being very waspy. and

35:24

yet, you know, its production

35:26

and manufacturing in the United States was mostly

35:28

Jewish American and the

35:30

more interesting iterations of it

35:32

often happen with black Americans.

35:35

And then what has kind of preserved it

35:37

over the years has been these Japanese brands

35:40

and Japanese companies. So It's much more complicated

35:42

than I think people think it is.

35:44

W. David Marks' book, Amatora,

35:47

how Japan saved American style,

35:50

made me realize that the history of Ivy is

35:52

so much richer and more complicated

35:54

than the simple clothing itself

35:56

could ever show. the clothing

35:58

is just dressed down.

35:59

It's not

36:00

ostentatious. It has

36:03

a really natural modest

36:06

sense to it. And so flashy comes

36:08

and goes, but, you know, if you're gonna

36:10

just say modest, it has to be modest and rooted

36:12

in tradition, and that's why I think we can't I back

36:14

to Ivy's style.

36:19

In hindsight, it's obvious why

36:22

I had been drawn to researching Ivy.

36:24

I had to stare down the style that I'd spent

36:27

my whole life avoiding. And in this

36:29

confrontation, I actually realized

36:31

how cool it is. It looks

36:33

good and it looks good to a lot of

36:35

people in a lot of different contexts. Low

36:38

head Dallas pens at best, but

36:41

this is a look that has come to be

36:43

about accessibility. I

36:46

think that's what prep engenders

36:49

right now. for me. Accessibility.

36:52

Yeah. In terms of being accessible

36:54

as a person, like my information,

36:57

my knowledge, you know, my love

36:59

for the earth. I'm giving it up.

37:01

And, yes, hedge funds and eating clubs

37:03

are still as exclusive and unattainable as ever.

37:06

But my pet theory is that

37:09

Ivy Close have become

37:11

everything the IV institutions themselves

37:14

are not.

37:16

They're accessible, they're relatively

37:18

affordable, And they're friendly.

37:20

If these clothes were making a sentence,

37:23

they'd say, hi.

37:25

How are you? I

37:28

think if you're rocking prep now,

37:31

that's where your mind is. That's

37:33

how it's evolved.

37:35

It maybe started in a place

37:37

that was real exclusive and

37:40

dealt with wealth. But now it's inside

37:42

a space where the vibe's different.

37:44

We view it now from its its current iteration,

37:47

and that's accessibility of humanity.

37:51

I love this interpretation, and

37:53

I think Dallas is right. The

37:55

clothes have an incredible power to communicate

37:57

a sense of openness. a

38:00

power that the far right has taken and perverted,

38:02

but that a lot of people can use in

38:04

a lot of different ways.

38:06

Including me, And

38:08

it's only in the course of doing this research into

38:10

Ivy that I've finally started wearing

38:12

collared shirts and a tennis sweater

38:14

that I got at Jay Press. But

38:16

you know, I

38:18

try to wear them in my own way. That's

38:20

the whole reason take Ivy was so

38:22

popular, right? It

38:25

wasn't about the clothes themselves. It's

38:27

about how you style them. But

38:30

now that I know what it is,

38:33

I like Ivy.

38:35

I like it a lot.

38:38

articles

38:47

of interest is a proud member of radiotopia

38:49

from PRX, written cut and performed

38:52

by Avery Truffleman. Kelly Prime

38:54

edits the scripts so many times.

38:56

It's amazing. The Marvelous Ian

38:59

Koss does mixing, mastering, and sound design

39:01

and showed me how to do some of it. Jessica

39:03

Suriano called up every person

39:05

and checked all their quotes with them. The

39:08

logo art is by Helen Shewolf

39:10

Sang with photo by Madeline Barnes.

39:13

The theme songs are by Sasamie with

39:15

this amazing collegiate reinterpretation by

39:17

the Beazl pubs, The Tufts University Acapella

39:20

Group. Isn't it amazing? Additional

39:23

music is by Ian Koss, me,

39:25

and the Amazing Rae Royal. Special

39:27

special thanks this episode to Evan Landry,

39:30

author of the phenomenal book poison Ivy,

39:32

how elite colleges divide us, as

39:34

well as Noam Hasenfeld, Taylor Hamilton,

39:37

and absolutely every single person who let

39:39

me talk about with them at a party and help me think

39:41

about this. Especially, especially

39:44

Derek Guy. Huge thank you to

39:46

Audrey Martovich and everyone at radiotopia

39:49

with gratitude forever to Roman Mars,

39:52

and thank you, dear listener.

39:54

For coming on this ride with me,

40:08

Radio to be From

40:12

PRX.