Transcript 0:00 It's not that I dislike the idea, it's just the word itself is very visceral The Americana slurry [laughs] Because it's what it is, and like, this old money TikTok, #quietluxury, this is all people trying to codify these things and interpret them and just creating this output of decontextualized symbols that then gain new context, and then there is this slurry and bits that weren't chopped up [laughs] in the blades of the blender, right? 0:28 Are, are, are what we are stuck with. Yeah. They're sort of references without a referent- Mm-hmm... is how I would describe them. Yeah. Yeah. The Americana slurry. Right. 0:40 [upbeat music] This is the third version of this format of Tasteland we're doing, where we have three or four conversations and then chop them all up into, like, one tighter, like, episode. Yeah. 0:52 Everyone's coming at it from a slightly different perspective. All interwoven. Sean Monahan is a writer and trend forecaster based in Los Angeles. 1:01 He co-founded K-Hole, the trend forecasting group, and currently publishes the newsletter 8Ball. You may know him for more recently coining the term vibe shift. 1:12 So my starting point for thinking about preppiness, 'cause we have these preppy revivals, and they always tend to happen when people are having status anxiety. 1:22 Caroline Helleman is the digital director of Town & Country Magazine, where she writes about culture, society, entertainment, and the world of the rich and powerful. 1:31 Her work has often focused on the British monarchy and the closest thing America has to a royal family, the Kennedys. I think about very old school prep and the idea of the old money concept is so if you know, you know. 1:44 Henry Fisher is the founder of Hank's Americana, a style zine and multimedia art project based in New York City. I think fashion is political, and I think that anyone who tells you it's not is lying. 2:00 The reason we timed this episode when we did is this will come out after our nation's 250th anniversary, but it is America 250 two days from now as we're recording this, and so what better time to talk about American fashion? 2:12 Okay. 2:13 So when we started talking about doing this episode, we were talking about Americana and prep, and prep to me, having grown up in rural Northern California, basically the Pacific Northwest, is sort of a foreign thing that I only know about through being interested in clothing and seeing, like, clothing nerds talking about prep and Ivy. 2:31 When I thought about Americana, I thought of denim pants and vests and hippies with bandanas and round glasses smoking joints, and this sort of more West Coast '70s version of Americana that is a cultural reference for me, whereas the prep Americana is something just so far. 2:47 Yeah. 2:48 I think what we learned is prep is a subculture of Americana, and it's not necessarily the most visible subculture of Americana if you live outside of the Northeast United States or outside of certain pockets, like a college town. 3:05 At the same time, it has become hyper-visible on certain corners of social media, 3:10 #oldmoney, and has become a form of aesthetic signaling online that I think makes, like, the true reach of prep and Ivy style seem perhaps further than it is geographically. 3:23 This Gen Z version of prep or Gen Alpha even, how Gen Alpha kids are using prep to refer to, like, Alo leggings and such, like, is tied to the history of prep being tied to the country club and clothing you would wear to do sport, but also is tied to this sort of class aspiration. 3:39 And even though Alo leggings don't seem on the surface anything like Bermuda shorts or what have you, right, like, in the spirit of it, they are actually quite the same. Mm-hmm. 3:52 Have you ever heard the euphemism post-economic to describe somebody who's extremely rich? No, but I immediately understand [laughs] what that means, where they have no-- They are just, their reality is so untethered to, 4:07 to, to, to the needs of, of money, to having to have a job, to having to earn money- And it occurs to me-... to money having meaning... 4:13 prep, as we end up defining it on this episode, is almost like true post-economic dressing- Mm... or has functioned that way historically in the United States. It's almost, in a sense, too pre-economic dressing. 4:27 I think it's- Mm... this illusion of living outside the tides of change that people are really attracted to. It's a code- It, it's an aspiration to that... that doesn't immediately code signal. 4:38 And I would say, like, what people think of as quiet luxury is, as a form of post-economic dressing, I think there was a lot of conversation a- about that with the wardrobe for Succession, brands like The Row, very sort of elevated, elevated basics, and if you know, you know. 4:58 I think a true history of that, I think it should belong more truly to prep, just because there's not as deep of a cultural playbook of lifestyle and values that goes along with other than this person who's extremely wealthy and they're not trying to overtly signal it, whereas with prep, there's this whole affiliation with institutions, and we get into that a lot. 5:19 Like, what does it mean to have a style of dressing that is almost entirely dependent on affiliation with institutions that represent a kind of stability, that represent a kind of prestige? 5:30 Quiet luxury is like, it signals maybe this person owns a yacht, maybe they bank at a certain place, maybe they have a certain credit card. 5:38 But it doesn't say Harvard, it doesn't say Yale, and I think there's a interesting tension there that might come back to this, like, old money, new money conversation that we had. 5:47 Like, the Kennedys, even today, are not quiet luxury. They're prep. I did find this tweet. It's actually even [laughs] better than I remembered. Uh, it's a really solid tweet and a really solid quote tweet. Okay. 5:59 The original tweet, June 18th Every time someone starts talking about what they think casual old money dresses verse how people with old money actually casually dress, I just instantly think of these photos. 6:12 They are old photos of Taylor Swift when she was dating one of the young Kennedys. This is actually more supposed to be on her boyfriend. 6:20 And then the quote tweet really sort of breaks it down for people who, like, looked at the photo and was like, "I don't get it," like, "This guy's in shorts and a T-shirt." 6:27 "If you live in New England, the richest woman you are likely to ever interact with is wearing khaki shorts and a 35-year-old Bar Harbor sweatshirt on vacation." 6:36 [laughs] I'm just like, yeah, that's 100% true, and I think it's a little different from quiet luxury casual dressing, where the key signature here is, like, A, this is somebody that doesn't have to try and maybe never had to try, which goes back to the sort of like pre-post economic thing. 6:52 Yeah. B, it requires you to know what Bar Harbor is. It requires you to know this person has been going to Bar Harbor for 35 years. 7:00 It requires you to know that they are never gonna throw out that sweatshirt until it turns into shreds. All of these are attributes of a historically old money or a prep person. Mm-hmm. 7:10 Where this isn't just, like, people discovering wide leg jeans after being tired of skinny jeans. 7:17 This really comes out in a specific economic or political moment where people are yearning for these institutions that represent stability and prestige. 7:26 And I think that that feels true to me, but I'm curious, uh, Francis, whether that rings true to you as well. That this is all tied to status anxiety? 7:37 That it's all tied to status anxiety, and for that reason, does not necessarily operate the same as blue jeans- Mm, yeah... in the cycle of fashion resurgance. 