Have some back to back zooms as I work from home so I threw a white shirt over my scout t shirt, a bridle bow tie, and my MTM Smoke Green Crepe Wool sport coat. Still in jeans and topsiders around the house orvis field watch

Recently @Antonio Centeno had me speak on a zoom panel about my style journey where I stated my disdain for the terms preppy and old money. Antonio even called me out on it since he has done videos about each term. While I tried to stay on task for the limited time I had on that call and sidestepped his comment, I thought I might take this opportunity to elucidate why I dislike those terms so much. And far be it from me to speak out against Antonio whom I deeply admire. Hopefully this might clear up any misunderstandings about what I mean. Anyone who has read my stuff here for a while, probably knows that I loathe both the terms preppy and old money. Oh believe me, I get where they come from. And a part of me is pleased that there is a movement for guys to recognize the classic aspect of each’s appeal. But to understand my issue with the terms let me provide a little background first. Born in 1960 I grew up in that decade as a small boy. Naturally I was a TV kid. On television, hair styles and clothing styles were pretty standardized (think Flipper, my three sons, leave it to Beaver, I dream of Jeanie, Bewitched etc etc. Some of the youngest members of this community will need to do a google search i suppose). By the late 1960’s and into the early 1970’s there was a war waging in jr highs and high schools across my state regarding school regulations about hair lengths, tshirts, torn and worn jeans (and that’s just the boys. The girls brought on a whole new dimension regarding skirt lengths etc). My bank president ex Airforce father and I had our moments as my hair became an inverted bowl, all my t-shirts graphics were heavily scrutinized, and my blue jean waistbands got lower while my legs flared out more and more. By the time I reached college in 1978-the nightmare that was the 70’s was in full force. Yet because I worked in men’s clothing, I at least had begun wearing quality shirts to school (Gant was a great brand in the 70s) and Berle (khaki trousers) that we sold. By the third store I worked in, most gentlemen had finally ditched the nightmare that was the 70’s and one of, if not the biggest influence was Ralph Lauren (which we sold). By 1980, natural fabrics and classic designs were taking back menswear by a storm. Then the damn book came out. Because Harold’s (the store where I worked) was specifically mentioned in that confounded book (The Preppy Handbook), Not only did we sell the book-we would sell out every crate we received in just a few days. Worse, each of we clothiers read our copies cover to cover because the clientele expected us to be experts on all things in that confounded unholy 🙄scripture (we were on commission after all). No matter how much we would tell people it was only a parody-most people simply didn’t get it. There were kind of two types of clientele. The guys who wanted to look good. And the guys who wanted to chase the latest pastel (provided it had a horse on it or Ralph’s name on the tag.) The sad part is Ralph became popular because of its superior product and design. But the craze took a life of its own. Sort of like a swarm of sherbet madras zombies chanting preppy instead of brain's. Of course I am being flippant. Truthfully as a guy at the very tail end of the boomers I was helping most of our clients who were buying this book (essentially slightly older boomers ) who had been duped by the absurd fashion trends of the 1970’s and were eagerly searching for merely some return to sanity {hmmmm sound familiar to today perhaps🤔}. Yet many didn’t really understand what they were running to -as much as what they were running from. This reversal of the disco double knit platform shoe nightmare of the hideous clothing known as the 1970’s flipped to some kind of traditional menswear and the rapid change was world wide. Then a strange thing happened by the 90’s. School aged kids began to wear classic Ivy clothing but did so in many cases as a status symbol. Naturally this produced cliques and commensurately caused counter cliques to wear the antithesis of “preppy”. Let me explain further. While clothing fashions has always been characteristic of different social groups especially among teenagers-I submit that the multiple groups like preps, goths, cowboys, hip hop, mall rats, geeks, etc etc took on a whole new dimension from the 1990’s on, perhaps until today. (In my high school we kind of had only three: stoners, goat ropers, and everyone else).