Nice weather. Let's complain.

Pink & Green Wedding

A reader of the blog emailed me that she is getting married soon and having a pink and green wedding. She asked for some help on some ideas; focusing more on cocktails than flowers I believe LOL

So I send a few suggestions (Email below): Please use the comments section to give your ideas=== anything you think the happy couple could use!!!

______________________________________________________________________

WOW, that will be so much fun. For cocktails the first thing that comes to my mind is the Cape Coder (more vodka to make it pinker LOL)for green anything with Midori in it can get the color, but here are some quick ideas

Apple Martini

Midori Cosmo

green carnation

Green Swizzle
Juice of 1 lime
1 teaspoon icing sugar
soda water
2 dashes bitters
2 oz white rum
1 tablespoon crème de menthe (green) Shot of Creme de Menthe (called Mint Frappe)

Green Tequila
1½ oz tequila
¾ oz melon liqueur
Squeeze of lime
Lime to garnish

Another idea is to have mint frozen in the ice cubes!

Other Pink cocktails:
Razmopolitan

Pink lemonade with Vodka

The Cosmo!

Pink Lady
1 1/2 oz gin
3/4 oz applejack
1/4 oz lemon juice
1-2 dashes grenadine
1 egg white
maraschino cherry for garnish

Pink Martini
2 oz good-quality gin
½ oz guava nectar
½ oz fresh orange juiceorange twist (for garnish)

I know there are dozens more! I would stay away from the green food dye in the beer and probably have bottles of Heineken, Becks and Grolsh

I will ask any of our readers too!!!

PREPPY pop-up at the W‏

I just got this notice, so I want to share with all you Fellow Preppies, if you are in Boston on Thursday stop by the W Hotel and do a little shopping!!!

There’s no better way to soak up summer then with seersucker. Or stripes. Or madras. This is New England, after all -- the epicenter of all things preppy. With that in mind, Boldfacers presents to you a one-night-only Preppy Pop-Up Store on a silver platter (monogrammed, bien sur) this Thursday from 5 to 9 pm at W Boston. Vineyard Vines, E.A. Davis, CK Bradley, and Ame and Lulu lead the preppy pack, along with a DJ and pink and green cocktails. Cheers to Biff and Buffy! Free entrance.

Check out their website for more information :

http://boldfacers.com/index.cfm?page=profile&profile_id=249#fullstory

Must Have for Preppy Men

Last week I saw "10 things a Preppy guy must have" on a great website "Preppy Must have" http://preppymusthave.com/index.html

The list went from needlepoint belts (love them) to the standby Top-Siders and even LL Bean bag (not sure a "must have" but good).

I think all these are great and a fun site.


I think if you have a few minutes jump over to this site and check out the ideas....Do you have any others?

Posted by "Tod"

What is "THE PREPPY" Sport now???

Quick poll on the right, just asking in 2010 what is THE preppy sport?

Thoughts are also welcome under the comments---I will try to throw together a post soon with everyones ideas


Posted by "Tod"

Fashion NO-NO

Guys, preppy or not, please stop the new trend I have seen around this summer ....

Crocs for adults....NOOOOOOO!!!!

I think flip flops from men are great, as long as they are VV or Polo , etc----Sandals are not flip flops and Crocs are worse...I even saw a guy wearing crocs with socks...HELP please!!!


I know I may not be the best dresser, however Crocs on adults should make anyone shiver

posted by "Tod"

Preppy Towns in America

An old post from way back in 2006 is still is one with the most comments. At the time I solicited ideas for preppy towns in the northeast or even the whole USA. So, I decided to re-open the comments and get a better list together.



This entire list is from readers suggestions only, I have my own ideas and most are on this list---hopefully we can get some additional names from this post and make a total list by summers end!!!

And with this list it seems "Preppy town" may be just where preppy people live? what do YOU think? Any towns missing?

Preppy Towns ( no particular order-YET)

• Greenwich, CT
  Newport, RI
  New Canaan, CT
  Darien, CT
  (Whole Fairfield County, CT)
  Bar Harbor, ME
  Annapolis, MD
  Middleburg, VA
  Leesburg, VA
  Hamptons, NY
  Ridgewood, NJ
  Kennebunkport, ME
  Nantucket, MA
  (Whole Cape Cod, MA)
  Wellesley, MA
  Martha's Vineyard (I Guess he meant the whole Island)
  Harbor Springs, MI
  South Hampton, NY (East is too nouvea -says one reader)
  Grand Traverse, MI
  Charleviox, MI
  Manchester-by-the-sea, MA
  Block Island, RI
  Duxbury, MA
  Weston, MA
  Summit, NJ
  Rumson, NJ
  Essex Fells, NJ
  Hamilton, MA
  Wenham, MA
  Marblehead, MA
  Locust Valley, NY
  Barrington, RI
  Longmeadow, MA
  Grosse Pointe. MI
  
  

Kristen Bell likes Preppy men's clothing

Saw this news, just thought I'd pass it on...Todd




Kristen Bell dresses like a man
Cover Media
Last updated 05:00 15/06/2010


Reuters
DRESS UPS: Kristen Bell likes wearing men's clothing - especially Oxford shirts.
Relevant offers


Kristen Bell likes wearing men's clothing.
The Hollywood star is a huge fashion fan and loves treating herself to new pieces. As she has to dress up so much for her career, she spends most of her spare time in casual clothes, although she does have a penchant for high heels.

