0:00

Tucker Carlson looks like an evil

0:03

little boy in a horror

0:04

movie from the seventies. Does he?

0:18

Welcome to your You're. I'm Sarah Marshall,

0:20

and today we have Avery

0:22

Trufelman as our special guest.

0:26

Today, we ask the question where

0:28

have all the preppy's gone? An extremely

0:30

topical reference to a Polycol

0:32

song, which I'm sure is on

0:34

all of your minds. And

0:35

we were talking today about how an

0:38

aesthetic that once was

0:40

or at least seemed to be a hyper specific

0:42

marker of class race and

0:45

privilege has now become something we

0:47

hardly even notice. And

0:49

it may seem like it's disappeared, but in

0:51

fact, escapes

0:52

discourse simply because it has

0:54

become ubiquitous.

0:56

I loved having Avery on the show.

0:58

I've enjoyed her work in podcasting since

1:01

before I made podcasts. and

1:03

she's one of my inspirations for

1:06

getting into doing this at all. And it was so

1:08

wonderful to talk with her about

1:10

something that she has clearly

1:12

become deeply obsessed with and there's nothing

1:15

I love more than being told about

1:17

somebody's obsession with footnotes.

1:19

If you wanna support the show, you can do it

1:21

on Patreon or Apple Plus subscriptions,

1:24

and we are coming out with a bonus episode

1:27

where I talk to Sarah, our

1:30

wonderful producer, about the

1:32

making of Fleetwood Mac's rumors.

1:34

And

1:35

we got some cute shirts and stuff on T

1:37

public as well. I've heard

1:39

that people are shopping lately.

1:42

I don't know why, but if you wanna do that,

1:44

that's one of your options. Thank

1:46

you so much for being with us. Here's

1:48

our episode.

1:50

Welcome to You're wrong about the podcast

1:53

where I have a little cold It's

1:55

not COVID. I'm gonna be here

1:57

forever. Don't worry about it. And

1:59

with me today, is Avery

2:02

Trufelman podcasting legend,

2:04

dare I say it. It's

2:07

such an honor. This is so cool.

2:09

This is so fun to have you on here.

2:11

tell us about who you are

2:13

and what you do, and then we'll go on our

2:15

wonderful cable Nick journey together.

2:19

Yeah. I'm a podcaster. For

2:21

the last year or I've

2:23

been working on this podcast that I

2:25

make about fashion called articles of interest.

2:27

In the past, episodes

2:28

have each been about

2:30

one thing, like, what's the history of

2:32

plaid? Or what's the history of

2:35

knock offs?

2:35

You know, just like one that's why it's called articles of

2:37

interest. Like, each one's like -- Mhmm. -- article of clothing. I

2:39

was gonna do one episode

2:42

about the topic we're gonna talk about today. And

2:44

then I was like, wait, no. This requires

2:46

its own thing. So I've made, like, seven

2:48

episode series about preppy

2:50

clothes, and I'm convinced it's the great

2:52

American fashion

2:54

story. I'm excited. I

2:56

wanted to start by telling you my perceptions

2:59

of, like, preppyness, preppy

3:01

clothes because when I first heard

3:04

from you about doing this idea. I was like,

3:06

I I really like it. Like,

3:08

I would love

3:09

to do it. But like,

3:11

is there enough material there? And then

3:13

we had to cover sensation about it. And I was like,

3:15

oh my god. It's about everything. I

3:18

I have to say on it, like, at cocktail parties

3:20

and people like, what are you working on? I was like,

3:23

hear me out. about preppy clothes.

3:25

And I think they're a style of clothes.

3:27

Well,

3:27

first of all, they look boring. They

3:29

look like there's nothing

3:30

to them. Mhmm. And also, everyone

3:33

has so much baggage around it, whether it's

3:35

like, I hate it or I'm

3:37

embarrassed

3:37

that I used to wear it or

3:40

III

3:40

don't know. People are, It's

3:42

it's it's kind of a deterrent. What

3:44

are your associations? I'm gonna start

3:46

in a place. I bet you were kind

3:48

of expecting

3:49

Ted Bundy And the

3:51

thing about Ted Bundy, I've always thought, is

3:54

not that he was, like, great looking

3:56

because, like, just look at him. Yeah.

3:58

But that he was, like, incredibly

3:59

white and

4:01

that he was, like, both born very

4:03

white and then it was, like, inhabiting

4:06

and enacting this,

4:07

like, much greater degree

4:09

of whiteness in order to make victims

4:11

trust in -- Yes. -- because

4:12

famously he would, like, walk

4:15

around wearing tennis weights. And

4:17

it's like, you've been playing tennis,

4:20

Ted. That's the insidious power.

4:22

of these clothes, like, you know, the members of

4:24

the back then alt

4:26

right marching

4:27

in Charlottesville, they're all wearing polo

4:29

shirts. with their techie torches. Yeah.

4:31

And and they were trying to

4:33

look

4:34

approachable. They were trying to be

4:35

like, come on. Join us. We're not that

4:37

Sarah. They say with Tiki

4:39

Georges.

4:39

Come on down to the BMW dealership

4:42

and

4:42

talk about white supremacy and

4:44

how

4:45

Jews will not replace us. Come

4:47

on down You're One

4:49

hundred percent. We just are, you

4:52

know, white supremacist

4:53

and fine with the

4:55

Holocaust. one hundred percent, but that's the and

4:57

that's why, like, Tucker Carlson is

4:59

wearing the most impeccable, uniform

5:03

Tucker

5:03

Carlson looks like an evil little

5:05

boy

5:05

in a horror movie from the seventies.

5:08

Doesn't he? It didn't occur

5:09

to me before, but he really does. But

5:11

that and that's the thing. It's always like masking

5:14

the same thing. Like, they're saying

5:16

these

5:16

wild bombastic things

5:19

with this uniform or like in Ted Bundy's

5:21

case doing these awful things with this uniform

5:23

of like presentability, looking

5:25

like a rational, normal,

5:28

friendly, white, neighbor.

5:30

I would also

5:31

submit that guy in Saint

5:33

Louis who came out onto

5:35

his porch of his mansion with, I'm

5:37

gonna get it wrong. I always get guns wrong with

5:39

a giant gun because

5:42

protesters were going by his

5:44

You're. wearing a Brooks Brothers

5:46

Polo. Yes. Yeah.

5:49

So we have Ted Bundy, Charlotte'sville

5:52

Nazis, say hello to my

5:54

little husband and to that I'm

5:56

going to add James Spader

5:58

in Preppies pink.

5:59

Yes. The preppy

6:02

handbook. which

6:03

is a book whose history

6:05

we will get into for if you haven't

6:07

heard of it.

6:08

And, yeah, I think that

6:10

establishes us pretty well. And to

6:12

speak of actual clothing, what I think

6:14

of are, like, cable knits

6:15

-- Mhmm. -- pearl earrings,

6:18

intentionally, slightly unraveled hems,

6:21

and edges of things. LL

6:23

Bean, of course, especially the bean

6:24

boot. I

6:26

would argue puffy vest

6:28

down vest even or in there if you're

6:31

in, like, Maine or something? Totally.

6:33

The Patagonia. The cannon of

6:35

what Preppies is is, like, constantly expanding.

6:38

too. Yeah. Like, I would say

6:40

Patagonia, Vests are preppy, but

6:42

that's, like, a recent addition to the

6:44

Canon. Right. So it's not, like,

6:46

old school preppy, but it's new school

6:48

Preppies, and and also that it's

6:50

an aesthetic. And this

6:51

is maybe the thing I find most intriguing

6:54

that, like,

6:55

people had such a clear

6:56

grasp of for a

6:58

period and was such a socially dominant

7:00

idea. And that now we don't talk

7:02

about. Now there's all these other words for,

7:05

like, areas of fashion or

7:07

kind of mood that intersect with

7:09

Like, I think dark academia is

7:11

one, and I don't know any of the others. Yeah.

7:13

But it's like a term that has vanished

7:16

from the zeitgeist and yet

7:18

as you're already pointing out clearly,

7:21

like, the thing itself has gotten nowhere.

7:24

So that's the interesting thing. In the series

7:26

I was talking with the writer, Tal

7:28

Levin, We're talking about Charlottesville and

7:30

the Preppies look that was used in Charlottesville.

7:33

And he was saying, you know, that group of people

7:35

was then called the alt right,

7:37

and that is not a word you hear anymore

7:40

because that

7:40

is what the right has become. Like,

7:42

it was so successful that

7:44

you don't need the word anymore. And

7:46

I would

7:46

argue that is what's happened

7:49

with itself because it is

7:51

so ubiquitous that we don't need

7:53

the word. And if anything, those

7:55

kinds of clothes are just considered

7:58

basics

7:59

or classics,

7:59

like if you go into any uniqlo and

8:02

you really like look at it.

8:04

Like, really look at what they have on the mannequins.