100%. 7:48 This is what you were just talking about in terms of post-economic dressing, right? 7:51 You dress this way because you want to construct this identity for yourself in the mirror that you have stability, that you have a future, that you have a present. It's like class dysmorphia. 8:04 You dress this way in an attempt to cure class dysmorphia. Yeah, and I also think, like, in environments of status ambiguity, where you're like, "What is, what is the right way to present myself to the world?" 8:17 It kinda makes sense to default to khakis and a sweater, right? Yeah. 8:20 Where you're like, "If I'm going into an environment where I can't really, like, outbid or outshine the rest of the people in this environment based on the amount of money I make-" Mm-hmm... 8:31 "or where I went to school or my job, I can at least look correct." And people have- Yeah... this idea in their mind of what it means to look correct, and I think in a lot of cases, it's pretty close to preppy dressing. 8:43 Yeah. 8:43 And obviously, that's, like, deeply embedded in the messaging that they've gotten about, like, what it means to be a good citizen, to be an educated citizen, and what it means to be an American, what it means to be a proper American. 8:56 Yeah. [upbeat music] Here's a good place to start. Sean Monahan, you recently wrote in one of your newsletter issues this line, "The tension between tacky and tasteful has always defined preppiness." 9:09 That tension between tackiness and tastefulness, in my mind, is a clear expression of the status anxiety. Tastefulness is, is a weird word. I feel like it's a word that has a lot of semantic slippage. 9:22 Oftentimes, when you hear it used in discourse, people are talking about some version of neutrality, about making decisions that don't seem like decisions, and I, I feel like that's the aspiration of a lot of preppiness, is to seem natural or neutral, even though it is kind of a very [laughs] conspicuous way to dress in America in 2026. 9:47 There's a way to, like, make that sort of, like, rugged, like, normal, everyday boy next door, girl next door, but, like, with clothes, you know? 9:56 It's like everybody has, like, a plaid shirt in their closet that, like, is really soft and is worn down and comfortable and, like, it goes perfectly with any of their old blue jeans or pair of khaki pants or, like, something and-- or a leather jacket and that sort of stuff. 10:14 It's easy, and it's, like, cool when it's, like, done in a way that's, like, considered and, like, meticulous. But it also doesn't appear as, like, you're trying that hard. 10:26 And we're in a world in-- where everybody's, like, looking at each other online, in person. Like, they're scrutinizing themselves. They're scrutinizing each other. 10:37 They're looking over their shoulder at, like, what the people are wearing behind them. Like, to some degree, I think people just wanna, like, chill the fuck out. 10:44 Part of what's entertaining about preppiness is that despite it having so many different manuals and explainers on precisely what you should wear and in what context you should dress a certain way, it's a bit hard to pull off. 10:58 I think this is kind of why it still has this aspirational pull. To be tasteful is to not seem like you're making decisions but actually be making decisions, but maybe those choices are inherited in some way. 11:11 And the tackiness is, of course, this, this fear of being clocked as, as someone who's putting it on as kind of a costume to try to play act grown-upness or conservativeness or inherited wealth or something like that. 11:23 There's some kind of tension there when it seems too, um, intentional. Can you talk about the rules of your preppy youth? I didn't identify as being preppy per se. 11:31 I, I never would have used that word to, to characterize myself. 11:34 But I bought a lot of Abercrombie & Fitch, and also it felt very, very natural in, in a kind of environment, a college town where a lot of people play lacrosse. 11:43 Those aesthetics always felt kind of very, like, a natural part of the landscape, I guess. Yeah. To me, Abercrombie is like mall prep. Mm-hmm. 11:50 And it's interesting that this idea of, like, neutrality of a sort of default outfit follows prep even outside of, like- The more Ivy-coded elements. Prep means something very different to Gen Z, Gen Alpha. 12:05 The idea of preppy is not kind of Ivy style. You know, what they're referencing is things that are trendy and, like, higher end. So this was since speaking with a fifth grader. Alo is what was deemed preppy. 12:19 Park sweatshirts, Sol de Janeiro perfume mist. Those are just a handful of the things that they referenced. Caroline works at Town & Country as her day job, and- Mm-hmm... 12:26 when young people are surveyed about what preppy is, they have this concept, but for this generation, it's like Alo leggings. Yeah. 12:34 [laughs] And I think it's, like, something, like, they don't really have the language for the thing that feels like default or considered but basic. 12:44 And it's interesting to me that in this genealogy of prep graphic that you made for, um, your newsletter, there is a direct line from normcore- Mm-hmm... 12:55 which was a term coined by K-Hole, which is a, I would call it, would you say a thought collective that you were a part of? 13:03 [laughs] I would, I would call it an art collective, which we publicly presented as a trend forecasting group. 13:10 That was the kind of hackneyed, uh, patched together term we came up with 'cause it was kind of an ambiguous endeavor. Perfect. 13:17 Well, there is a line from normcore to #OldMoneyTikTok, and I think that's the sort of, like, neutrality, maybe neutrality in dressing precedes, like, a true prep resurgence as a sort of, like, springboard of, like, we go back to khakis and jeans, and then we springboard into critter pants or something. 13:38 Yeah. I mean, the funny thing about preppy is that it's very adjacent to just what we would've called traditional norms around dressing in mid-century America. You know, we're coming out of the '50s. 13:50 This is kind of the gray flannel suit era of American dressing. 13:54 There used to be really strong and explicit rules about what you could and couldn't wear different places, and then that kind of fell away, and it put people in this weird position where now they had to make decisions about how to present themselves, and they had to justify those decisions to some extent because they couldn't just point to a dress code for why, uh, they chose to wear X and not Y. 14:18 I was thinking about tradition this past weekend. I was at a family friend's funeral, and he had attended Princeton and was part of an a cappella group at Princeton called The Nassoons. 14:29 And all-- Like, a lot of colleges have these a cappella groups, but in my experience, the Ivys and the Little Ivys have these, like, older groups that are really, like, deeply embedded on campus and- Mm... 14:42 have a lot of tradition inherent in them, and, like, sometimes there's a certain level of prestige attached to being involved in one. 14:49 Anyway, he had been in The Nassoons, and his year, I think it was the late '70s, there was I, I would say about a dozen members there to sing at his funeral, and they were wearing- Yeah... orange and black striped ties. 15:01 They were in the program as The Nassoons, and they sang two songs, and one of them is, uh, what's called, like, "Orange and Black." 