WASPS and Weetbix

One could be mistaken that prep/preppy is a wholly American phenomena.

The Official Preppy Handbook (OPH) does little to dissuade this argument. The book is steeped in specifics, and offers few examples of prep occuring elsewhere.

This is where True Prep (TP), the legacy to OPH, finds its legs. It even broaches racial identity, with a section on the African American love for Oak Bluffs. OPH's Muffy would have choked on her Hermes scarf before discussing something so unseemly. But, that, is exactly why TP was so necessary. The old guard, caricatured in OPH, have had to acknowledge, rather like England's aristocracy post WW2, that "new" people may bring life to an old way of life.

There is still a lot to be done, in terms of prep awareness, internationally. Hence this blog. There are anomalies like the continued popularity of Japanese Take Ivy (photography of US campuses by Japanese photographers/authors, 1965), which was/is hugely popular in Japan and then released in US in 2010. Also, Masafumi Monden discusses the Japanese take on US Ivy league style in Ivy Style (multiple authors, Fashion Institute of Technology New York and Yale University Press, 2012).

However, I am in New Zealand, and there is little to no acknowledgement of prepdom here. NZ is a young country and has a history of self-conscious feet finding. This weightlessness has anchored somewhat in the last decade. However, we are still watching the moves of other cultures, awkwardly copying the dances of elsewhere.

We don't need to be Jackie Kennedy, lying across an Adirondack chair. We can take New England clam chowder and throw a hearty bunch of paua in it. A fusion of faraway and familiar is the only way forward. We don't need to surrender to seersuckered Southampton, we can drink to Boston Brahmins and bathe outside our baches (NZ summer houses) with antipodean abandon. We are enough....and, yes, we can be preppy!

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The Kiwi prep house

Hows does a preppy kiwi dress their home? in a distant version of how an American preppy dresses their house. 

Every preppy Kiwi will have these things in the family (re parents') house:

1. A Dick Frizzell print and/or Graham Sydney print
2. Dad's old Swandri bushshirt
3. Random fishing paraphenalia
4. A 1975  NZ commonwealth games tea towel
5. Ancient Tupperware from when mum and her friends had parties
6. Clunky pottery from the 1970s
7. Everything by the Finn brothers
8. Any furnishings from Citta Design, Coast, Wallace Cotton, and Country Road.
9. A poster that mum bought as a fundraiser for the hospice
10. Happy Hens pottery
11. Shelves that dad built that are slightly off
12. Red banded gumboots (wellington boots) with cobwebs and possible spiders
13. A pencil holder you made at intermediate (middle school) in the shape of a heart or dinosaur.
14. Cecily tea towels that mum thinks are "fun" with jokes about calories or alcohol on them ("sometimes I even cook with it!"). 
15. Horrible soap that was won  in the school raffle but it "needs to be used up"
16. A picture of the kids with a koala from a childhood trip to Australia- dad has a Hypercolor tee shirt on and you are wearing Zinc sunscreen in a culturally insensitive fashion
17. Janet Frame, Owen Marshall, and Brian Turner books.
18. Scottish stuff from a trip/ OE ("overseas experience," traditionally taken following high school or university) back to the "old country"
19. The Yates gardening guide, 1991 edition with "Merry Xmas '91" written inside
20. Christmas themed platter for mum's pavlova
21. The best of Dave Dobbyn (pretty much our national songsmith)
22. Rattan nesting tables
23. One of those rag rugs
24. Lots of stuff from Trade Aid

 



A Dick Frizzell design eco bag- this print hangs somewhere in every Kiwi prep's home

Prep in Print

 
"Old School" by Tobias Wolff (Bloomsbury, 2003) is about a prep school student who plagiarises a short story in order to meet a literary hero. It is easily my favourite novel as the writing is so finely woven- the silky sentences soothe the angsty teen in inside. I remember trying to get backstage to meet rock stars, as a teen, as a Morrissey obsessed 27 year old. The narrator's need to meet Robert Frost echoed my own outstretched hand, trying in vain to touch Moz.

 

"Prep" by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, 2005) is about an ordinary middle class girl at an elite New England prep school. As a Kiwi, it was fun to play voyeur and experience this rarefied WASPy world from the perspective of Lee. 

 

"The Rector of Justin" by Louis Auchincloss (Mariner Books, 2002 (first published in 1964)) is, as the title states, the lifestory of a rector at said fictitious prep school but told through six narrators. A cousin of Jackie K, Auchincloss was part of the world he wrote about, hence his authenticity. His style can be dry, and the religious references don't interest me, but the different points of view intrigue me. 

 

The matriarch in "Maine" by Courtney Sullivan (Vintage, 2011) leads a simple life- church, gardening, and reading. Her daughters, however, seem to be just waiting for her to die. She lives in a lovely cottage, in a great Maine location, and don't her daughters know it?! The characters are lively and the family dynamics ring true. 

Preppy at the Periphery

Living at the bottom of the map, with only hints to prepdom (retailwise), poses problems procuring prep paraphenalia. 

Even mainstays, such as Vera Bradley and LL Bean are a stretch. Forget about Kiel James Patrick, Jack Rogers, Lilly Pulitzer, and Vineyard Vines. The shipping costs, if they will ship (not using an intermediary shipper), offend my preppy purse. 

Ralph Lauren, a parody of prep nowadays, is low-hanging fruit. The ubiquitous polos, most likely bootleg, hang sadly in charity shops. The too loud logos and garish colours are a cartoonish version of prep. Not to dismiss vintage or classic RL! I have a gorgeous blackwatch tartan bucket bag that I sourced from Invercargill on Trademe (akin to Ebay). 

 

I had a stroke of luck when I came across a Vineyard Vines tote on a local Facebook trading  page!! of course the seller was unaware of the brand. $10 very well spent!! 

 

I swallowed my distaste and paid $90 shipping (yes $90!!!) to get my beloved Jack Rogers sandals. A preppy essential, I ordered them with the aim of wearing them for my Rarotongan wedding but ended up wearing well-worn Sperry jandals instead (dressing was a rushed affair). The price of shipping, which wasn't fast btw, was offensive but I just had to have them!!!

 

My Lilly- secured at last!! US shoppers thought they had it hard- I had no shot at getting through website when Lilly for Target launched. Gotta love Ebay!