8:06

It's preppy. Like, in the eighties, someone would

8:08

have been like, that's a preppy look.

8:10

And now it's just like,

8:12

a baseline thing.

8:14

And I guess to speak of the polo

8:16

shirt, it's the shirt of say

8:18

hello to my little husband. It's the

8:20

shirt of like camp counselors and

8:23

pool snack bar staff.

8:25

And to me, most significantly,

8:28

it's

8:28

a shirt that my mom wore, like, practically

8:30

every day of my childhood

8:32

because she was a

8:34

doctor and, like, a sort of like

8:36

business casual setting.

8:38

Yeah. And she didn't feel like dressing

8:41

particularly feminine.

8:42

and And

8:43

I think that a polo

8:46

shirt was, like, as close as

8:48

anyone can get to, like,

8:50

wearing nothing of any description

8:52

at all. Yes. Yes. I have no

8:54

idea where this could begin. I feel like you could

8:56

say, like, nineteen forty

8:57

or fifteen fifty

9:00

two.

9:00

really, really, really, I think where the story

9:02

begins is in

9:05

eighteen eighteen in the

9:06

United States with

9:08

the birth of a store that would eventually

9:10

become known as Brooks

9:12

Brothers. Okay. And it

9:14

all starts with

9:16

a merchant named Henry

9:18

Brooks in downtown

9:19

New York. And this is the funny thing. I really

9:22

thought in

9:22

researching clothes, I'd be going out to, like,

9:25

Kennabunk Port to interview people named

9:26

Diffy all the time, but it's really it's

9:28

like a very

9:29

New York story. It is a super New

9:31

York story. Basically,

9:33

Henry

9:33

Brooks runs a grocery store in

9:35

downtown New York on Katherine Street. He

9:37

works by the docks. So the

9:39

British and the US were enemies in the war

9:41

of eighteen twelve. they were still getting over

9:43

that whole American revolution thing,

9:45

tensions were high. And what they

9:47

functionally do is like a prank.

9:50

Before America started enslaving

9:52

people in the south to grow our cotton,

9:54

we bought all our fabrics from

9:56

England. And obviously, in the war of

9:58

eighteen twelve, we weren't buying any fabrics from England because they

10:00

were the enemy. And basically, after the

10:02

war ends,

10:03

England was functionally like Alright.

10:06

Let's mess with them. Let's just dump all

10:08

of our unused fabric

10:10

in the port. And it

10:12

backfires. Wow. That's

10:14

great. don't know what they would have expected

10:16

to happen from this, but people like Henry

10:19

Brooks see all this fabric pile up in

10:21

the port. And they're like, oh, this

10:23

is interesting. I mean,

10:25

it's important to note at this time. You don't

10:27

go

10:27

shopping for clothes. Like, that's not

10:30

something that happens unless

10:31

you're poor. what

10:33

people aspire to go shopping for

10:35

around this time is

10:36

cloth. Like, you go shopping for cloth

10:38

and then you sew it up yourself or you take

10:40

it to a tailor. Like, clothes are made

10:42

for your body. And if you are buying already

10:45

made clothes, you're buying

10:47

them like second hand from like a

10:49

rag distributor. it's not anything cool.

10:51

It's not anything to be proud of. They probably

10:53

are really ill fitting. That's for like the poorest

10:55

people in society. I love

10:56

who we think of ourselves as like living

10:58

in this

10:59

time of great privilege fashion wise

11:01

and having all these choices. And

11:03

I bet, like, people from

11:05

the eighteen fifties would be, like,

11:07

scandalized and embarrassed for us

11:09

that, like, Like,

11:10

I'm just wearing this rag from

11:12

an A and M on on the

11:14

freeway that's just like

11:16

some cloth like, I

11:18

have been told that the hallmarks of

11:20

modern fashion is that nothing

11:22

actually fits. We have two

11:24

modes of fit, which is oversized

11:26

or stretchy. And that's the only

11:28

way that

11:29

clothes actually fit us now.

11:32

Yeah. Which is also, like, nice to

11:34

remember when you feel like clothes fit.

11:36

It's like, yeah, because they don't. They're

11:38

not they're not supposed to. Yeah.

11:40

So Henry Brooks sees all this fabric

11:42

pile up. And

11:43

this moment very notoriously in New York You're

11:45

the population of the city, you know, this

11:47

is the early eighteen hundreds, like New York's

11:49

really getting going. The population

11:51

is doubling all the time. All

11:53

the time, there's so much access to

11:55

labor. Mhmm. He and a bunch

11:57

of other merchants take advantage of all this cloth

12:00

that is piled up in the ports of New York. And

12:02

they're like, what if we got people to

12:04

just draw patterns? And then

12:06

women can sew this stuff up at

12:08

home And this is

12:08

different from, like, a tailor used to be sort of

12:11

a venerated artisan. And this is like, yeah. We'll just

12:13

give it to these women, and they'll sew it up with

12:15

their children or whatever. and

12:17

then you

12:17

can have new, decent

12:20

quality, ready to wear

12:22

clothes.

12:22

Is this the moment in which the sweatshop

12:25

was invented? I

12:28

mean, I can't

12:29

I don't know that definitively, but

12:31

it is this kind of

12:34

landmark moment in the the

12:36

mass production and the commodification

12:38

of labor. Also, is this like deeply

12:40

American thing? Mhmm.

12:42

And so at first, this is really for, like,

12:44

people who work by the docks, people

12:46

who never thought they'd have

12:47

a suit, and now they can

12:50

buy

12:50

one ready made. At

12:52

this point, The word democracy

12:55

is sort of a dirty word. It's almost

12:57

like how socialism is now. People are like, could

12:59

this even work? Wow. It's

13:01

not like it was a dirty word in the States. It was more like it

13:03

was a dirty word in Europe. People You're like, oh my god.

13:05

You know, our petulant colonial

13:07

children want to go off and

13:09

start this democracy, this full

13:11

democratic government. Let's see if they

13:13

can pull this off. European

13:15

diplomats were always coming to the US to be like, let's see

13:17

how this experiment is doing.

13:19

And by the eighteen

13:19

forties, it was this very famous

13:22

cliche that they would always write back,

13:24

like, oh my god. Everybody

13:25

in America dresses so

13:28

well. It was this huge

13:30

advertisement for what

13:32

democracy was capable of doing actually, I

13:34

mean, an interesting thing is that

13:36

in New York, it provided

13:37

a lot of class anxiety because

13:40

the poor

13:40

people weren't in rags, rich

13:43

people weren't in Jews and

13:45

wigs. Yes. Everyone was sort of in

13:47

these ready made suits.

13:49

Mhmm. So everyone is

13:51

sort of wearing this uniform. This is

13:53

like, Benjamin Franklin called it our happy

13:55

mediocrity. Everyone is it's

13:57

a democracy. We're not copying the

13:59

fashions of a

13:59

monarch. We're all trying to look like each other.

14:02

There's no ready made clothes for women. That

14:04

doesn't happen until the late eighteenth

14:06

century. Brooks

14:07

Brothers Again, it was like one of many clothing

14:09

companies that started

14:11

making mass produce clothes in America, but

14:13

it's the only one that's still around. It's

14:14

over two hundred years old. It

14:16

has closed forty out of

14:18

forty six presidents. But

14:20

the reason they did it was it was such

14:22

a powerful statement that, like, oh my god, the

14:24

most powerful man in

14:26

the nation dresses the same as

14:28

like the small town merchants and the

14:30

con men. And these mass

14:32

produce clothes were able to be shipped all over

14:34

the United States you could get people in,

14:36

like, small towns also wearing

14:38

Brooks Brothers suits. So it

14:40

was this incredible emblem

14:43

of everything

14:44

that is wrong and

14:46

fascinating and interesting about democracy and

14:48

our idea of democratic dress.

14:50

Yeah. And is it fair to

14:52

say that Sarah Brothers started off as Forever

14:54

twenty one for Steven Doors?

14:56

I

14:57

would say so. I love that. I should be proud.

15:01

Sources like Brooks Brothers and their contemporaries

15:03

sort of created the modern shopping experience,

15:05

especially once Brooks

15:07

Brothers started making high end mass produced

15:09

clothes in eighteen fifty. This

15:11

was

15:11

the first time you'd like go to a store

15:13

for entertainment and walk out

15:16

with something. you know, you used to be like, oh, I guess I gotta

15:18

get some clothes and you like touch a bunch of fabrics and

15:20

you like get measured and you're like, I guess I'll

15:22

pick these up later. But it was the first

15:24

time that you could sort of go

15:25

in and be like, who do I want to

15:27

be? And you could, like, try on different

15:30

clothes and, like, walk out of the store with

15:32

something. Yeah. Like, shopping as

15:34

an

15:34

activity. sort of happens around this time.

15:36

And

15:36

that's like, America. Right?

15:38

And they're listening to, like, you

15:40

know, John Phillips' Susan Music or

15:42

something. That crazy

15:46

new federal assessor phone

15:48

racket. A lot of people

15:50

be like, oh, Preppies began in

15:52

the UK.