15:06 It's literally about Princeton, and it's an old rivalry song, and so they mention Yale, and they mention Harvard. And I was just like-- Obviously, it was very moving, but I was like, "This is what tradition is." 15:16 Tradition is a group of people to sing at your funeral in a striped tie with your college colors. Mm-hmm. 15:21 Like, these are people who flew from all across the country to sing here, and I think that people want access to that type of multi-generational community tie. Former "Tasteland" guest Mike Pepe- Mm-hmm... 15:36 wrote a book about platforms and has also been doing a lot of work about institutions and what are institutions mean in the age of AI. Um, and he's talking about how platforms are much weaker than institutions. 15:47 Digital platforms, they don't necessarily create weak community ties because there's a lot of other sociopolitical and economic factors that could explain why community ties are weaker in this moment. 16:00 But they certainly don't help, and they can't replace institutions, but they often give the illusion of being an institution replacement. 16:08 Whereas, like, institutions, like, to bring it back to the topic at hand- [laughs]... 16:13 prep style, Ivy style, and this idea of Americana, it's always been attached to institutions, beginning with, I think, educational institutions, and that feels like a very important piece of the puzzle. 16:28 You can't really decouple it from the campus where, like, you know, as you age and you age into different codes, you know, there, there's always some way to tra- transfer it back to the college campus or the town that you summer in or your summer camp- Mm-hmm... 16:44 or whatever institution where you inherited these codes, I guess. Yeah. I, I've read some of Mike Pepe's stuff on this. I totally agree with him. 16:53 [laughs] I think platforms LARP as institutions, but they're clearly not because they don't really have rules around membership. 17:00 They're open to everyone, and they're also ruthlessly self-interested in their own propagation. 17:07 I mean, institutions too, to some extent, but I do think the idea of cultivating lifelong bonds, these kind of more softer, humanistic overtones that you find within institutions are, are not present on digital platforms. 17:21 And they're not really interested in any long-term social or cultural goals. They kind of morph and ebb and flow with the direction of the market, and institutions don't tend to be primarily focused with the market. 17:37 You know, that's a big distinction here. Obviously, colleges, universities, they're kind of in for a hard time right now. I mean, I, I grew up in a college town. 17:47 Uh, we passed peak 18-year-old, I think, two or three years ago, and so there's just kind of a structural decline in the number of people that are going to be attending college baked into the demographics of the United States right now. 18:00 So there's market pressures on the institutions, but I wouldn't say by and large they're mostly motivated by those market pressures. If they were, Harvard would have Hundreds of thousands of more students than they do. 18:12 But that would undercut the prestige of the institution and kind of the point of it existing in the first place. 18:18 The platform is always ceding to the sort of masses that are allowed onto it, whereas with any given institution, there's more limitation in who is allowed into it and why. 18:28 The last decade of marketing, the go-to word was always community. We're building community. 18:34 And I always found it really insidious and dark when they would say that because if you say you want something, it means you don't really have it. 18:43 And there's something very sad about this idea that there's millions of people kind of ambling around trying to figure out how to connect with other human beings when being part of a community is such, like, a inherent part of being a human being. 18:55 And I think that's been a lot of their allure and kind of part of the, the way that they've sucked in so much social and cultural life because they were able to convince people to kind of port their social graphs into them. 19:09 Uh, meanwhile, the actual community ties that kind of predated those relationships in the real world atrophied. 19:17 Yeah, and there's, like, so much conversation about the replacement of the college campus, like, what is a college education actually worth? 19:24 I've always felt reflexively that it's worth having that experience for having that experience, to gain those community ties, to deepen your relationship to an institution that has a history and will have a future. 19:35 But I also think I am a bit susceptible to this argument that maybe college is past its peak in American society. So I do think it's very individual, but I also think 19:46 it's only under the light of how flimsy these platforms are and how hollow the promise of stuff like Polymarket and OnlyFans is in furthering human connection that these institutions who have, like, really just totally racist and classist histories start to seem, like, noble, right? 20:11 [laughs] I think the appeal of it is also kind of a Dunbar's number deep human desire to live in a village atmosphere. 20:21 And I think that all ladders up to maybe another component of, of prep style, which is lifestyle, which sounds awful, honestly, [laughs] when you compare it to all the, you know, high-minded ideals of, uh, a university or college education and the life of the mind, all this kind of stuff. 20:39 But, but ultimately, there's a lifestyle associated to going to a small residential college that appeals to people because it's hard to find other places in the United States. 20:53 [laughs] I mean, there are other countries in which you have the same kind of college green or piazza or whatever you wanna call it in this specific cultural context it happens in, where people kind of sit around and run into each other, and the, the small dramas of people's personal lives are engaging and entertaining and good and bad in all the ways that those sorts of things always are. 21:18 But it does feel like the only version of that we really have in the United States is- Dense and walkable strikes again. Yeah, exactly. 21:25 [laughs] We're seeing a lot of young people embracing the aesthetics of American prestige in the form of this particular style at a moment when many of them are deeply ambivalent about America itself. 21:39 Do you think it's part of that, uh, that tension of, like, longing for institutions, not necessarily the institutions that we have, but some sort of institutionalism as an avatar for, like, belonging and stability? Yeah. 21:51 I mean, that, that sounds about right. I think people feel ambivalent about America, that's such a big word, on the eve of our 250th anniversary. 22:02 But I, I do think a lot of it is architectural, and even institutions are kind of architectural, too. You need spaces for them. This is the other problem with, with platforms. They don't live anywhere. 22:14 You can access them from your large McMansion in the suburbs of Dallas, but it's not really gonna supply you the, the same desires that you have for human contact. 22:25 I think that's part of why this World Cup, it seems like on social media, has spurred this excitement about America. 22:32 I feel like for me personally, it's, like, made me feel more connected to the idea of an America, seeing people coming together in real life, seeing videos of people, of the Scots on the streets of Boston, of Dutch people in downtown Kansas City. 22:47 Because that's also then platforms magnifying and broadcasting people being together in real life and in person. Yeah. 22:53 I mean, I, I think there's something else funny about it too, though, because it, it's plugged into the, the Europoor discourse [laughs] on, on X. 23:03 This has been kind of an ongoing discursive spat about how Europe is secretly much poorer than the United States. 