You’ve missed the boat (ha ha) on preppy style if you think it’s “just purchased my clothes last week.” That’s the complete antithesis of preppy style. True preps are wearing old boat shoes that saw action on a boat, mother’s cashmere sweater with a hole at the hem, older brother’s LLBean raincoat, etc. I think some of you are confusing upper middle class mall style with true prep old money style.
Clips from one of my favorite shows ever shown on tv.
Social class in America…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLE795FB5701514A0A&v=nU5MtVM_zFs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLE795FB5701514A0A¶ms=OAFIAVgJ&v=snbW6hI8xuY&mode=NORMAL
There is old money New England Prep (who actually go boating with those boat shoes 
), wannabe (mall prep to use pizzagirl’s parlance) Prep, Southern Prep, Black Prep, etc.
What I’m finding out here is how pretentious I am! Wow…
I think it’s interesting that if a student came on here and said - I visited a college and the students were all dressed in old band t shirts and ratty jeans and a lot of them have tattoos and so forth and I concluded it wasn’t for me - he’d be told not to prejudge people on their appearance, step outside his comfort zone, that he was a snob, etc. but apparently that only flows in one direction and it’s perfectly fine to make judgments on people’s character, worth and values if they wear certain clothing.
Why does wearing pastel “mean” anything other than the person likes pastels? I’m wearing black today. What does that mean about me? Other than its slimming lol.
“The title of this thread referencing “supposedly elite” colleges definitely gives away the OP’s feelings about the matter.”
Look at the other threads they’ve started. There’s an agenda there, for sure.
Agreed, especially considering I grew up only around half a mile from the campus and got to visit it regularly from childhood onward.
That factor plus the fact just 2 decades ago most of the undergrad divisions was still widely regarded by many tri-state area folks as a “rich kid’s school” for B- students with the exception of Tisch(Performing arts) and Stern(Business) which were regarded as elite in their own respective rights.
My perception might also be colored by the fact over 1/3 of my HS graduating class including yours truly were accepted to NYU(Mostly Arts & Sciences and Stern). Most, especially the A & S admits were in the middle to the bottom of the class academically.
If someone had told us just 2 decades ago that NYU undergrad outside of Tisch and Stern was “elite” or even “supposedly elite”…we’d wonder what drugs were you smoking. In my HS years, with the exceptions of the two named elite undergrad divisions, NYU was considered only a slight step up from the local public colleges, SUNYs other than Binghamton** or Stonybrook, or private schools whose academic reputations were such many families would insist their kids attend the local public colleges if those private schools were the only options their kids received admission offers*.
- St. John's U except Pharmacy and Hofstra.
** Bing’s hard HS GPA cutoff(90/100 or 3.5/4.0) at the time my graduating class was applying to colleges meant many classmates who were admitted to schools like Middlebury, NYU-Stern/A & S, Columbia SEAS, Vassar(Mostly males), etc would have been rejected outright.
Boat shoes aren’t just “something comfortable that people where near the shore”. I don’t think anyone I know wears them. I’m reasonably sure that, except for the small more affluent corner of our town, no kids at our HS would wear them. I work at a local NJ college, and I don’t see that look much at all. Clothes ARE signifiers.
And if someone looked at a school and said it wasn’t for them because everyone had on old t-shirts and faded jeans, I wouldn’t call that snobby–I’d call that a recognition of fit.
http://www.cnam.com/downloads/plu_ts.pdf
I am just highlightting a few quotes.
PG- we’re near Seattle where it is hard to tell how much money someone has by what they wear. So far we have only been to western colleges.I know anyone CAN wear boat shoes whether or not you own a boat, but here, a poor kid never would. Seattle has a ton of big sail boats, and I know a bunch of the owners, and I have never seen any of them in boat shoes. I see them most on members of rich, white fraternities (like my nephew). The one guy my age who wore boat shoes grew up on a farm in Arkansas but has a son who joined a rich, white fraternity.
We all have our affectations. Guys drive pickups but never haul hay in it. Women carry purses that cost more than $100. Who here owns $200 sunglasses that are justified as better performance when, in reality, they come off the same Chinese factory line as the $20 Sunclouds? We display these accoutrements publicly not for how they make us feel, but for the reaction it has on other people. Isn’t that the definition of superficial? Otherwise, Christian Louboutin would be out of business.
My wife has a pastel vee-neck tee shirt with stains on it. That is different than a pastel button-down with a logo to indicate its approximate price. I have been kicked out of places for looking poor even after I had money. The Ford dealer refused to let my wife test drive a car. Yes, we are judged by the way we dress.