15:53

but I think it really really begins as

15:55

this like very American thing with the start of

15:57

Brooks Brothers. Which

15:58

I think is just fascinating

15:59

because it shows

16:01

you know, if you buy that argument, which I do,

16:03

that

16:04

Preppies has always been about

16:06

American class mobility, that, like, there's

16:09

no original that anyone's trying to

16:11

copy. Yes. We're all just doing

16:13

copies. Yes. Yes. all

16:15

supposed to, like, look towards each other.

16:17

So

16:17

I couldn't nail an exact date on this, but Brooks

16:20

Brothers eventually makes the turn to

16:22

making what we would now

16:24

call Preppies but back then the

16:26

style was called Ivy. It was like

16:28

the Ivy look. And

16:30

that really came from Princeton

16:32

University. That really came from the fact that

16:34

Princeton -- Mhmm. -- is this tiny

16:37

homogeneous and and

16:38

it has these things called eating club

16:40

where it's not regulated by the universities.

16:42

So it's like these privileged You're

16:45

Anglican men hanging out

16:47

together and sort of developing this

16:49

new style separate from everything else and

16:51

separate from their Sarah. And most of what that style

16:53

entailed was like, Kind of a version of what you see

16:55

college students doing today, which is like wearing

16:57

their sports clothes all

16:59

the time. Right? athleisure

17:02

invented by Caledon Hach like, kind of

17:04

arguably a precursor to athleisure, and they're

17:06

wearing a lot of

17:07

like, the box for button down

17:09

shirt

17:09

-- Mhmm. -- started

17:11

as something that polo players in

17:13

England would wear to, like, keep their collars

17:16

from flopping up while they rode

17:18

horses. and a lot of these clothes were

17:20

adapted and manufactured by

17:22

Brooks Brothers. Mhmm. Students on

17:24

Princeton were wearing this sort of

17:26

new sporty look. magazines were

17:29

writing about it. It was known as this thing like, oh, the

17:31

style on the campus of Princeton was very

17:33

popular in, like, the nineteen thirties.

17:35

And that's very, like, tweed

17:37

pants and like a, you know, this

17:39

like collegiate young man

17:41

look. The look

17:43

starts to expand when

17:46

admission to college starts to -- Yes. --

17:48

which is obviously

17:48

like the GI bill. We

17:50

must know who's really

17:52

in college. Yeah. This

17:54

is when khakis get introduced because khakis are

17:56

military surplus clothes. This is

17:57

when like veterans are

17:59

coming to college campuses and they're wearing

18:02

elements of their

18:03

military issued uniforms and the Preppies kids

18:06

are like, oh, you know,

18:07

the kids who actually went to preparatory high school

18:09

are like, oh, those are cool pants.

18:11

Mhmm. Students at

18:13

women's colleges

18:14

were dressing in this way that

18:16

was arguably sort

18:17

of androgynous. but that

18:19

was kind of okay when you were in school. And then obviously, you

18:21

know, when you graduated, you had to become

18:23

a secretary and, like, get back into dresses.

18:27

then at Morehouse and Spellman,

18:29

people were wearing Ivy

18:31

clothes too. It was becoming this look

18:33

of, like, Black

18:34

students, women students, the

18:36

middle class, it started really,

18:38

really spreading,

18:39

and the fascinating thing

18:41

is

18:42

like the old boys at

18:44

Princeton still kept it, which goes against

18:46

everything we think about trend proliferation, like

18:48

if everybody has it, Right. It's no

18:50

longer distinctive and it's no longer cool. Right.

18:53

And then the fascinating thing is there are all

18:55

these Jewish tailors that make

18:57

the super waspy Preppies

19:00

elitist look, and they've been doing this for a long

19:02

time. They, like, started doing it in nineteen o

19:04

two. Yeah. Since, like, the

19:06

early nineteen hundreds, I talked to this very

19:08

preppy brand called j press.

19:10

And they were like, oh, yeah. The all

19:12

the tailors, you know, Jewish tailors figured

19:14

out how

19:14

to really make this look

19:16

something that could extend beyond Brooks

19:18

Brothers to everyone.

19:19

Mhmm. So, like, nineteen forties to nineteen

19:22

fifties. Mhmm. The look is

19:24

sort of everywhere. And why do

19:26

you think that is?

19:26

Like, personally. I

19:28

talked

19:29

to this author, Jason Jules, who wrote

19:31

this great book called Black Ivy Revolton

19:33

Style. And what he talked about was the role,

19:36

specifically that black

19:38

activists and jazz musicians had in

19:40

helping the look Sarah. Because

19:42

if you look at

19:43

Miles Davis. Mhmm. He's

19:46

wearing preppy clothes. He's wearing, like, an Oxford

19:48

button down collared shirt,

19:50

like John Coltray. Like,

19:53

these musicians

19:53

look impossibly, impossibly

19:56

cool. And so there was

19:58

this version of Black Ivy that

19:59

was just a variation. Princeton

20:02

students were doing, and these black

20:04

jazz musicians would tour

20:07

notoriously around Europe and sort of spread

20:09

this look around and became sort

20:11

of the accidental ambassadors to, like, hey, look

20:13

how awesome, how relevant this

20:15

American look continues to

20:17

be. As

20:17

it expanded,

20:20

The

20:20

style only got

20:21

more interesting. You know, like middle

20:23

class veterans brought in the khakis, and

20:26

women brought in this element

20:27

of Androgyny every

20:29

time people took on this look.

20:31

They kind of only made

20:32

it more interesting. So

20:35

while I'm sure there was some grumbling at the eating club

20:37

of, like, they're stealing our stuff,

20:39

I want to believe that there was actually some like interest

20:41

and intrigue and delight in

20:43

the way that this is happening, which is kind

20:45

of fascinating as a fashion trend.

20:48

And

20:48

this actually is an example of something

20:51

succeeding in the marketplace of

20:53

ideas. And, yeah, it feels like it's

20:55

both like pretty basic and but

20:57

I just mean, like, literally basic

21:00

and nice and

21:03

also

21:03

very impatient Right? Yes. It's like very

21:05

simple rules, but then it's

21:07

like a grilled

21:08

cheese sandwich. Like, you can make one thousand

21:10

kinds of grilled

21:11

cheese sandwich because they'll all be a grilled

21:14

cheese sandwich. Yes.

21:14

Yes. Obviously, the

21:16

look goes away in

21:19

the sixties. Mhmm. So you can

21:21

see this most notably at

21:23

the nineteen sixty eight Olympics in Mexico

21:26

City -- Mhmm. -- when Tommy Smith and John

21:28

Carlos very famously, like, raised the black

21:30

power fist on the podium. Mhmm. you're

21:32

seeing fashions change in real time because in

21:34

some photos of them, they're wearing this

21:36

sort of eye view look. They're wearing like a

21:38

button down shirt. And then at

21:41

other moments, they're wearing like

21:43

leather

21:43

jackets and beads, and

21:45

it's like, changes in the air. Mhmm.

21:48

a lot of historians chalk us up to the

21:51

depths of Martin Luther King --

21:53

Mhmm. -- and JFK and

21:55

RFP and -- Mhmm. -- this sort

21:57

of disillusionment with

21:58

the happy mediocrity that

21:59

Benjamin Franklin once advocated for,

22:02

this idea that, like, to do our best in the

22:04

society in America, we all have to, like, work

22:06

really hard to fit in

22:08

that's suddenly

22:08

not working anymore. Suddenly there's

22:10

this new era

22:13

of

22:13

rebellion. Mhmm.

22:14

And one of the things that happened

22:17

in the fifties was

22:20

this revolution in

22:22

management theory. where

22:24

this MIT professor realized

22:26

that the way people

22:28

were told to go to work was

22:31

like, a

22:31

system of six and carrots. Basically, like -- Mhmm. --

22:33

you should go to work and you're gonna be

22:35

heavily observed and rated,

22:37

you know, assessed for maximum

22:40

productivity. And he was like, this is clearly

22:42

making people meet miserable. Jack

22:44

Lemmon

22:44

in the apartment. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

22:46

Yeah. There are all these movies about like, oh,

22:48

the fifties malaise. And so he

22:50

called that theory x of management and he was like,

22:53

what if there was

22:53

a new form of management and he called

22:55

it theory y? this

22:58

was known as the creative revolution. It's like, what if we

23:01

encouraged people and, like, encouraged

23:03

workers to

23:05

work because they feel fulfilled, you know,

23:07

less supervision and more this

23:09

is kind of setting the seeds for mad men.

23:11

Like, the creativity of

23:13

your work should fulfill you.

23:16

What this means is that as much as we

23:18

like to think that the establishment

23:20

You're

23:21

know, the men in the gray flannel suits were like upset

23:23

by the counter culture in the sixties.

23:25

You're creative hip young

23:28

ad executives Marshall in on the revolution.