23:11 And part of what was interesting about this was having a lot of Europeans go places in the United States that do have, like, kind of mass affluent suburban lifestyles and, and that's certainly appealing to a lot of people. 23:25 Um, even though we're talking about this desire for community, the suburbs wouldn't exist if people didn't want what the suburbs were selling at the same time. 23:33 I mean, I love Brooklyn and I love Europe, but I also love to drive my car to a Target that has a Starbucks inside of it. [upbeat music] I wanted to read something from the introduction of your book, if that's okay. 23:45 Of course. Obviously, this is a book that deals with the Windsors and the Kennedys and the sort of diverging destinies of these two dynasties. 23:53 "Over the past one hundred years, few families have so thoroughly occupied the public discourse as the Windsors and the Kennedys, the British royal family and the closest thing America has to one. 24:04 They offer a juxtaposition of modern dynasties. While one success stood on centuries of ceremony and ritual, a position they believed was God-given, the others was carved out of ambition. The Windsors had status. 24:17 The Kennedys had to claw their way to attain it." 24:20 What I like about that section is this idea of clawing your way towards status, which I think is less obvious to a younger generation that is sort of viewing the Kennedys as aspirational today, not totally understanding that this family was actually outsiders from the core of WASP Boston society, and that the Brahmins and the Irish Catholics were actually these different groups. 24:45 And we hold them up today as among the most privileged, and this is a true American family. 24:50 But at the time, it wasn't necessarily a given that they would have that status in society or that they were the view of aesthetic perfection of, like, what America should look like and what a fashionable and classy person should be. 25:01 Yeah. You look at America, and you look at the idea that within three generations, you can go from an Irish immigrant in Boston to the White House. 25:12 That is quintessentially, like, the idea of the American dream, that anyone can become something here. Anyone can, with enough ambition, claw their way into the positions of power. 25:24 He was the first Catholic president, and that was shocking to people, and that was a huge criticism during his campaign. 25:30 I mean, like, funny factoid is that there's only two presidents who don't have any ancestors in the United States that predate the American Revolution, and it's JFK and Donald Trump. Wow. 25:43 [laughs] So they-- He was kind of the first immigrant president. And bisexual. Just kidding. And bisexual. I'm starting a rumor. 25:54 There was a really funny article about Tuckernuck, which we might get into, and the Jackie dress and what that represents, and the idea that that aesthetic, that Jackie's aesthetic, that the Kennedy aesthetic, is representative of kind of like WASPy America, when in fact it is the opposite of WASPy America, is what the Kennedys were. 26:14 It's, it's, it's interesting to think of that transition from then to now, absolutely. 26:18 This is making me think of this, like, idea of old money and old money dressing that you'll see on Instagram or TikTok or wherever on social media, and it's like, you know, nothing beats old money aesthetic, and it's never quite the same thing, but it's always so confused. 26:34 And maybe, like, one example could be some, like, they're just wearing like a Bruno Cuccinelli baseball hat or something like that. 26:40 The sort of desire to this aspirational aesthetic with no understanding of what it is and the codes, because it's always like the real version of this aesthetic is always just the symptom of some large system of codes, which is very hard to be-- to, to read quickly for on social media. 27:01 Well, something else that's interesting to think about, uh, in particular about Jackie, is that she actually had a very French aesthetic. 27:09 She was very intrigued by European fashion, and that was an issue during the campaign. 27:15 And when she became First Lady, you know, she was making line-for-line replicas of French designs from Chanel or Givenchy made in New York, so she could say they were made in America, but they were exact copies of, of French designs. 27:34 Which I just think that's so interesting, because then from there, you know, she became such a global fashion icon and influencer in the truest sense of that word. 27:42 And so then it was kind of her aesthetic was copied and copied and then gets, you know, becomes, I think, what people often think of as like that quintessential nineteen-sixties American look. 27:53 And really, it's influenced by France, which I th- I just think that's interesting to think about. How consciously do you think the Kennedys were cultivating this image of American elegance? 28:04 Obviously, Jackie Kennedy put a ton of thought into her style. Male Kennedys put thought into their style as well. 28:12 But how much of it was a projection, and how much of it was a deliberate attempt to really be this new American royalty and to imitate the codes of old money as more of a new money family? Yeah. 28:25 I think it was absolutely a part of their consciousness. I look to the engagement photos that JFK and Jackie took on the Cape. They're these beautiful images that ran in Life Magazine. 28:36 Those to me are like quintessential Americana. Jackie's in kind of Bermuda shorts and a collared shirt, and they're on his boat, and they're looking like so America to me. And all of it was orchestrated. 28:49 I feel like, you know, Jackie did not love being on the boat, but she knew that photo was one that they needed to go in Life Magazine to present them as kind of, you know, the new power couple so that they-- s- to help with Jack's pursuit of politics. 29:04 To me, those photos are kind of the first indication of like, this is kind of the American look that we're going for. 29:12 Do you think the Kennedy aesthetic was always meant to project national identity, or was it simply a personal style or a style of their particular ambition that became symbolic over time? That's a good question. 29:27 I think so much of kind of the idea of prep and that, like, classic American look comes from the concept of Ivy style. 29:35 I'm not sure if you all get into that in this episode, but the fact that, you know, JFK was at Harvard, I think that's all tied into this as well, like whether that is kind of a pursuit of American national identity or a pursuit of an aesthetic tied to a particular class and status in America. 29:58 I don't know if those are two separate things, but I think that that's part of it as well, is looking like you are supposed to fit in in the Ivy League. 30:05 You're supposed to look a certain way to be in those rooms, I think is part of it as well. Something interesting for me is the idea of the Kennedys is something so foreign to me and something I- Mm-hmm. 30:16 You know, I grew up with a European father in rural Northern California, so far from any East Coastism, right? Yeah. 30:24 To me, this is all East Coastism, that, like, my Americana growing up was more like hippie San Franciscoism, right? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Like, that's what I think of. 30:33 Th- just listening to the two of you go so deep into this, there's so many little details that I didn't know. I didn't know who Caroline Bessette Kennedy was until- Mm... this TV show c- came out, right? 30:42 I, I had never heard of her. It's, it's so foreign to me. So this idea of, like, this representing this American curse is almost like this East Coast parochialism to me. Yeah. 30:56 Whether or not you are aware of this family, and kind of both what they represented and the influence that they had, they continue to have influence both culturally and politically, and I think, I think you're not the only person who's not aware of them, that has... 31:11 doesn't have this as kind of the idea of America, but I think the fact that they do continue to have influence, I think is significant. 