Who Gets To Look Like An American
Hello!
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I pulled the trigger on buying a J. Crew barn jacket in 1991 after reading the catalog copy enthusing about the jacket's ubiquity from New England to the Santa Fe Opera. The Santa Fe Opera! That phrase mashed all the aspirational buttons in my teenaged brain: Imagine being the kind of person who lived under Georgia O'Keeffe's clean-scrubbed skies, the kind of person who was cultured enough to go to the opera, confident enough to show up in a coat meant for mucking out stalls, and cool enough to pull it off. Was there anything more American than the promise of democratically accessible cool?
This was five years before Sharon Stone would wear a Gap turtleneck to the Oscars. But Gap had already begun the then-radical blending of high- and middlebrow signifiers -- in 1988, they had launched the "Individuals of Style" ad campaign where Annie Leibowitz shot people like Joan Didion and Spike Lee in Gap basics.
For J. Crew to follow suit wasn't really a surprise: Gap and J. Crew clothing was basically the same: khakis, tees, sweaters in saturated hues, plaid button-downs and striped rugby shirts. So was the target customer, and so was the end result: A look that fashion editors repeatedly classed as "All American"
Where the two companies differed was in how they defined All-American Style. Blame or credit the company DNA: The Gap's origin story was rooted in the West Coast cool of 1969, while J. Crew's was rooted in East Coast prep school in the 1983 heyday of Lisa Birnbach's seminal The Official Preppy Handbook. The Gap posited that "All American" was unfussy, democratic and cool; J; Crew presented "All American" as unfussy, exceptional and classic.
The Venn Diagram for these qualities has a space in the middle labeled "The Kennedys." I don't remember the line precisely, but, there's a reference in The Official Preppy Handbook to Caroline Kennedy and how she'd never let a synthetic fiber near her body. Thirty-one years later, Birnbach issued a follow-up manual, True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World, and used the Obamas as her president-adjacent style reference. Yet what's most striking about the sequel is how openly it grieves the loss of whiteness as one of the key signifiers of All-American style; including Barack and Michelle Obama says a whole lot less about being woke and a whole lot more about how on-the-nose the "I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could" line in Get Out was.
In its muddled way, It's A Whole New Old World presaged a larger moment in American culture and clothing. It's hard to be an all-American brand when Americans look at you and see their exclusion. It's even harder to be that brand when Americans look at you and see decline -- both yours and theirs.
Twenty-eight years after I bought my first barn jacket, I am on my second, this one purchased from a vintage reseller. This coat is perfect: It's got a cotton flannel lining in the body, well-stitched buttons, huge and plentiful pockets. Whenever I wear it, I get compliments -- not from fellow Gen Xers who grew up with a lot of All-American messaging, but from younger and therefore automatically cooler adults.
The American promise of democratically accessible cool has been flipped on its head. Now it's cool to push for access to democracy for all Americans. Here's hoping that trend doesn't flame out.
For more reading:
"How Gap Ruled the Nineties" -- This is an excellent overview of the Gap's ad campaigns during its 1980s-1990s heydey.
"Why J. Crew's Vision of Preppy America Failed" -- I love a good decline-of-J-.Crew story and this one from 2017 points out that right now, nostalgia for early-1960s America doesn't read as space-age optimism but "Wow, do I miss when police frequently turned dogs and firehoses on children and women died from back-alley abortions!"
"Can J. Crew Find Itself -- And Its Customers -- Again?" -- Vanity Fair's turn at the can-this-brand-be-saved story, fresh on newsstands now. Personally, I feel like the answer is "Maybe pay attention to middle-aged people who are really clear about the staples they miss and don't charge crazy amounts for revival versions that are nowhere near the originals?" That might be crazy talk.
"By Selling a Feel-Good Lifestyle, Preppy Brands See Consistent Success in a Trend-Driven Market" -- This fascinating piece on the high-low iterations of classic prep signifiers, prompted by the Vineyard Vines line at Target, has one source talking unironically about how to embrace the same staples John and Jackie Kennedy wore. Imagine being alive in 1961 and hearing a tastemaker talk about embracing the staples of Theodore and Edith Kermit Roosevelt.
"What Does Preppy Fashion Look Like in 2018?" -- Come for the history lesson on the Lo Lifes, a group of black and Latinx collectors of Ralph Lauren prep gear.
"Why Urban Millennials Love Uniqlo" -- Included because this analyzes the cultural currents that make Uniqlo the basic-cool brand of the 2010s.
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