23:30

They loved this idea. They were like

23:32

rock on. This is so they see the counter culture

23:34

and they were like, this is great.

23:37

let's lean into this. And this is when you get

23:39

all these advertisements

23:40

like the nineteen

23:43

sixties Pepsi campaign that Like, it's

23:45

for the Pepsi generation. Like, everything is

23:47

always very, like, groovy

23:49

and young and cool in this

23:51

very mainstream way, there's this

23:52

huge revolution that youth

23:56

equals cool in the nineteen

23:58

sixties. If you look at

23:59

pictures of college students in the nineteen fifties, they just

24:02

look older.

24:02

Oh, yeah. Because looking older

24:04

and more mature,

24:06

was like the way you were taken

24:08

seriously. And in the sixties, it flips and people

24:10

like, I wanna look young.

24:12

So there's this huge advertising

24:15

revolution and then part of that is this fashion revolution

24:17

called the peacock revolution. And

24:19

this is part of why you see people

24:21

in the sixties and seventies

24:23

wearing outlandish clothes

24:25

just dressing ridiculously,

24:28

especially men, they're wearing, like, high

24:30

heels and they're wearing Neru collars and

24:32

frilly collars and poochie

24:35

patterns. I think if men wearing,

24:37

like,

24:37

sort of, like, Sarah

24:40

Johnson outfits like, just like

24:42

leather and franks and, like, full

24:44

western Daniel Boone

24:46

kind of thing. Totally. And

24:47

this is, like, the beginning of retro

24:49

fashion. Basically,

24:51

the fashion industry is like, okay. Let's just crank

24:53

out as many looks as we possibly can,

24:55

which is really hard to do. And

24:57

so what they do is they go back

24:59

in time. Like, the easiest thing you can do is borrow from the past.

25:01

Of course. So if you look at the sixties,

25:04

it's just like all eras get

25:06

revived, all simultaneously. It's

25:08

like, Victoria Sarah, era,

25:10

like Western fashion, like, bam bam bam

25:12

bam. It's just all happening all

25:15

once at once. It's

25:16

so funny to think happening then because I feel like

25:18

that's what fashion is today. In

25:20

any ways, it's, you know, and we're doing, like, Y2K

25:23

stuff and everything. But

25:25

thinking about being revivalist about

25:27

fashion at a time when, like,

25:29

you're You're,

25:29

I don't know, let's do

25:31

the Victorian

25:32

Sarah. like, what? No. If you look at

25:34

yellow submarine, it's like a darty and like Yeah.

25:36

And now that you say that, I'm

25:38

like, yep. That's like John Lennon,

25:40

Sarah it looked like for

25:41

while there. Totally. All these

25:44

hippies who wanna dress like Bob crack

25:46

shit. Yes. Yeah. So basically, it

25:48

becomes this confusing flurry.

25:52

And it comes on sort of so hard

25:55

and so fast that

25:57

it makes trends themselves

25:59

seem

25:59

like one giant trend, like, oh my god. I

26:01

wasn't like, all this fashion is happening now.

26:04

And

26:04

so The easiest return

26:07

is back to preppy clothes. There we

26:09

go.

26:09

They're back. But this time, it

26:11

comes with a twist. because

26:13

most notably, in the nineteen

26:16

sixties, it is revived by a man named

26:18

Ralph Lauren.

26:19

Hi, Ralph Lauren. And

26:22

so Ralph

26:23

Lauren, you know, is like

26:24

this Jewish guy from the Bronx who dropped out of

26:27

community college or city college, who

26:29

went to Brooke, Well, he

26:31

was first and foremost very inspired by the

26:33

movies. He was very inspired by, like, Fred

26:35

Astaire. And he was like,

26:37

Hollywood style icons. And

26:39

because of that, when he was about twenty years old,

26:42

he works for a year at

26:43

Brooks

26:44

Brothers. Mhmm. And that's where he

26:46

learns about this, like,

26:48

casual, elegant, ivy

26:51

style. Mhmm.

26:52

And functionally, young Ralph Lauren,

26:54

who's born Ralph Lifts, but he changed his name in

26:56

high school. Like, he's been Ralph Lauren. for his whole

26:58

life.

26:58

I like the idea of doing that, like, before you can

27:00

do it legally.

27:01

You're You're sixteen years old, and you're

27:03

like, I'm rough flooring. I'm not flooring.

27:05

And some people speculate is, like, because of the movies, like,

27:07

Lauren McCall or something. I think there's something very

27:09

dreamy about it, like, this little kid -- Totally.

27:11

-- loves film. first

27:13

name, boy name, last name, girl name. In

27:17

the

27:17

nineteen sixties, when everything is in fashion,

27:19

all of the same time

27:22

and it's just like confusing retro

27:26

blur.

27:26

Mhmm. Preppy is like this

27:28

breath of fresh air. People are

27:31

so amped

27:31

on it. And so when Ralph Lauren

27:33

comes

27:33

out with these preppy clothes,

27:36

basically, what he does is he mixes

27:38

Hollywood style and Brooke's

27:40

brother style is, like, what if we took these preppy clothes

27:42

and made them, like, tighter and

27:44

sexier? And people love

27:46

it. People eat it up. They're, like, I'm

27:48

so sick of all these fashions, all

27:50

these wild retro fashions.

27:52

I like the simple style,

27:54

and you can slowly see it ramping

27:56

up all throughout the seventies.

27:58

Like in nineteen seventy

27:59

four, Ralph Lauren does the costumes

28:02

for the movie, The Great Gatsby, and then you

28:04

have this rash of movies

28:06

that take place just

28:07

before Kennedy was assassinated. You

28:09

have like animal house -- Mhmm. --

28:11

and

28:11

American graffiti. Yeah.

28:15

Liverning Shirley. Yeah. Yeah.

28:17

And so everything that you're saying this idea of like, oh,

28:19

wasn't it cool to be just like a simple young

28:22

teenager? before the world got so complicated. It's

28:24

like a premise of almost every

28:26

movie

28:26

or not every, but like these

28:27

all these huge movies in the

28:29

seventies. And if so, my

28:31

fashion. Like, it's so funny to me that, like, Y2K fashion

28:33

is in because, like,

28:35

I don't know, it's just

28:36

funny. Like, it made sense to me when we

28:38

were doing, like, fashion waves based

28:41

on stuff

28:41

I wasn't already an adolescent for.

28:43

But now I'm like, oh, but

28:45

it

28:45

makes total sense. You're just like remember,

28:48

when you just had your delia's catalog

28:50

and your biggest worry was

28:52

Y2K I've been thinking about this

28:54

a

28:54

lot because I

28:57

was just watching this talk that Arndati

28:59

Roy gave in like two thousand

29:02

three, and it really

29:03

reminded me what an awful time that was. Mhmm.

29:05

You know it's so

29:05

like fashion is literal nostalgia.

29:08

When all you look at are, like, the crop tops and

29:10

the flip phones, you're, like, fun.

29:12

But then I was like, oh, right.

29:14

We didn't know why we were in Iraq. Like,

29:17

the government was lying to us, and

29:19

there was This enforced nationalism -- Mhmm. -- it

29:21

was, like, really scary. There was

29:23

a really awful

29:26

time.

29:26

Yeah. Maybe the truth is hiding

29:28

behind that is that, like, times

29:30

are often equally awful

29:32

in their own way because

29:35

people are awful in consistent

29:38

ways. Like, there's a consistent

29:40

thread or, you know, in terms of what America

29:43

is, like, Yeah. The

29:44

time around the Iraq

29:46

War, like the beginning of it, and

29:48

the, like, weapons of mass

29:50

destruction, allegedly, was, like, this

29:52

time of great, either you are actively

29:55

avoiding

29:55

the truth that is as clear as,

29:58

you know, the nose on your

29:59

face or you're not a patriot and

30:02

you're actually, like, a traitor.

30:04

Yes. And also, like, there was a great

30:06

mainstream embrace of that too.

30:09

I mean, for all of the,

30:09

like, grief that we give the Twitter discourse now,

30:12

at least there is a discourse for a

30:13

little while. Yeah.

30:16

Yeah. Our discourse was Alan

30:18

Jackson songs. So Ralph

30:20

Lauren, I had never thought about Ralph

30:22

Lauren before. Ralph Lauren is

30:25

just so ubiquitous.

30:26

I looked in my closet. I was like, oh, I guess

30:28

I have Ralph Lauren stuff. I don't even remember

30:30

buying it. It was never anything I

30:32

sought out. It was just there.

30:35

I guess know him, of course, as Rachel

30:37

Green's boss.

30:39

Alright. And

30:40

he was in that. Right?

