Old school's new look

The on-trend man

By: Mark Lee Taylor

Published On: September 09, 2010

Fall 2010 is one of those rare years when Nashville men can relish the fact that their uniquely Southern variation on traditional “prep” dressing is now being appreciated (and appropriated) by men everywhere. Should we rejoice or lament in the fact that other men are stealing our Music City style?

We say, enjoy it and stock up now, while there are so many fresh offerings in local haberdasheries. Remember, if you can recall a wardrobe item in an earlier incarnation, you’re too old to wear the original version you own. Besides, wardrobe items are never reproduced exactly the same way. The colors are different, the lapels are thinner or wider or a new fabrication is used. The bottom line: you need to buy a new one!

Need proof that prep is back? The author of The Official Preppy Handbook, published in 1980, has written a sequel, True Prep: It’s a Whole New World, which should appear on bookshelves about the same time white bucks are packed away until Steeplechase 2011.

Even more interesting is an obscure and long out-of-print photo essay by a team of Japanese photographers that is being reprinted in English. Take Ivy was born when a Japanese clothing manufacture sent a team of photographers to America to photograph men’s clothes in order for him to reproduce his own Japanese versions.

For decades the slender volume was a style manual for cognoscenti wishing to design or recreate their own authentic preppy wardrobe, circa 1964. The fact it was written in Japanese did not lessen the zeal of those seeking its visual iconography of young bucks at Harvard, Princeton and Dartmouth stylin’ in authentic prep regalia. It’s rumored that one designer at a firm that features a horse-riding athlete logo kept the book on his desk for inspiration.

This fall you could pull out your old man’s preppy duds, but it’s much smarter to mix the old with the new. Remember, you don’t want everything preppy. It’s all about your own personal style, and prep is only one part of it, not all of it.