<p>I’m still amazed that kids would wear those Magnum P.I. looking shorts with a long sleeve, button-down shirt. </p>
<p>Glad I raised the kids in the PNW. I doubt my kids could recognize any of the labels listed.</p>
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I think you hit the nail on the head! </p>
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<p>Insouciance?</p>
<p>Where’s @Alumother when we need her? She has her own blog on life as a “High WASP.”</p>
<p>There’s “preppy” and then there’s “class.” Still the definitive guide (and as hilarious as it was the day it was written):</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253”>http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253</a></p>
<p>RE Tatty…the most tatty (tattered) guy I ever dated was a 3rd gen Harvard man with a trust fund. When I first met him I assumed he was broke. Sweater had holes and loafters were beat up. He said his outside of Boston Grandmother refused to turn on the heat in the family house. </p>
<p>Sounds like my former business partner who had an old Saab900 with a driver’s side door that didn’t open. He bought it from his Harvard roommate and drove it until he had an unfortunate incident with a state trooper who didn’t buy his “I’m just trying to climb out of the window, officer” explanation for what looked like a very suspicious move during a traffic stop. </p>
<p>My classic old preppy friend went to Andover, then Harvard, became an Episcopalian minister and wore LL Bean and Brooks Brothers. That’s old school.</p>
<p>We belong to an old and prestigious yacht club, and so are constantly exposed to the preppy look. Vineyard Vines started out by cleverly advertising their business by being sponsors at regattas. No better way to reach their target audience and gain street cred. I still remember first hearing of them at a event where the sailing prizes were Vineyard Vines ties or bags. I’d say the young people I’ve known thru sailing dress preppy for relatively formal occasions but not for everyday wear up here. At every campus we visited, the look was much the same: tees, sweatshirts, very casual, whether at Cornell, MIT, Stanford, Brown, Tufts, or Yale. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention. Okay, I think Yale was definitely the most formal and preppiest of all of them. Even the adcom who made the presentation wore a suit and tie.</p>
<p>Its off topic but do the kids at Duke or Vandy really dress any differently? (Two of my son’s sailing friends went to prep and got into those schools.)</p>
<p>We were on a tour of a small LAC today, and one of the boys in our group could have been the model on the first page of the Vineyard Vines site. Plaid shorts, down at the heels Sperrys, pink oxford and a faded Vineyard Vines jacket. Hair carefully messy, a short version of a LAX bro flow, Wayfarers on a croakie, hanging down his back. His mom was tennis-fit middle aged mom preppy. They were parked next to us. Nondescript car, Connecticut plates. All I could think of was this thread.</p>
<p>The college itself was full of kids of every description. </p>
<p>^^^I really do think that is more of a country club look, rather than preppy. Subtle difference, perhaps, but that boy sounds like he’s dressed himself a little too carefully…preppy is plainer, less contrived, not out of a catalog.</p>
<p>Nondescript car</p>
<p>The volvo station wagon bought to carry that high school junior home from the hospital when he was born? The same one he’ll take to college?</p>
<p>@alh Yep. You might be preppy if…</p>
<p>Heh don’t dis my volvo its’ got to go 3 more years until #3 graduates college…anyway I agree that there are campuses where the kids look like carbon copies of each other and campuses where the tatooed blue hacked hair skinny jeans and tiny flat tennis shoes coexist with the laxfloed patagonia kids and the white dreadlocked tree hugers… and in my opinion you can put on Vineyard Vines (which I personally gag on since it’s just alittle too "cute’) but little watermelons and turtles don’t make you preppy…it just makes you look like a poser. </p>
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<p>What the heck is a LAX bro flow? What’s a croakie?</p>
<p>Croakies are eyeglass retainer straps, I think. LAX stands for lacrosse, and there is a sort of “look” to it that must have a certain type of haircut. LAX players seem to also always have a big lanyard hanging from their pockets, and wear sandals. (I"m probably missing a lot of detail here.)</p>
<p>BTW, really preppy stuff isn’t ever new. Its old and “tweedy” looking. The vineyard vines stuff is really just kind of “commercial” preppy. </p>
<p>Prepsterism. </p>
<p>@NJTheatreMOM Croakies are the straps that keep ridiculously expensive sunglasses from flying off your neck. LAX stands for lacrosse, and “The LAX Bro Flow” is the sweepy, carefully messy/tousled hair, that’s just the right length. I just call it JFK hair, but it’s a little messier, a little more side swept, and a little longer than that. It’s hard to explain. Google Southern Proper model Charlie Holderson. It’s not quite, but comes close. That’s essentially THE ideal southern preppy/country club guy hairstyle…I forgot about that. Every preppy-wannabe college guy here tries to get their hair to fit that “ideal,” and every college girl here wants a guy with this ideal, “perfect hair.” This sounds very ridiculous now that I type it out. </p>
<p>Oops, dadx already answered your question.</p>
<p>Croakies float…a must if you are a boater or sailor and that is the point of the Croakies…I’m sure you can use them to keep them from flying off your neck but that is possible with any glasses chain or cord will. Croakies float (in water). I am guessing that Croakies has now gone mainstream and make Croakies that don’t float…but they became popular decades ago because they float. No one (in the 80s) wanted to loose their Vuarnets or Ray Bans in the water. The lacrosse hair thing also requires longer hair than the average kid has. It has to be long enough to stick out behind the helmet, and it has to blow nicely in the breeze 
when the helmet comes off – so think thick and wavy. I know I have one who just cut off his high school lacrosse hair last month finally. </p>
<p>Did any of you who look down your noses at “preppy” not ever wear Villager or Ladybug back in the 60s? I loved that stuff. And bass Weejuns?? (And I grew up in the northeast)</p>
<p>Sure we did and Carol Reed and Pendleton and the little circle pins</p>