<p>Trust me, my family is littered with prep school teachers. It doesn’t get more preppy than that! (My great grandfather even founded a prep school.)</p>
<p>Well, actually, I just took a look at the “famous alum lists” of a few very well-known prep schools here in the northeast.
There were just a few university/college educators/administrators.
However, it appears that being a politician, journalist or judge can really add some bona fides to your preppy pedigree.</p>
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<p>Really, “just a few”? On Wikipedia’s list of famous Phillips Academy alumni alone, I counted 25 academics. That’s out of a total of 175 Old Phillipians in all fields that Wikipedia considers “famous,” a pretty high percentage if you ask me—surely enough to conclude that academia is a pretty common career path for Phillips Academy alums. Only a few are listed as “professor” but many more listed as scientist, psychologist, economist, or whatever; some as Nobel laureate; some as college or university president; some just as author or writer even though they hold academic positions.</p>
<p>And I think you need to take into account that most college professors aren’t “famous.” Those listed among the famous are mostly those who went on to become university presidents, Nobel laureates, public intellectuals, popular writers, or otherwise achieve fame at a level that is unusual for academics. There are plenty of those on those lists, and since the famous almost certainly represent a small subset of all the Phillips Academy grads who became college professors—the proverbial tip of the iceberg—well, let’s just say it’s likely a pretty big iceberg.</p>
<p>Ok, you win!</p>
<p>As a lifelong sailor, I associate sports with preppy. True preps are easy to spot; they look like they slept in their expensive, yet appropriately old, clothing. Duct tape on sailing shoes is another give away!</p>
<p>" Only the rich can AFFORD to have tat like that." Basil Fawlty</p>
<p>So, tell me if a memory from my childhood is preppy or just the era (1960-1970s):</p>
<p>We lived on a LAC campus. For dressy events such as the xmas party at the school president’s house, we would be dressed in kilts. The older women, if WASPy would wear a long tartan skirt, often with a black or snow white blouse.</p>
<p>When my daughter was young, I was searching for a kilt for her to wear to church or whatever and my husband (midwestern URM) thought I was from Mars.</p>
<p>My aunt (old money East Coast who married a Midwestern farmer) still dresses like that, as do her daughters.</p>
<p>@ecc: Basil Fawlty almost could have been a prep down on his luck</p>
<p>Funny, my very preppy son was just talking about the Winkelvoss twins with absolute distaste. My son rowed in boarding school, wears untucked oxfords with his shorts or khakis to class every day, sails, golfs, plays tennis and will play squash (poorly) when asked. He plays Rugby now in college. He wears his grandfathers ancient LL Bean boots on cold rainy days with a Barbour jacket. I just forced him to give up his favorite Brooks Bros. pea coat from his day schools years (7th grade?) because it was way too small, despite being “broken in”. </p>
<p>As a family we believe in service, even if it’s through the Junior League. Someone listed a roster of preppy family names, take my word for this, Lilly is worn by some of them, with their Jack Rogers of course! Labs may be preppy dogs, but they are members of the family not status symbols. We do buy new cars, nice cars often but we drive them forever. We will never get rid of the Land Cruiser with 200,000+ miles on it, it’s perfect for picking things up at the garden store or taking the dog to the beach!</p>
<p>yes, Service, like the Bushes. Noblesse Oblige is big.</p>
<p>Using Phillips Academy (or Exeter) as a barometer for prep schools is like using Harvard or Yale as barometers for college.</p>
<p>A west coast perspective here…
not to be negative, but preppy doesn’t fit well out here
preppy is somewhat alien - out of the movies
sort of a dowdy, “young-fogey” fashion/style of dress
wealthy white people from east coast
old money
old fashioned
traditional
NOT high-tech, for certain</p>
<p>The WC version of preppy would be something that walks out of an Armani store; perhaps the suave, urbane, idea of modernism that CA embodies. It’s all the same thing–relatively (very) well-to-do yuppies wearing good clothes.</p>
<p>Two of the preppiest boys I knew were raised in California…Hillsborough…but their roots were from the Northeast.</p>
<p>twomules, my Scottish grandmother would have approved! I spent some of my dressed up time as a child in kilts, and think it was the era perhaps, though this was far from preppy anything, in Arizona.</p>
<p>I think the San Francisco area has its share of people who dress preppy.</p>
<p>When I lived in San Francisco, I enjoyed the English/preppy clothes from Cable Car Clothiers.</p>
<p>Although this is way over the top and cheesy, it makes me laugh every time. </p>
<p>[Smirnoff</a> - Tea Party - YouTube](<a href=“Smirnoff - Tea Party - YouTube”>Smirnoff - Tea Party - YouTube)</p>
<p>Preppy is a way of finding one’s place in society, a way of thinking reflected by the way one dresses and conducts one’s life. The attitudes expressed by the preppies in the new novel, THE PREPPY AND THE TROUT, are very representative of what being a preppy is all about. I think the character Corkie sums it up best when she describes how Kip is her ideal version of a preppy.</p>
<p>Yes fly-fishing would be popular with the trustafarian preps…</p>