My kids, growing up in this area, would have no problem with goth, tattoos, LGBTQ, or many other things that might create a reaction in kids from other backgrounds. I do not expect everyone else’s kids to have the same reaction as mine. S1 doesn’t like spiders and will avoid places they are likely to be. D is afraid of clowns and haunted houses. S2 has his particular issues with the self-appointed social elite and will avoid them. I have no idea what trauma led to it.
Here’s one I just remembered: one of my preppy nephew’s friends was bound for Harvey Mudd until he saw a student injecting heroin. I guess the work hard/play hard attitude there can be taken to the extreme.
Clothing trends are regional. We don’t call them boat shoes – they’re Sperries (and the southern preps used the specific Docksiders when I attended UNC in the dark ages; where I grew up in Florida, it was just folks with actual boats who wore them and many of them were not rich at all). They also are the only one of the six options for uniform shoes that my son did not find hideous. At his school – everyone wears Sperries, even the extremely, definitely not preppy kids. My kid is a STEM, athlete, anime fan and computer gamer who loves his boat shoes because they’re comfy and easy to kick off Having said that, his school is having spirit week and Tuesday was Preppy Day (is that offensive cultural appropriation? It certainly was meant to be mocking). He did wear a pastel colored polo-style shirt (he looks fantastic in turquoise) with khaki shorts and his Sperries, which the kids only consider preppy when worn without socks. Sperries with socks – just shoes.
Even out of uniform – rich boys at his school can only be identified by their cars. Girls have designer bags (and some really ridiculous shoes school dances. Otherwise, no difference.
My D does wear pink and green clothing and is totally accepting of LBBTQ. No boat shoes, but does wear a certain sneaker that if I mentioned here would get railed against. She’s not into goth but does volunteer with underprivileged kids.
Stereotypes are just that. Hardly anyone fits perfectly into one and using them does more harm than good.
Then there’s Trinity CT where the guide tuned to the group and asked, “Where do you all prep?” (Strikes me that all my smh tales are tours DH took them on.)
DH, the girls and I all love boat shoes. On land and at sea, ha. So what? But yes, they are quite different than the dime a dozen shoes many favor today. And pastels are very popular in ‘some’ parts of the country. Don’t get me started.
The look I loved, back in college, was an expensive pullover with worn, holey jeans. We referred to it as a Princeton look.
Really, my point is let’s not get any more snobbish about clothes than we already are.
Higheredrocks, I don’t really know about rich boy cars, but the rich girls I went to college with all drove Mother’s old car, handed down.
It just happened to be a Mercedes.
Dstark, DH loved that book (or one like it.) he used to laugh about code and look for wannabes. It’s not always easy to really mimic the look.
Well, looking at the blowback the “boat shoes” comment got, I don’t know that one can generalize this as a one-way street, really.
I rarely notice what other people wear. I am not a good dresser. I think of clothes as a necessary evil to protect me from the elements.
With that said, I remember touring some high-ranked LACs when I was in high school and noticed how nicely everyone dressed there. I realized pretty quickly that it just wasn’t for me- and that’s perfectly fine!
You can mimic the look but…
Paul Fussell was tough. I think you can change your social class, or some of your social classes because there are so many social classes running concurrently with most people.
I can never be an upper class wasp. That would be a different person. 
I have always thought I moved up in social class. I realized today that almost all of my friends have moved up considering where they started. Maybe, if we all moved up, none of us have moved up.
My nephew is at Georgetown. I’ll let him know what your niece thought. 
It’s funny, we visited a small LAC in PA somewhere, not “elite”, but there seemed to be a uniform of UGG boots and North Face jackets, especially on the visiting prospective freshmen. We saw one African American girl visiting and were disappointed to see the UGG boots again - it just becomes thoughtless, rote, almost mechanical, when it becomes so ubiquitous.
Later that month we visited Yale and it was more of the same - only expensive leather equestrian boots (that will never see the inside of a stable) and black tights. Hard to escape this stuff when you’re dealing with teenagers.
Well since we’ve ventured off topic so much, I just want to let people know I love my Volvo, I am middle aged, but I am not fat, I don’t have too many kids and I don’t own a dog
We didn’t venture off topic. Our feelings, our thinking about elite schools are affected by social class.
I was at Cal (Berkeley) two weeks ago. I didn’t see any equestrian boots. That may be a turn-off or a turn-on depending on the person considering the school.