30:42

Yeah. At least once. They they

30:44

had a Ralph Lauren cameo,

30:47

but

30:47

that was, like, the great like, the

30:49

Pilgrim's Progress of Rachel

30:52

Green. ends

30:52

at Ralph Lauren. Yeah. You're know, because she,

30:54

like, she comes to New York. She

30:56

wants to work in fashion. And

30:58

boy, is it a gradual

31:01

crawl to Ralph

31:01

Lauren. Yeah. She's like, yes. Our girl

31:03

has made it. I think what Ralph

31:05

Lauren has done is functionally

31:08

up there with Steve Jobs.

31:11

Like, I was talking to a contemporary

31:13

of Ralphs, another menswear

31:15

designer. And he

31:15

was saying, you know, at the time

31:17

we were both coming up, the

31:19

way that

31:19

people found out about

31:20

new designers was through department stores,

31:22

was through, like,

31:23

functionally in New You're, the way you learned about a

31:25

new designer was Bloomingdale's. And if

31:28

You're a designer selling your wares at

31:30

Bloomingdale's, they

31:30

would put your shirts in the shirt section and

31:32

your pants in the pants section and your socks in the

31:34

socks section. And Ralph was really the

31:37

first that was like, can you put all my

31:39

clothes together? because this

31:39

is all, like, part of a world. And

31:42

so they carved out a section of the

31:44

ground floor. Ralph Lauren has

31:46

this famous quote that was like, I don't

31:47

do shoulders. I do worlds. And what he

31:49

means is, like,

31:49

you don't come to me for the tailoring. It's

31:51

not about, like, oh, check out -- Yeah. -- like, I

31:53

have these buttons in these shoulders.

31:56

he was inspired first and foremost by the

31:58

movies. The whole thing is, like, come

31:59

into my world, and he showed it

32:02

in these ads that looked like film

32:04

stills and they were everywhere. These like

32:06

multi page spreads and you go into

32:08

his store and you can

32:10

see how all the clothes fit together

32:12

and even if you go to

32:14

his flagship store,

32:16

it's like Epcot, you know, he's got, like,

32:18

the preppy ring and the safari ring

32:20

and

32:20

the western ring, It's like

32:22

the world of Ralph Lauren. It's just, you

32:23

know, what we hear now. And it's so

32:26

ubiquitous, like, lifestyle marketing.

32:28

God. Yeah. It's FAO

32:30

short. It's for adult men.

32:32

Yeah. He was a pioneer

32:34

of lifestyle marketing. Yeah.

32:36

And, you know, also in these ads, he's, like,

32:38

showing you the full

32:40

context. That's not just about the clothes,

32:41

but it's about, you know, driving in

32:44

your

32:44

car with your beautiful blonde

32:46

children or, you know, being on a

32:49

ski lift. With your handsome fiancee,

32:52

like, he shows you the full

32:54

context of where

32:55

these clothes supposedly belong. And he sold this

32:57

image and it was just like, it

32:59

was ascendant. So, like, the seventies into the

33:01

eighties, there's, like, the slow boil of

33:04

all these nostalgic movies, and

33:06

Ralph Lauren is on the

33:08

ascent. And then the

33:10

way that I like to say it is like

33:12

it had a long fuse

33:14

and

33:14

then the match was really

33:17

lit in nineteen eighty by

33:19

the preppy

33:20

handbook. And the word preppy

33:23

has been around at

33:25

least since the nineteen thirties, but

33:26

that wasn't like a widespread word

33:29

because most people didn't know

33:31

like that world of preparatory high

33:33

schools that look like tiny colleges,

33:35

that is so elite. Right. How would anybody know

33:37

that that's a derogatory term?

33:40

But it was brought into the

33:42

mainstream consciousness by

33:44

this movie in nineteen seventy

33:46

called Love Story.

33:47

what

33:53

can you say a twenty five year old girl who

33:56

died? Beautiful. Yes.

33:58

Love story. Love

33:58

story. Which

33:59

apparently popularized the

34:02

name Jenny What? According to this

34:04

historian I talked to and if you look on, like,

34:06

whatever Wikipedia, it was like, it was a hugely popular

34:08

movie and a popular is the

34:10

name Jenny. And there's

34:13

this moment where Jenny is

34:15

like get your own library preppy

34:17

and is ridiculing, you know,

34:19

her her her handsome boyfriend played

34:21

by Ryan O'Neil, she retocules him for being a preppy, and

34:23

that catapults the word into

34:26

common parlance

34:29

And also, it should be said around nineteen seventy

34:31

two -- Mhmm. -- is the

34:33

moment when Ralph Lauren

34:36

introduces the polo shirt Yeah.

34:38

And this is when style

34:41

starts to emerge or something different

34:43

from, like, collegiate IV style. So

34:45

the actual original Polo shirt

34:48

was

34:48

invented by Jean Renee Lacoste,

34:50

a tennis player in France in nineteen twenty

34:52

seven. Oh my god. It's a person. It's

34:54

a person. A guy named Lacoste, His nickname was

34:56

the crocodile, and I forget why. There are, like, a few reasons. Some were, like, because

34:58

he had a big nose

34:59

and others were, like, it was his playing style, but whatever.

35:01

Jean Rene la Coste was called

35:04

the crocodile. and you used to

35:06

play tennis in long sleeve dress shirts.

35:08

And he was like, what if we didn't?

35:11

And he invented the short sleeve knit

35:13

sport shirt, and it was pretty much used

35:16

for tennis, and it was really rare. It's like hard to get

35:18

in the states if you

35:19

were going to Europe You're

35:21

talked

35:21

to someone who was like, oh, yeah.

35:23

I remember going in the nineteen sixties. We'll be like, can

35:25

you bring back a low cost shirt? And then

35:27

in the seventies, seventy one, seventy

35:29

two,

35:29

I forget Ralph

35:31

Lauren basically makes a version of

35:32

it, and it's so interesting because

35:34

Ralph Lauren's company is called

35:37

polo. Like it's named after this sport

35:39

that you have to be super rich to

35:41

play because

35:42

you need multiple horses.

35:44

And

35:46

what the polo shirt actually

35:47

is is a tennis shirt. It's like a shirt for

35:49

playing tennis, but we call it the polo shirt because

35:51

that's the name of

35:54

the company. So it's like the wrong port, but that's what

35:56

we call it. That never occurred to me.

35:58

Right. because like who even knows what you were to

35:59

play

36:00

polo? You can't. go

36:03

play polo at the park on a whim. Right. Right. And so and

36:05

now it's just become a brand, you know,

36:07

it's become like Kleenex.

36:09

like we call style

36:10

basically after this brand. So but

36:12

this is all sort of like passively

36:14

brewing throughout the seventies until

36:17

In nineteen eighty, this woman who

36:19

was working for the village

36:21

voice goes to

36:22

this publisher because she

36:25

has an idea for

36:26

a joke book. She wants to publish a book of light bulb jokes.

36:28

Like, you know, how many x

36:30

does it take to screw in a light bulb?

36:33

Oh,

36:33

wow. And they're like,

36:36

actually, we have another idea for

36:38

you. Do

36:38

you wanna make something called the preppy

36:41

manual? And and it it it almost feels like the discourse around

36:43

preppy

36:43

is sort of like how early aughts,

36:45

like hipsters,

36:47

words, like, We

36:48

all love to laugh at them. Yeah. Like, no one will admit to

36:51

being

36:51

one. Yes. But we all make fun of

36:53

them. Right. because, like, the funny thing about

36:55

hipsters

36:55

is that, like,

36:58

I don't really think there have ever been any self identified hipsters.

37:00

It's

37:00

always what some other guy is

37:03

doing. There's always

37:04

a mustache bigger than

37:07

yours.

37:07

Totally. Totally. Although, I have to say I was, like, very proud of being hipster.

37:09

I

37:09

was, like, we have a

37:11

movement over something.

37:15

No. But it totally was totally like a derogatory thing.

37:18

And I think this writer for the

37:20

village voice went to a prep school.

37:22

She was another Jewish

37:24

New Yorker. went to an Ivy League school, sort of

37:26

understood that she was

37:28

this thing, but she was a preppy. And she thought it

37:30

was just funny. You it's like a joke. She laughed

37:32

about it.

37:34

and when powerhouse books was like, do you wanna write the

37:36

preppy manual? They gave her

37:38

ten

37:39

weeks to write it and,

37:41

like, seven thousand dollars. And

37:43

she was really She just

37:44

graduated. And she was like, I'm gonna

37:47

write the best

37:48

book I can. Her name's Lisa

37:50

Burbach. and she went on to do

37:53

an anthropological study

37:55

of what her Preppies

37:57

in prep school and in

37:58

her Ivy league school. What and not

38:00

only what they wore, but really, like,

38:02

the

38:03

underlying philosophies of

38:05

how preppy people

38:08

think and shop and

38:10

learn, like, she

38:11

really her whole thing was she was like,

38:13

well, this is mostly gonna be

38:14

read by my peers and my contemporaries who go

38:16

to Lumi Ms. Chaffee and all these prep schools, so

38:18

I

38:18

have to make it right. I have to be

38:21

like really, really, really accurate.