31:18 [upbeat music] And I think what is so complicated about everything becoming a reference online and being remixed on Pinterest boards is then it, like, loses its history. It gets decoupled from its history. 31:30 Well, these are all political symbols and all steeped in politics. Fashion's always political. 31:34 What that means, I think, for, like, this, like, American stuff being on mood boards or, like, being, like, constantly referenced or whatever, like, a lot of the stuff that people are referencing, it's not, like, a version of America that is, like, scary or necessarily violent or pushes its thumb down on people, which I think is what, you know, people are upset with America about doing today. 31:57 When I think about, like, stuff that's, like, constantly referenced or, like, the things that are, like, in the conversation at the moment, it's, like, plaid shirts or, like, blue je- like, it's stuff that, like, regular people wear. 32:10 That stuff is democratic. Like, it's the ideal of America in this sort of romantic sense, I think. 32:17 One of the things that makes America America is, like, people here crack the code on, like, storytelling and, like, turning that into, like, money, you know? 32:25 Yeah, and Caroline used the example of Jackie Kennedy's pink suit being referenced by Moschino. 32:32 It's really curious that I would say the most referenced piece of kind of Kennedy iconography in fashion is Jackie's suit that she was wearing when President Kennedy was assassinated, and- Mm... 32:45 there's a scene in one of the Legally Blonde films where she's dressed, like, looking like Jackie O., but she's wearing a full pink suit and a pillbox hat, and it's not in reference to one of the most horrific moments of political violence in American history. 33:00 Instead, it's just referencing kind of the idea of Jackie. 33:05 Or I know there was a Moschino show that was referencing that look, and it's just curious to me that we have become so desensitized that we're just taking this look that is representative of such violence. 33:17 I mean, she didn't take it off when it had her husband's blood on it, and now it's, like, just kind of another fashion reference is, is interesting. 33:26 And the original ones being French designs, but then that she had made in America to make this political statement. You also have this resurgence of the Ralph Lauren flag sweater. 33:35 Obviously, Ralph himself being an immigrant from an immigrant family. I think his, what's his real last name? Lipschitz? Lipschitz. Mm-hmm. 33:44 We have this time period where young people aren't maybe super political or politically engaged, not happy with what's happening with the octogenarian leadership of this company, but our country [laughs] Oh, no. 33:56 Uh, that's a Freudian slip. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. All right. But who's running this company? 34:02 But, you know, they're happy to, like, use it as a prop in a Hampton's flat lay photo on Instagram, and I was really surprised and, uh, amused that Caroline said that the flag sweater is, like, all over London. 34:16 I thought that was pretty funny. This wasn't the most recent time I was in London, but perhaps the time before, I saw many people wearing the Ralph Lauren American flag sweater in L- In London. In London. Wow. 34:28 Which I thought was just interesting. Peop- British people. Mm-hmm. 34:30 And I just thought that's so curious to be, to be choosing this just for the aesthetic as opposed to, you know, a- any sort of engaging with the, the politics of what wearing something like that might mean. 34:41 Or maybe they are, and I don't know. I didn't talk to them, but- Well, wait, wait, wait. 34:43 Can, can you, can you describe, like, what their overall looks were signaling, whether it was this, like, ir- irony or this poshness? What was it? 34:52 No, it was, it was almost them embracing kind of the idea of a preppy aesthetic. Ralph Lauren is enormously popular in the UK. 34:59 It's interesting to think about how they are the sponsor for Wimbledon, which to me is, like, the ultimate British sporting event, and it's, you know, sponsored by Ralph, which is, of course, the ultimate American brand in my opinion. 35:14 I think the reason people reach for prep is because it's, like, one of those, um, aesthetic genres that's a lot more black and white than any other way that you try to slice and dice the population. 35:25 It's, like, very obvious who's prep and who isn't, whereas it, it's not obvious, like, who's a Democrat, who's a Republican, especially now, who's upwardly mobile, who's downwardly mobile, whose family's been here for a long time. 35:39 And especially because, like, coming out of COVID, all, everyone was wearing leggings. It's like, "God. God, how am I gonna find my people? Everyone's in leggings," right? 35:49 [laughs] Well, this is, this is what I was going back to about people wanting codes. Mass casualization is just an aesthetic horror. I mean, I was just in Europe for a couple of months. 35:59 You see the American styles leaking there as well. We are exporting the America B lifestyle to the masses around the world. That's absolutely happening. 36:10 And at the same time, like what you're saying about preppiness being kind of globally recognizable as some kind of more upper class European coded aesthetic is also true. 36:22 I went to a rave in Spain with a sweater over my shoulders, and I got Some really nasty looks from people. 36:29 [laughs] Well, but in the case of Amatura and, like, post-war Japan, there are instances of the world exporting prep back to us. Like, shout-out W. David Marx. 36:39 A super prominent example of, like, I mean, we're, we keep saying Europe, America. I feel like we've been a little insular in the discussion, but, like, there's... You can find versions of this in Asia. 36:49 You can find versions of this in Latin America. It's truly become a global style. Yeah, I was in Madrid, and I don't think... 36:57 They would not see the way that I was dressing, which, to be clear, was, like, I was wearing, like, linen shorts and a button-down, and I had, like, a sweater on my shoulder. 37:06 It wasn't that extreme of a look or something [laughs] but in Madrid, that just reads as, like, kind of, like, prissy upper class. They don't see that and think, like, "Oh, this is very Americana." 37:15 'Cause a lot of these things are... They come out of, like, late 19th century English sartorialism. I mean, that's kind of where the genealogy of prep diagram starts. What's the difference between prep and Americana? 37:26 Does, like... Is prep a subset of Americana? How do you see the difference? The preppiness is always, like, an affectation of the Northeast. 37:33 And the Northeast, as, as Daisy said, is always kind of reaching back towards England as, as a kind of legitimating origin point. I mean, I think there's lots of different kinds of Americana. 37:43 So there's this kind of, like, Midwestern hunter look that has a lot to do with camo and trucker hats and ripped denim, and that's Americana. I've written about, uh, white trash chic [laughs] 37:55 which is, you know, biker aesthetics, leather, gay and Hells Angel varieties. That's Americana. Traditional Western wear, that's a very conspicuous sort of Americana. 38:06 I do think there ends up being kind of a regionalism to it. You know, preppiness is very associated with the Northeast. This kind of, like, rural hunter look is very associated with the Midwest. 