Sometime after the big bang, (I’m referring to my big bang of 1980, when my first book, The Official Preppy Handbook was published), I saw that the preppy style of dress was shall we say—persuasive.
As I began to travel the United States widely on a book tour that began in the fall of that year and stretched into almost 1982, I tried to pay attention to the regional styles that were still in evidence then, before the Bennetonification and Gapification of America. Even the Shasta deliveryman I met each time I returned to Richmond, Virginia did not emerge untouched by the preppy juggernaut. He still wore his uniform jumpsuit, but the second time we met, he wore a webbed belt with his jumpsuit. I would not be at all surprised if he switched from work-boots to Sperry Top- Siders, or if he wore a Lacoste polo under the jumpsuit for that two upstanding collars look. Outstanding. Mr. Richmond was an example of the “high/low aesthetic.”
I didn’t understand it at first, but looking back I realize that I first became aware of the possibilities of wearing high and low together when I was a little girl and Jackie Kennedy was the fashion icon of the day. (As a matter of fact, she is still the fashion icon we emulate most.) I had heard of Kenneth Jay Lane, and I had heard that women who wore couture outfits and jewels had him copy their jewelry as realistic fakes so that they could stow their real stuff away in their vaults and do the frug and the monkey without a care in the world.
Here’s what I gleaned from that cultural bon bon: you could wear faux jewelry as long as everyone around you knew that you knew that they knew it was copied from your real David Webb. Having fake didn’t count if you didn’t own the genuine article. You would wear your Kenneth Jay Lane with your real Yves Saint Laurent. Thus the high/low. Much later (say, in 2010) when I was researching the stylish Italian jeweler Fulco di Verdura for my book True Prep, I learned that in the 1920s he designed jewelry out of relatively inexpensive semi-precious stones and gold, at the behest of Coco Chanel, who paired her Verdura with out-and-out fakes to create her more-was-more aesthetic. High/low.
Taking the High/Low Road
by Lisa Birnbach
Sometime after the big bang, (I’m referring to my big bang of 1980, when my first book, The Official Preppy Handbook was published), I saw that the preppy style of dress was shall we say—persuasive.
As I began to travel the United States widely on a book tour that began in the fall of that year and stretched into almost 1982, I tried to pay attention to the regional styles that were still in evidence then, before the Bennetonification and Gapification of America. Even the Shasta deliveryman I met each time I returned to Richmond, Virginia did not emerge untouched by the preppy juggernaut. He still wore his uniform jumpsuit, but the second time we met, he wore a webbed belt with his jumpsuit. I would not be at all surprised if he switched from work-boots to Sperry Top- Siders, or if he wore a Lacoste polo under the jumpsuit for that two upstanding collars look. Outstanding. Mr. Richmond was an example of the “high/low aesthetic.”
I didn’t understand it at first, but looking back I realize that I first became aware of the possibilities of wearing high and low together when I was a little girl and Jackie Kennedy was the fashion icon of the day. (As a matter of fact, she is still the fashion icon we emulate most.) I had heard of Kenneth Jay Lane, and I had heard that women who wore couture outfits and jewels had him copy their jewelry as realistic fakes so that they could stow their real stuff away in their vaults and do the frug and the monkey without a care in the world.
Here’s what I gleaned from that cultural bon bon: you could wear faux jewelry as long as everyone around you knew that you knew that they knew it was copied from your real David Webb. Having fake didn’t count if you didn’t own the genuine article. You would wear your Kenneth Jay Lane with your real Yves Saint Laurent. Thus the high/low. Much later (say, in 2010) when I was researching the stylish Italian jeweler Fulco di Verdura for my book True Prep, I learned that in the 1920s he designed jewelry out of relatively inexpensive semi-precious stones and gold, at the behest of Coco Chanel, who paired her Verdura with out-and-out fakes to create her more-was-more aesthetic. High/low.