38:24

She turned in the book two weeks late, so it was like a twelve

38:26

week dash. She wrote this book. Wow. And

38:28

they really didn't think it was gonna be any they

38:30

thought it was like a coffee table book. and

38:33

their big hit that year was supposed to be this book that they were writing called

38:35

to how to make what is it? How to make

38:37

funny noises with your mouth

38:38

or something to that

38:40

effect?

38:41

they were not expecting this to be anything.

38:43

And then it sells

38:44

two point three

38:45

million copies. It's like this runaway

38:47

runaway -- Yeah. -- run It

38:49

was that success That's

38:52

incredible. It was huge.

38:52

It launched all these other copy yet. There

38:55

was, like, the Jewish American Princess

38:57

Handbook, the Valley Girl Handbook,

38:59

like, all these handbooks. And

39:01

it also launched all

39:03

of these books like

39:05

Paul Russell's class about like,

39:07

what is social class? in

39:09

America. Right? And this thing that we had

39:11

been ignoring

39:12

since the Brooks Brothers Democratic

39:14

revolution, like, no. No. No.

39:16

We're all the same. And

39:18

if you look at ads in the eighties, all of them are like,

39:20

you have the privilege to use

39:22

this credit card. You know, there there in the

39:24

eighties, there suddenly this idea

39:26

like in the sixties when you were told to buy things prove youthful and rebellious and

39:28

free you are. In the eighties, it was

39:31

like prove that you You're

39:34

high class -- Mhmm. -- and that you have moral worth. My,

39:37

like, kind of her example

39:39

of what the eighties

39:40

or at least early nineties felt like

39:43

an advertising is the the

39:46

fancy

39:46

fees commercials that Lauren

39:48

Beccalled No. Which I think

39:50

was also important in helping to destigmatize,

39:52

like, commercial voice overwork

39:55

for celebrities. Mhmm. So that's exciting.

39:57

And the voiceover was always good taste is easy

39:59

to recognize.

39:59

Oh my god. You know, because, like,

40:02

even your

40:04

cat, You

40:04

know, I'm I'm being a little bit silly by saying this, but that's true. Even

40:06

your cat is a class signifier. No. No. No.

40:09

It is. It is. No, sir.

40:11

You nailed it. Like, the

40:13

subjects of the preppy handbook is it was

40:15

this reveal to mainstream America. They were like suddenly

40:17

getting all these

40:18

these glimpses

40:21

at how the elite or at least

40:23

the

40:23

upper middle class, you know, not the

40:26

astronomically gazillionaire

40:28

gazillionaire what Paul

40:29

Fessel calls out of sight, wealth,

40:31

but

40:32

what the

40:32

upper middle class, how they

40:34

live. And it

40:35

pulled back the curtain on

40:37

this world of last signifiers that like, oh my god, people

40:39

are noticing what brand of shoes

40:42

I wear or

40:42

like how I tie my

40:44

tie or whether I not

40:47

I wear a belt or like what watch

40:49

brand I have, that this is all saying

40:51

something and that it all matters. You know,

40:53

the funny thing is Preppies preppy handbook is

40:55

ostensibly a joke. It's like joke book and class by

40:57

Paul Russell is also supposed to be like a joke book

40:59

because America's

41:00

like we don't

41:02

really have class but like if we did

41:05

or like, you know, it it's it's like this dry look. Because if

41:08

you actually talk about it seriously, it's quite

41:10

upsetting. But Paul Fossil

41:12

has all these things as, like, not

41:14

smoking

41:14

at all is very upper middle class. But if you

41:17

call attention to it, that drops

41:19

one to middle

41:20

class

41:22

immediately. and that, like, upper

41:24

middle class people name

41:26

their cats like Klidomnestra --

41:28

Mhmm. -- or like Doseievsky. That

41:31

everything you do even

41:33

including your cat and your cat food. Like, everything is this

41:35

marker of class. And

41:37

we see that

41:40

At

41:40

the same year that the preppy handbook comes out, we

41:42

see that manifested also in the

41:44

election of one of the

41:46

two

41:46

presidents who don't wear Brooks Brothers.

41:49

which is Ronald Reagan.

41:52

Whoa. I would not have guessed that. I would

41:54

have guessed Carter's. He was the other one,

41:56

Sarah. He was the other

41:58

one. But as you

42:00

can imagine, they do it

42:02

for opposite reasons because Brooks Brothers is

42:04

supposed to be like traditionally like the

42:06

mass produced cloth of the people

42:08

And

42:08

and Carter is, like, almost too modest

42:11

even for Brooks Brothers.

42:12

His whole thing is he's, Sarah, he doesn't

42:14

wear Brooks Brothers. He wears flannel shirts,

42:18

and he wears, you know, just start off the rack suit

42:20

even for his inauguration for, like,

42:22

the time you're supposed to be fanciest. He's, like,

42:24

almost too humble. Yeah. very mister

42:27

Smith goes to Washington. Totally. And like America isn't

42:28

having it. He's like, well, we should all

42:30

close gas stations on Sundays. And America's like, no.

42:33

Absolutely not.

42:33

Like, we don't want

42:36

this level of humility. And so in the next

42:38

president they elect, he's like the

42:40

closest America gets to aristocracy, which is

42:42

a celebrity.

42:44

Mhmm. And he does

42:46

not

42:46

wear Brooks Brothers because he is above

42:48

Brooks Brothers. He's like custom suits

42:51

from Hollywood. Of course.

42:52

You need a custom suit

42:54

when you're crushing unions off the rack won't do.

42:56

Exactly. And so it all

42:58

ties up

43:00

with this idea, like, Reagan's whole idea of trickle down economics is like,

43:03

well, if you're a wealthy person,

43:05

you're a moral You're.

43:08

You're know, like, you've worked hard and don't need to regulated with taxes. Like,

43:11

you can be counted on to

43:13

share it by letting it

43:15

trickle down. And

43:16

so this

43:18

idea of class and money gets really equated with,

43:20

like, yeah, moral worth and

43:22

how do you prove that you have

43:24

moral worth that you're dependable You're

43:28

that you're trustworthy. It's like through these class signifiers.

43:30

And all of this just

43:32

makes

43:32

preppy stuff take off

43:35

and

43:35

at the same time, so many people are

43:37

getting into business school and trying

43:39

to enter the professional sphere. And

43:41

this gets back to your mom like

43:43

women are sort

43:43

of entering the professions for the first

43:46

time. There's this really significant thing that happens

43:48

in the eighties where like women

43:50

start wearing modest

43:53

professional clothes in

43:55

part because they're following the rules

43:56

set by John T maloy and

43:59

dressed for success his companion book that he

44:01

wrote for women. Oh my. He's he's like, oh, adopt, like, a practical

44:04

uniform. And so they do that

44:06

and

44:06

preppy clothes sort of fit right into

44:08

that. And then interesting

44:10

thing that happens in the eighties

44:12

where the fashion machine keeps

44:14

chugging. They're like,

44:15

oh, cool that Preppies

44:18

androgyny thing that we were trying. That was like a fun

44:20

thing. But let's do

44:22

they call it through through, like

44:24

mini skirts and like big shoulder

44:26

pads and You're sets. They're like, yeah. And you can see it there, pushing

44:28

it on TV. Mhmm. You know,

44:30

in ads, all the manufacturers like

44:33

Liz Claiborne, pause, production

44:36

on some skirts to have them shortened.

44:38

Everyone gets on board with this fruit fruit

44:40

thing. And the consumer for

44:43

the first time ever is like, no.

44:46

Absolutely not. Like, I'm not gonna do that.

44:47

They just didn't buy it. They're

44:50

like Miranda being

44:50

invited to do Angel Incus. I'm not gonna do that. I

44:53

don't wanna do that. No. Exactly. They're

44:55

like they're like, no. I've

44:56

they had jobs. They had lives. They're

44:59

like, fuck

45:00

you. I'm not gonna wear like a mini skirt. I'm a professional

45:02

now. What I feel like there's like in

45:04

in that kind of design and culture,

45:07

there's this like tasset

45:09

concept of, like, don't

45:11

dress sexy or the boss will grab you. And,

45:13

like, in reality, your boss

45:14

will kinda grab you no matter

45:16

how you look. if they're the grabbing kind, I

45:19

would submit.

45:19

Yeah. And we should all be able

45:21

to dress as sexy or not as

45:23

we wish to. totally. But I

45:26

feel like that's part of the, like, unspoken

45:28

contract of that fashion as

45:30

well. Well, really, it's

45:32

this moment where the consumer is like, no, you

45:34

give me what I want. Like, the designer's not gonna

45:36

dictate

45:36

to me anymore. Like,

45:38

I want to choose to follow fashion

45:40

as much or as little as I want.

45:43

And this is when brands start

45:46

flipping out. And this is when they're like, the

45:48

trend forecasting industry really grows

45:50

in the eighties. because brands

45:52

are like, oh my god. Like, how do we give the

45:54

consumers what they want?