38:16 Western wear obviously is associated with the Southwest. I mean, even the urban lumberjack look, right? 38:22 Like, this is kind of a rehashing of grunge, which is a derivation of how kind of lower middle class kids' fathers dressed when they worked in logging. 38:33 I think they get kind of all scrambled up now 'cause we don't have quite such distinct regional identities anymore. Americana. Ooh, what is it today? I think it's loaded, like, first and foremost. 38:45 I think it represents different things to different people, and I think it depends on, like, what about America you put on a, your own pedestal, you know? 38:55 'Cause I think this place can be taken from a lot of different angles. 38:58 Like, it's easy to hate it, it's easy to love it, and I think culturally it's a place where a lot of different things can thrive and a lot of unique perspectives cut through. 39:10 Whether or not, like, we agree with all of those perspectives, I think, is just part of that, like, First Amendment. 39:17 It's also, I think, like, today it's a crutch for brands if we're talking about menswear to come off as, like, sincere or authentic or rugged. 39:28 It's a, it's a way for them to, like, try to relate and, like, get in touch with, like, the lowest common denominator, I guess, of who they're trying to capture because anybody understands, like, a white T-shirt and jeans or, like, a flannel shirt and, like, military pants. 39:43 Like, that stuff has been co-opted and re-co-opted and mixed and matched in all sorts of stuff for, like, you know, since the hippies really, I think, is when that st- kind of started in America. 39:55 I think, you know, you go back a little further and it's, like, post-World War II in Japan and you have the GIs wearing, like, military shirts with their fatigue pants and Levi's and then... You know, I don't know. 40:06 I mean, this is like... You can also go read Amatura by David Marx. Like, th- that basically just outlines all that stuff. Is that part of how we get from, like, Americana to Ivy, you think? 40:15 Is it the specific kind of, like, post-war moment? 100%. 40:19 Like, a fair amount of that stuff, like, came from, like, military clothing or, like, the blazer was used as dress clothes or whatever for the Army and then it got turned into civilian wear and then, you know, it was a less casual time, so people still wore, like, a blazer and shirt and tie to class, but, like, they didn't iron their shirts. 40:36 Like, they wore frayed khaki pants. They wore, like, a sweatshirt and they'd cut the sleeves off, and some deck shoes. Like, Ivy menswear is more so, like, how do you look put together but also a little fucked up? Mm. 40:49 We talked before about, you know, how weird America is, and even in this buttoned-up preppy Ivy niche we get glimpses of weird America in there, um, just because there's so many different influences. 41:05 And one of the examples was, like, you know, if you go to a Grateful Dead concert and you see, like, the preppiest guy you've ever seen in, in your life and he's, like, 56 years old. [laughs] Like, it touches everything. 41:17 Like, if you walk into a regular retailer, like, they're going to have things that are- Yeah... like, core Ivy. They're going to have Oxford shirts at, like, Abercrombie. They're going to have khaki pants. 41:26 Like, they're gonna have a cable knit sweater. They're repositioning that product to, like, sell it to a consumer that isn't into that sort of stuff, but, like, that's what it is though. 41:35 You also see it in history, like, the guys in Fugazi would wear, like, big thrifted Brooks Brothers shirts and, like, that's Ivy League clothes that, like, pe- their parents were probably wearing and then, like, they, like, had sweat stains on them or some bullshit and, and they, like, took them to a Goodwill and, like, those guys were like, "Well, you know, the shirt fits. 41:55 Like, I'm gonna put it on and, like, we don't really care how we look, and it's beat and, like, that's what we can afford and we care about making music." 42:02 This, it's ubiquitous in our, like, style lexicon in this country, you know what I mean? It's also, like, kinda like the generally accepted practice for a man is sort of business casual sportswear. 42:12 You can do that in, like, two ways today. Like, you can wear, like, all stretch fabrics and, like, have things protruding out of your pockets on the train or, like, you can... 42:20 Or you can go to Buck Mason or, like, Double RL or, like, any of these places and go get, like, an accurate 1940s military Chino and, like, a shirt that has, like, the same university stripe that you got at, like, I don't know, Charles Tyrwhitt or, like, some place like that. 42:34 And you're effectively doing the same thing. You're just... You know, it's a different font. But it is everywhere. That's what makes it the best in a way, you know? It's democratic. 42:42 Quoting from Robert Armstrong writing in the Financial Times, Armstrong's a self-described preppy And he's wrestling with the connotations of clothing associated with the WASP elite by distinguishing between preppy and the more evolved Ivy. 42:56 "Preppy," Armstrong says, "Is a legacy admission who takes it all for granted. Ivy, by contrast, is on scholarship, and its shoes show some polish. 43:06 One flaunts inherited privilege, the other aspires and employs a critical eye. We all aspire to be educated and successful and to be totally relaxed and sophisticated about our success. 43:17 We all want to be the Kennedys at Hyannis Port," Armstrong wrote. "At the same time, we hate all that. 43:23 We want to be rugged individualists who trust in our hands and live by our word, who don't want the rich man's dollar, his country club, or his company all to ourselves. To be American is to entertain both." 43:34 Yeah, totally. I mean, I think that's, like, applicable to kind of, I think, style in general in a way. 43:41 I mean, I think that's kind of a balance and something we're always, like, playing around with making the magazine, like, from issue to issue. 43:47 Like- I'm just gonna read the first line from the fake Ivy piece in this issue. "Death, taxes, and young people forever finding ways to reclaim Ivy League fashion. 43:57 Over the last few years, Western society's post-pandemic desire for structure, the collapse of high fashion, and a fatigue with constant technologically induced newness have merged, with this confluence of factors reshaping how people dress." 44:12 Which is like, okay, we-- When you're amid, uh, what feels like a collapse of codes and a collapse of traditional institutions, that's when the young people start to yearn for #oldmoney mood boards, and this post-pandemic moment is, like, a huge part of that also just simply because people were dressed so casually in their homes. 44:35 I work from home mostly, and I was doing [chuckles] laundry yesterday, and I just remember thinking, like, about the way I dress and the way I shop and how it's so divorced from needing to be in an office environment and how I wonder if I should. 44:49 Like, am I missing out on something? Am I missing out on learning these signals? Should I, ten years ago, have been, you know, when I was in my early twenties, been in an office environment to learn these signals? 44:58 Would that have helped me in life? Instead, I work from home. 45:03 Sometimes I go to a co-working space, and I browse Depop and Grailed and eBay while watching TV, and my style is shaped by these more alienated just shopping instincts and shaped by social media feeds, et cetera. 45:17 And it's so divorced from the necessity of any real world environment besides my leisure and my neighborhood. 