There are magazines, and then there is Vanity Fair. The world’s greatest photographers, feature stories so perfectly crafted that many feel they deserve a coveted spot on bookshelves for decades, preserved and respected. A who’s who of celebrities, public figures, the infamous and famous alike. Vanity Fair is a magazine you read, not skim. Thirty years ago, a book called The Official Preppy Handbook became an instant international bestseller. The same author, Lisa Birnbach, has recently completed the newest version, this time called True Prep. In this month’s Vanity Fair, they printed an excerpt from the book and in it, Birnbach has tapped Polarfleece as the biggest change in Prepdome in 30 years. We’ll take it, just as long as climbing in bowties doesn’t catch on.
Read the entire article- Vanity Fair’s “Official Preppy Reboot”
Excerpt from True Prep-
If, in 1980, you had whispered to friends that within the next few decades America would elect a thin, black, preppy, basketball-playing lawyer to be president, they would have laughed at you and exhaled in your face, inside the restaurant or club where you were sitting. And, if you predicted that one day all our children would have little portable phones stuck in their pockets so that they could not answer us when we called them from our little phones, we would have again exhaled in your face—indoors—and said you were talking science fiction.
Still, to our minds nothing is more sci-fi than the fact that preppies in the 21st century all wear the unnatural fibers we collectively refer to as “fleece.” We always thought our reliance on natural “guaranteed to wrinkle” fibers was our right and our trademark. If it’s hot or humid, we’d just roll up our all-cotton long-sleeved shirts. But now we wear polyester fleece, and its offspring, recycled water bottles.
The revolution began in 1981, at a company then called Malden Mills in Lawrence, Massachusetts, manufacturers of textiles including the wool for uniforms in World War II. A place like Malden Mills is populated by textile engineers who spitball, “mess around with fabrics,” and then refine, according to spokesman Nate Simmons. They work collaboratively with clothing manufacturers, as they did in this case with Patagonia. What came off the looms in the early 80s was pure synthetic, soft, quick-wicking, quick-drying, and machine-washable. It did not fade, and changed the wardrobes of athletes forever. Its Malden name was Polarfleece; its Patagonia name was Synchilla.
The new book also sites some new “Prep Careers for the New Millennium”, included in which is ‘Ski Bum’, a profession we are proud to associate with, alongside anyone working hard to support days off on rock, in rivers, on the slopes or anywhere else that requires a little less popped collar and a little more, “Where the hell are we?”
Yvon Chouinard product testing
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