45:56

And then from that point on in the

45:59

eighties, The

46:00

French philosopher, Giula Povetski, says that modern fashion

46:02

has these three phases. One

46:04

is up until the nineteen sixties when

46:06

it becomes about being youthful.

46:09

and then the next changes in the eighties

46:11

when the consumer sort of decides

46:13

what they want. And it means there are,

46:15

like, multiple competing trends all at once

46:17

starting in the eighties. And it

46:19

also means that the

46:22

easiest, safest

46:24

bet for clothing manufacturers,

46:26

for like mainstream clothing manufacturers is just

46:28

to make boring stuff. It's

46:30

just make, like, simple, conservative

46:33

well clothes.

46:34

And some version of preppy

46:36

fit right into that so much so that,

46:38

like, nineteen eighty three is the year

46:40

that a company called popular merchandise ink

46:43

rebrands and becomes Jay Crew.

46:45

It just becomes, like, a very

46:47

safe bedrock for any company to

46:49

pin themselves to. He was like, oh,

46:51

this preppy stuff. Yeah. It's

46:54

so hard to figure out who is and isn't a person because I would have

46:56

said that gay crew was like some

46:59

kind

46:59

of oil magnate Safari

47:01

guy from Connecticut who got into clothes in

47:04

the nineteen twenties and started off

47:06

making

47:07

fink hunting gear.

47:08

Right. Like, no. Right? Yeah. So

47:11

the eighties really becomes this moment where,

47:13

like, we get multiple trends. The consumer

47:15

is fully in control And

47:18

so, prepiness becomes standard.

47:21

And

47:21

the interesting thing is

47:22

then, like, into the nineties,

47:26

We

47:27

see fork off in two

47:29

distinct directions,

47:29

which one is like business casual.

47:32

Mhmm. You know, people start just wearing

47:34

this. Like Bill Gates is wearing apollo shirt and

47:36

khakis all the time.

47:38

And then

47:38

the other thing we see is Ralph Lauren is

47:40

on the ascent forever and ever. and

47:43

you see this rival emerge in the form Tommy Hilfiger.

47:45

Mhmm. And -- Uh-huh. -- there was

47:47

this movement of footwear kids

47:50

in Brooklyn

47:52

would take the train into Manhattan and go to boutiques and

47:54

like steel stuff and develop

47:57

this incredible

47:59

sense of style, like started putting clothes together in

48:02

a totally new

48:04

way. And it was

48:05

sort of the origins

48:08

of what we would eventually

48:10

call street style, like, pairing something expensive

48:12

with something cheap. Mhmm. There

48:14

were these groups of these, like, shoplifter

48:18

societies called, like, Ralphie's kids or the low

48:20

lives, like, named low, like Ralph

48:22

Lauren, who, like, loved Ralph Lauren. They thought

48:24

Ralph was

48:26

so cool. and they were functionally

48:28

wearing preppy clothes in a really different way. Like, in the preppy handbook,

48:30

the stuff was all sort

48:32

of,

48:32

like, falling apart and,

48:36

like, rolled up and disheveled, but they were wearing

48:37

it in this, like, clean, fresh.

48:40

Like, that's the whole thing. It's, like, in hip hop style,

48:42

it has to be, like, really really

48:44

really clean. and,

48:46

like, different sizing. Like, it's a

48:49

bit bagier. And it's this

48:51

whole new

48:51

way of wearing preppy clothes

48:53

that Tommy Hilfiger

48:56

leaned

48:56

all the way into. He was like, yes, this is the move and started

48:58

-- Mhmm. -- making, like, street wear

49:00

based off of preppy clothes. And

49:02

so for a while, there's this, like,

49:03

toe to

49:06

toe rivalry with Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren. And the interesting

49:08

thing is that,

49:08

like, Tommy Hilfiger embraces in

49:11

a very active

49:14

way HIP Hop artists way before its mainstream.

49:16

In his shows, like

49:18

Sean Combs is modeling in his

49:22

shows, he's really embracing. And it should be said that like Tommy Hilfiger

49:24

grows up as like this working class guy.

49:26

He grew up around people with a lot of different

49:28

races. This is like he

49:31

hired people of color at all levels of his company.

49:33

He wasn't just, like, throwing this on. Like,

49:35

he really believed in this, and

49:37

his brother worked in lighting in

49:39

music. And so their marketing campaign is

49:41

they would, like, give away

49:43

Tommy Hilfiger clothes

49:46

to artists And they were You're sure enough, someday someone famous is

49:48

gonna wear one of our stuff, one of our things.

49:50

Mhmm. And it happens in nineteen

49:52

ninety four, snoop

49:53

dog performs on SNL wearing

49:56

a shirt that says Tommy on it.

49:58

Oh. And they blow up. Like,

49:59

that's their big

50:02

moment. Wow. And there's

50:03

this interesting parallel here between like

50:05

the jazz musicians doing

50:08

their version of Ivy and like hip

50:10

hop artists doing their version

50:12

of preppy Again, it's not like they're trying to look white. They're

50:14

like taking a sample. They're changing

50:16

it. And again, they just like make

50:18

this look so cool. If Ralph

50:20

Lauren took

50:22

like

50:22

updated Brooks Brothers, streetwear updates, Ralph

50:24

Sarah. And Fat Farm, you

50:27

know, all these all these brands,

50:29

all these streetwear brands start

50:32

by looking at Ralph Lauren and and Tommy

50:34

Hilfiger. You know, like, this is a

50:36

huge genesis point for

50:38

this movement. And then

50:39

also in the nineties,

50:41

Abercrombie and Fitch gets its

50:44

rebrand in nineteen ninety

50:46

two. And like Vineyard Vine starts in

50:48

nineteen ninety eight. Like,

50:50

it just grows and grows and grows and grows and

50:52

grows and then there's this whole

50:54

other thread happening this whole time

50:56

that we haven't even talked about. Mhmm. this

50:58

whole time while this whole American Saga has been going on, Japan

51:00

has been observing it and

51:03

functionally

51:03

imitate it and

51:06

deliver it back to us in

51:08

the form of Uniqlo, which

51:09

starts in nineteen eighty

51:12

five. The look was

51:14

mass manufactured by Jewish people.

51:16

It was made -- Mhmm. --

51:19

relevant by black musicians and

51:21

it was perfected and modernized

51:24

by Japanese companies. I mean,

51:26

it's like pasta.

51:27

Like, you can just

51:29

put anything on It's so accessible

51:32

and

51:32

legible. Like, you don't have

51:34

to explain

51:34

or whatever if you're wearing like

51:36

a button down shirt and a blazer.

51:39

It's like a very friendly look,

51:41

and that's exactly why it gets

51:43

exploited by, like, the fascists

51:45

in Charlottesville and Tucker Carlson. And that's the insidious part of

51:47

its power, but it also has something

51:50

beautiful about it. But,

51:52

like, it

51:52

is sort of accessible

51:53

to anyone

51:56

And

51:56

it's one of the kind of, like, magic talismans

51:59

in American

51:59

life where, like, it's as close as you can come to

52:02

being You're

52:04

not necessarily claiming to have greater class

52:06

status than you do, but

52:08

you're also not being marked as,

52:12

like, low class or untrustworthy by anything you

52:14

have on? Yes. That is so well

52:16

put. And, like, the more we

52:19

pretend that we don't have,

52:20

you know, those beliefs in this country, like, I feel

52:23

like the stronger they get. Yes.

52:25

Right. And then,

52:27

like, the other like, the question that I

52:29

have all this like, the clothes actually matter? Right? Like, if clothes are

52:32

semiotic, if clothes

52:34

mean something, But

52:36

this style of clothing has really become so,

52:39

like, available and so

52:41

everywhere. Mhmm. Yeah. As you

52:43

said, sort of, like, nondescript actual

52:46

inequity. An actual

52:48

class difference is like this

52:52

gaping chasm then,

52:53

like, what it don't Yeah. One of the

52:55

things, the fashion things

52:56

that I've enjoyed in

52:58

the past couple years is that

53:01

You're. So, like,

53:02

typically, if you're a late night host, you

53:04

wear a suit. It's always been that

53:06

way. It's like kind of been grandfathered it at

53:08

that point. It's kinda weird when you

53:10

think about it. whatever.

53:12

And then we have these lockdown shows.

53:14

And -- Yeah. -- Seth Myers

53:16

never wore a suit again.

53:18

Like, came back to the studio. I

53:21

think has audiences now and just, like,

53:24

gave up on the suit. He wears a blue

53:26

chambray shirt a lot of the

53:28

time. Like, he's running a

53:30

grocery store in Nantucket.