45:24 I think about very old school prep and very old school kind of the idea of the old money concept is so if you know, you know. It's nothing screaming at you. 45:33 It's looking at labels and brands and pieces that you're taught about from your parents and the-- They're kind of the people in your community, that that is what is high quality, what is the best of the best, what you should be wearing. 45:46 We were talking in both the previous conversations we've had about this idea that, you know, the old money TikTok aesthetic represents this sort of slurry and total deconstruction of context around some of these things we're talking about around prep and Ivy people reaching and finding symbols of their own that are so divorced from, from what these things traditionally mean. 46:06 But thinking of Americana more broadly, which in this broader Americana, is there anything that is dying, that is, like, soon to become so much a fossil and, and just disappear from culture? 46:21 Honestly, I don't think any of these things really die, especially when, like, we're living in this, like, nostalgia-pilled culture. My answer honestly would be, like, none of it's dead. 46:32 It's all just, like, in a vacuum, and, like, it's fucking spinning around and, like, there's dust and... Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it really dies. Like, I think it goes in cycles. 46:42 Like, people argue all the time about, like, are skinny jeans in? Are fucking big jeans in? Like, pleats, flat front. Like, honestly, it's all just, like, one big argument because people need to sell pants. 46:54 It's, uh, my favorite Bruce Springsteen song. You know, everything dies. Maybe that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back. 47:01 [upbeat music] I think the idea of America being a, a melting pot, American culture being a slurry- You have to stop saying slurry... I s- It's the word. 47:13 It, sl- It's the th-- To me, that's what I'm getting from all the conversations we've had of this is, like, American culture being this slurry. I mean, it is, dude. It's fucking chaos. 47:23 I think, like, there's so much weird stuff out there in this country, and it's so fun to go, like, wade around in it. 47:31 Like, we're going to follow a band around for ten days this summer as, like, part of the next magazine, and we're gonna try to, like, show people, like, you can still do that. 47:40 Like, that's an, a part of Americana that pe- I think people would say is dead, but if a single person, like, thinks it's worth keeping up, then there's a chance that it can, like, live forever. 47:50 I mean, I-- Print media is a good example of that in a way. Like, with people my age, I don't know how old y'all are, but, like... It's like I turn thirty next year, so I'm like, "Okay, this is, like, my last hoorah." 48:01 No, it's all downhill for you, buddy. I'm thirty-one. I'm already bald, so, like, y-y- you don't have to worry about that. Look, you know, these, this, it's going back. Don't worry about it, dude. You can't tell. 48:10 No, you can't tell. All right, we'll do hairline therapy later. I wish you a full head of hair forever, sir. Okay, where were we? Yeah, so, like, but, like, that's a good example. 48:18 There are gonna be old people that, like, think stuff is dying or, like, like, film photography, like, "No one's gonna take film photos anymore." 48:25 Well, you know, like, five or ten years ago, we saw, like, every single person in the world picked up a fucking thirty-five millimeter camera. Like, it's like skinny jeans. 48:32 Like, I guarantee you people are gonna be wearing skinny jeans in five years. Like, like, the-- whatever the next APC new standard is or something like that, like, people will be wearing it, you know what I mean? 48:41 [upbeat music] I had a European client once talk about how the Bidens were the end of WASP America, and I was like [chuckles], "What do you mean? 48:49 Joe Biden from Scranton who talks about being an Irish Catholic all the time?" The Brahmins are rolling in their graves. 48:56 I mean, to me, w- we were talking about this on the first conversation, where, like, I'm from far northern California, and all this, like, preppyism, JFK, Kennedyism to me is so foreign and so, like, far away from anything I ever thought about growing up or was exposed to or was related to the culture of where I'm from at all. 49:14 And I relate to that European where it's like, oh, to me, they're all just, like, older, white, religious-coded people from the Northeast. Like, what's the difference, right? 49:27 Well, I think what's the difference should be the takeaway [laughs] of this podcast, maybe. 49:31 Um, I mean, I think, like, because of the region of the country I grew up in, it was a lot more inescapable, no matter, like, what your class position is in New England, because there's something about it that's also just New Englandness too. 49:44 And I-- when I was at summer camp, I was, like, at camp with girls that would just have their J. Crew catalogs sent to them. And one of my, like, my-- I joke this is, like, my core class trauma. 49:55 Somebody in my summer camp cabin called Applebee's white trash, and I started crying. [laughs] I like Applebee's. Um- Which, like, God, get, get a better trauma, Daisy. 50:07 But I-- obviously, I always remember that because I was like, "We're all at the same summer camp. You know that, right?" I think there's something about, to go back to the beginning, about tastefulness versus tackiness. 50:15 There's always a question of who's deciding and a frustration with that. But somehow the kind of general ethos around it sticks regardless. If you call someone tacky who's not tacky, they won't care. 50:28 If you call someone tacky who's tacky, you know, they'll break down in tears. Is that about my Applebee's situation? [laughs] People who decide are the people deeper in the institutions. I, I don't know. 50:40 But they don't even decide. They just exist. I mean, that's what wealth is, right? The right to just exist without self-labeling. 50:46 Well, when I say decide, I mean in being derisive about what is deemed to be tacky, they position themselves as within the insti- institutions. 50:55 This girl at your summer camp who was saying Applebee's was tacky, like, that statement and it-- that statement's ability to hold power over you there just positions her as deeper in the institution than you. Well, 51:10 she was from Texas. [laughs] I think-- I mean, it is funny, like, not- Sorry... this insecurity of not knowing the specific places to go because, like, you know, I-- Emily Sundberg's been on this podcast. 51:23 Like, her willingness to go really niche on, like, this just places to go economy, places to spend money economy, and, like, externalize it has-- leads to so much status anxiety where, like, 51:38 I, I think, like, half the time she's, like, a victim of her own subscribers because the anthropology that she's doing just whips people into such a fren- a frenzy that even being the messenger for this restaurant, not that restaurant makes people feel like they are primitively under attack. 51:55 And my thing is, like, yes, there's towns in Maine that are more, like, wealth-coded, but you're gonna find wealthy people summering everywhere. 52:01 And I don't get why people, like, shove themselves down the corridor of the Hamptons. I'm like, pick any town on the Maine coast and go there. But isn't the Hamptons tacky? 52:11 Isn't that the whole secret thing about the Hamptons? [laughs] I mean, you said it, not me. I, I am publicly-- I'm, I'm anti-Hamptons, but, um, whatever. I've heard that Montauk has been ruined. Um... 52:25 [laughs] I mean, they're not filming reality shows on the Maine coast. That's what I'll say about that. 52:31 [laughs] Um, but I, I, I actually think this is part of the appeal of, of tastefulness, and this is why most things that are in the kind of places to go category, the, the paranoia about which restaurant to go to category do read as tacky. 52:50 You're supposed to just have, like, a, you know, a secret bolt in the wall that only you know about that's very casual and local, and that's the tasteful thing to do. Or you're supposed to, like, not care. 52:59 Like, when you're running bots to get- That's what I mean... a spot at Red Hook Tavern. No hate to my friends who are using bots for their reservations. 53:09 You know who you are, and you screwed me over royally when we got banned. See, that's horrifying. That's horrifying. Coming up-- Maybe coming on a future episode. 53:17 Like, i-e-- to me, it's just so much cooler to be like, "Fuck it. We're going to Balthazar." [upbeat music] Here's one for you. You know, there's a lot of talk about save the bees. What about the wasps? 53:32 I love when you're, like, obviously gunning to be the intro to the episode. [laughs] Or the end. I don't know. Like, "Pick me. Pick me." Joe, that's up to you. That's up to you, Joe. 53:40 No, you could never earn an episode kicker 'cause you would never say something as innovative of, "I'm tired. I need a quesadilla." Quesadilla. [laughs] Um, yeah, save the wasps, right? 53:49 Well, there was this question of, like, would a true wasp ever refer to themselves as a wasp? Probably not. Maybe in jest. 53:57 This goes back to old money, where it's like, if you're using that term and you're trying to identify it and you're trying to figure out what the codes are, you're already outside the club. Right. And you'll never be in. 54:08 Well, and being the person to name the codes is a little bit like cementing your outsider status. Anthropologists are usually from out groups. 54:17 I worked on this piece for Town & Country that actually didn't make it into the magazine. 54:21 I, I honestly don't remember why, but it was about progressive preppies, socialist preppies in this particular, like, Trump won moment. And I talked to Lisa Birnbach for the piece. I met her for coffee. 54:34 She is the author of The Preppy Handbook and then the follow-up, True Prep. You know, she was a little bit of an outsider to that culture at the time she wrote the book. 54:43 She was recruited as a young person to kind of be the face of the book. She was working with an older writer and illustrator, and she was a Jewish New Yorker that went to Brown. 54:53 And so she had that perfect insider/outsider perspective. And of course, now that's, like, the Bible. 54:59 But it's interesting when the person who first puts things into print, and we talked about Emily Sundberg a little bit and Feed Me. To me, Feed Me is like a pretty similar project in that- Mm-hmm... 55:09 Emily would describe herself as an outsider. 55:12 She has earned and wr-- earned her way to being inside of these rooms, but she's speaking to the people, the insiders, but she's also speaking to the outsiders in a way that is-- Where it produces a lot of status anxiety, and having a readership whose primary motivator is to get beyond the paywall is status anxiety. 55:33 It creates a, an emotional tension in the relationship people have to the information that's being conveyed. It's like they want to know, but they resent knowing. 55:41 If they have so much anxiety or insecurity that they feel like they have to act on it, whereas for me, I'm like, I like knowing this stuff. I don't feel like I need to act on it. 55:51 I feel comfortable with my place in the world. If I have any sort of insecurity, it's probably more about wanting to rack up more creative achievement, sell a book, whatever. 56:02 It's not, "I have to get this restaurant reservation." And the restaurant reservation people probably think, 56:09 you know, me wanting a byline seems small and stupid and square, and I think that they seem like, you know, they're tilting at windmills, and we'll never entirely understand each other, but we understand each other a lot more than people that don't live on the island of Manhattan. 56:25 So that's really where this tyranny of small differences comes from. You know, one thing I've seen in this America two fifty is people saying, "Well, will it be an America five hundred? Will we make it there?" 56:36 And you see people saying, you know, "Just like Rome outlived the Roman Empire, New York, San Francisco, cities such as these will, will outlive the American Empire." 56:46 You have to wonder, will Hyannis Port and Bar Harbor outlive the American Empire in the same way? Mm. I mean, this is a perfect time for me to come out as a New Eng- New England separatist. 56:58 And every time I say this, people think I'm kidding. I'm not. What about just a full balkanization of this country? In a lot of ways, like, that's already happened, right? Did you freeze or did I? 57:10 No, I was letting it land. Okay. Okay, you're, you're letting it land. Sorry. [chuckles] I mean, uh, like one could argue America's already balkanized. [chuckles] And was, and it was meant to be. 57:20 Like, America was supposed to be a republic. Thomas Jefferson's vision was not this federalist vision. It was really, as we know, states' rights oriented. America is a republic. Each state should have its own identity. 57:31 But now we're in the messy middle where it's like states don't quite have enough power to create a utopian vision for the state that accounts for everyone in that state and their diverse needs and desires. 57:45 And, like, the federal government is- Mm-hmm... sort of limited as well by design and, like, meant to be kinda perpetually gridlocked. So that's why America's so weird, and not just visually. 57:58 Okay, sixty years from now, if we're talking-- A lot of the prep stuff we're talking about is like a sixty years ago, seventy years ago thing. 58:05 You know, will there be people podcasting or whatever the equivalent is, talking about, like, this, w- what we've spoken about with our guests, about this Gen Alpha allo Stanley vision of prep? 58:18 Like, will that be something that is an artifact? Like, do you think that has any staying power? 58:24 Or because of the slurry nature of culture now, it's actually none of it will be, or it's just harder to predict because this slurry won't settle for decades? 58:32 I think sixty years from now that we might see a similar thing to what happened with the Kennedy family, which is, like, this family that sort of rose into this category of American prestige and prep, but didn't start out there. 58:48 Sixty years later becomes the symbol, the pinnacle, of course. Like, this is the top tier when it's like, obviously, they weren't the tier or they wouldn't have had anything to aspire into. 58:59 And I think there are subcultures right now that we can kind of already see, like, collapsing into prep. 59:06 Like, I wouldn't be surprised if sixty years from now, vintage prep was considered what you see today on, like, Alabama Rush TikTok. Whereas, like, 59:15 that is much closer to a version of, like, Southern collegiate and Southern prep that was not considered traditional prep. 59:23 I think we might see a version of prep where, like, the Trumps are seen as prep when the Trumps are- The Kennedys of today... Well, no. God, no. 59:33 But, like, they're not very prep, but they might be on the mood board because obviously people will have some understanding of, like, who Donald Trump was and what he stood for. 59:43 But I would say, like, if the right wing shows a greater interest in preserving the tradition of this style of dressing, then they'll probably have more ownership share over it in the public eye at least than they have in the past. 59:57 You know what I'll remember in sixty years if I'm still alive, that I will be the Americana slurry. [upbeat music]