53:32

Yes. Yes. Why are the

53:34

suits? And it's

53:36

just like, a

53:36

little, like, corner that got peeled away. And it

53:39

feels like, are we now in the

53:41

era of

53:41

the late night show

53:44

host in the chambray shirt, like, I would like that. And

53:46

that's also a very preppy moment. It's

53:48

casual, but it's preppy. It's

53:50

not, like, disrespectful towards your

53:54

audience. It's not like But like, no. But I feel like that's the that

53:56

is the thing that PREPI

53:58

did. Like PREPI is

54:00

sort of the seed that

54:02

killed that eventually killed the suit.

54:03

You know? Like the men

54:05

on the campus of Princeton developed

54:07

this so they wouldn't

54:08

have to wear a suit.

54:11

You're know, and then, like, people wearing business casual in the nineties

54:13

turned to this look so they wouldn't have to wear a

54:15

suit. And we're now,

54:17

like, finally, finally, finally, saying

54:19

it comes to full fruition, but it's been brewing

54:21

for a very long time. I act

54:23

I think that when this episode comes out,

54:25

we need to, like,

54:28

of ourselves in polo shirts to celebrate

54:30

it. Do you have do you engage

54:32

with the look now? I historically

54:34

lows polo shirts because

54:36

I went to a school that had uniforms when

54:39

I was in elementary school and middle

54:41

school and it was a

54:43

polo shirt. every day

54:44

for five years

54:46

You're, I guess, associate

54:48

Polo shirts with wearing a school uniform as I

54:50

assume a lot of people do if they ever

54:52

had to wear one. because that's

54:55

also, like, such a classic school uniform component for all

54:56

the reasons we've been talking about this

54:59

whole time. Yeah.

55:00

Yeah.

55:02

Yeah. I feel like this intersects also with the concept of norm

55:04

core.

55:04

Oh, a thousand

55:06

percent. And I feel like from the beginning,

55:08

it's been exemplified by, like, you

55:12

know, what You're Seinfeld wore? Yes. On

55:14

Seinfeld because the whole time, because all of

55:16

Seinfeld. Yes. Very sexually

55:19

confident guy wearing you

55:21

know, that

55:24

really baggy. Yeah.

55:26

because, you know, like, an like, an

55:29

aqua mock turtleneck and, like, really high cut,

55:31

like, wash jeans and

55:33

giant sneakers because,

55:36

like, yep. gonna have

55:39

some

55:40

sex today.

55:42

one of the things I find most intriguing

55:44

about all this is that when we

55:47

started

55:47

talking about kind of preppy fashion

55:49

and the concept of

55:51

preppingness, it to like

55:52

that was a term that

55:53

you don't hear anymore really. Like, you

55:55

don't hear people -- Yeah.

55:56

-- really self describe

55:59

as crappy at

56:00

least not young people. I feel like the last reference to

56:02

preppedness I

56:03

heard like, a major

56:05

media franchise was when Noel

56:07

on Felicity's

56:08

self scribes

56:10

as preppy and, like, nineteen ninety

56:13

nine. Yeah. But, like,

56:15

it feels

56:15

like it the term

56:17

didn't survive into the new millennium,

56:20

but I

56:20

feel like possibly what you're

56:22

saying is that

56:23

it didn't need to because the

56:25

aesthetic itself had become so ubiquitous that

56:27

we didn't need to, like, point it

56:29

out anymore. A

56:30

hundred percent, I feel like, you know,

56:33

especially in the early

56:34

to mid ahs. You know, if if

56:36

something

56:36

is established enough as a

56:39

symbol, you don't

56:40

you don't need to say it.

56:42

And, like, my pet theory is that as

56:45

we've

56:45

talked about, it's come back

56:48

in style over

56:48

and over and over and over and over again so many times that

56:51

almost every generation has grown

56:53

up with a version of it. Like,

56:55

Andre three thousand has this

56:56

quote, that

56:58

he was like, yeah, I wear these preppy clothes because grew up in

57:00

Atlanta in the eighties where everyone was

57:03

wearing two polo shirts on top of

57:05

each other and popping

57:05

the collars. and

57:07

so he's referencing that. It's always sort of an

57:10

option. Yeah. I mean, it

57:11

reminds me of like how there

57:13

was a viral video of

57:15

like a guy's skateboarding to Dreams by Fleetwood Mac and,

57:17

like, Dreams had a moment. But it's like,

57:20

yes. Dreams is, like, kind of

57:22

never not having

57:24

a moment. Right? Yeah. It's like always on the radio. always

57:26

people jamming out to it. There's always

57:28

someone having a break up

57:30

or something who's like, dreams.

57:34

But, like, there are little moments

57:36

in the culture where, like, all of us at once

57:38

will be, like, oh my god,

57:40

dreams. Yes.

57:42

I mean, the the the key thing about it is if you think about fashion

57:44

as not only being something that

57:45

only young trendy people

57:48

engage in, People

57:50

turn to this look as they age because

57:52

it, like, looks good on an aging body.

57:54

You don't have

57:55

to be alone. to wear it. You know?

57:57

Yeah. And then there's sure. And I'm sure there's, like, you know, that

57:59

you can look at demographics and, like,

58:02

millennials are getting older.

58:04

We're having kids, we don't

58:06

wanna be, like, sinking our

58:08

waists all the time. Yeah.

58:10

Our sort of baggy jumpsuits

58:12

having a moment because we want to be to

58:14

our bodies, you know, to pay them

58:16

back for the mid to late two thousands.

58:19

I don't know. I

58:23

want to close by

58:25

asking you, like, why is

58:27

this your

58:27

magnificent obsession? because I think this

58:30

is such an interesting topic, but the world is

58:32

full of interesting topic six. So,

58:34

like, why do you feel like

58:36

this has has drawn you so much

58:38

over

58:40

time? Well, In the

58:42

same way that you can't have a conversation

58:44

about

58:44

race, without talking about whiteness, and

58:46

you can't have a conversation about gender,

58:49

without talking about masculinity, I

58:51

feel like

58:51

you cannot have a

58:53

discussion about clothing without

58:54

this. Like,

58:56

I didn't even realize this was like I felt

58:58

like a fish learning about what water is.

59:00

Like, oh, yeah. This is the mainstream. When

59:02

people talk about dressing mainstream or

59:05

reacting to the

59:06

mainstream, they're functionally talking about preppy

59:08

clothes. So, like, what

59:09

is this? Like, let's name it. Where did it come from? How did it get here?

59:11

And you just can learn I've

59:13

learned so much about the

59:16

course of twentieth century fashion just

59:19

by tracking where this

59:21

comes in and out.

59:24

Okay. Wait. But can I, like, give a little tease for the series?

59:26

Yes. There were people who got

59:28

arrested for dressing crappy. What? This is,

59:30

like, a huge problem. Yeah.

59:33

That's the Japan story. It it's really

59:35

interesting. Alright. This is

59:37

a good cliffhanger. Where can people

59:39

listen to your

59:40

You're? Every compliment?

59:43

Thanks. It's called articles of interest, and

59:45

you can find it wherever you hit

59:47

your podcast. Thank you so much

59:49

for coming on.

59:50

This was so delightful. And I don't

59:53

know. This feels like kind of a

59:55

continuation of the Miranda priestly

59:56

lesson of like it's never just a

59:58

sweater from a a box of stuff.

1:00:00

Yeah. You know, there's always the story of, like, our whole civilization

1:00:03

in there. Yes. Yes.

1:00:05

Which is

1:00:06

funny. I don't know if fashion is,

1:00:08

like, uniquely that way

1:00:10

or not. You You're know what I mean? I don't

1:00:12

know

1:00:12

if fashion does it more so or less

1:00:14

so than any other

1:00:16

mass produced product.

1:00:18

but

1:00:18

it is the one that

1:00:20

we have the most control. Like, we can choose more readily

1:00:22

and more quickly what we wear than,

1:00:26

like, the buildings we live in or the cars we drive, what the time

1:00:28

-- Right. -- scale is just is just

1:00:30

quicker. Yeah. And I

1:00:31

think we're more prone to feel

1:00:34

like we're

1:00:34

expressing our personality and the clothes we wear that in, like, you know, how

1:00:36

our cabinets look or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:38

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can see it,

1:00:40

you can text it, you can understand

1:00:43

it. You're invested in it because it affects

1:00:45

how people perceive you. It's like

1:00:47

effectively part of your body

1:00:49

because how much time do you really get to

1:00:51

spend in the world make good. Yeah.

1:00:53

Yeah. Exactly. And yet, it's, like,

1:00:53

connected to, like, giant forces way

1:00:56

beyond our

1:00:56

control that have existed for

1:00:58

hundreds or thousands of years.

1:01:02

Yeah. Kinda creepy. Kinda

1:01:05

crazy. Kinda

1:01:08

beautiful. Thank

1:01:15

you so much. every compliment our guests. Thank

1:01:17

you to Miranda Zigler for editing help.

1:01:19

Thank you, as

1:01:21

always, to Carolyn Kendrick. without

1:01:23

whom I would be sitting alone in my

1:01:26

closet talking to no one.

1:01:28

Thank you for being here. We'll

1:01:30

see you in two weeks.