"I love clothes but I borrow almost everything," she explained. "I love preppy, classic looks and menswear. It's great that men's Oxford shirts have made such a comeback. Also, like any other woman, I love Christian Louboutin heels - they are to die for."

Although she loves fashion, Kristen has made her fair share of fashion mistakes. She can't believe some of the outfits she used to wear, and does all she can not to look at the pictures from her early career.

Kristen is as careful about her beauty regime as she is with her clothing choices. She has dry skin so won't use abrasive moisturisers, and has also decided against invasive procedures.

"I like hyaluronic acid. I also believe in light therapy where you sit under red or blue lights that are UV safe. The stimulation of the lights can help regenerate skin cells and produce more collagen.

"Over the next eight weeks your skin regenerates," she explained to Look magazine.
Ad Feedback
Next Fashion story:
Bieber stays true to his style
Life & Style Homepage

Christmas shopping

I know it's only December 8th, WAY too early for any man to start thinking about Christmas gifts...so why am I ???

Not sure really, maybe all the talk from the Muffy wife talking about kids gifts or all those 24/7 Christmas radio stations...whatever, I am starting to think....No good answers yet, but the 24th is far enough away so no worries..

Question: What are people hoping for this year? (this will help everyone with ideas)...


Posted by Tod

Whisky Map

posted by Tod

Funny blog

Looking for more fun blogs, Got this one via Twitter. Still not sure if this Twitter thing is for me, I update a bunch then get busy with real life not this Preppy Persona. Of course I follow as many fun people as possible, but I can't keep up with all the posts.

Most of them are great, I learned about new sailing regattas as well as fashion conversations. Guess I will stick with it as best as I can. It is a little information overload...

Anyway, back to looking for fun blogs when I can add them too.

Suggestions? I will post them here and twitter too if I can.

By "Tod"

What are preppies, Article

Good Article from the Boston Globe:

Let me school you about preppies

By Sam Allis, Globe Staff July 16, 2009

So the Bravo cable channel has given us “NYC Prep,’’ the ludicrous reality show about spoiled rich kids, most of whom attend Upper East Side private schools. Excuse me while I examine my cuticles.

The show has nothing to do with preppies. Real preppies would have nothing to do with it. They’d be laughed out of New Canaan at the mere thought of participating in it. Their parents would disown them.

The kids in the show are nouveaux riche airheads who talk endlessly about shopping. Think Valley Girls and Boys moved east. What they have none of is class.

Worse, this Bravo mess (which airs Tuesdays at 9) misses the essence of preppy culture. The name “preppy,’’ lest we forget, comes from prep schools. And prep schools are, in the cultural sense I’m talking about, boarding schools - not country day or Upper East Side privates. It was on boarding school campuses that true preppies were spawned. The petri dish in which the culture was created and perpetuated was the prep school dormitory.

It is there that one was introduced at a young age to a “Lord of the Flies’’ insular existence that defies description. Essential friendships were forged and enemies made in prep school dormitories. It is where you were introduced to hall hockey and a particular strain of sarcasm.
Preppies are timeless. Wait long enough, and they’re in vogue again. They have never changed. Everyone else has. This speaks to a sense of security on their part rather than a lack of imagination. They never went through their Dolce & Gabbana phase.

Preppies gave America the sport coat - an advance on par with the wheel - and pioneered the blue blazer. They gave us khakis - and they really are pronounced like “car keys’’ in Southie - along with polo jerseys, the two-button suit, button-down collars, the list goes on. To dismiss this as preppy is to miss the point. We’re talking classic, conservative men’s clothes.

When the Gap started push ing khakis over a decade ago, I’d see billboards with the coolest of the cool - Miles Davis - in khakis. Jazz legends like Davis and Chet Baker, I have on good authority, wore preppy clothes. They didn’t buy them because they were preppy - they had never heard of the word - but they liked the understatement of the clothes after the loud outfits in jazz that had preceded them.

I write about preppies from the remove of decades after my own boarding school experience, which I thoroughly enjoyed. But prep school culture has changed dramatically since then. The robust multiculturalism on today’s boarding school campuses, fueled by institutional wealth unavailable in public schools, has replaced the negativity that used to dominate prep school culture.

Today, there is an ethos to do good, here and abroad, among the good boarding schools that was nonexistent in the old days. You’re more likely to see kids from Ghana and India at the big affluent places like Andover and Exeter than flaxen-haired lacrosse players from Locust Valley.
Whatever allure in preppies there may be now is anchored in the past. It speaks to an old world of exclusion and exclusivity, of final clubs and blackballs, of pumps with black tie and the Social Register. (Whatever happened to the Social Register anyway?)

There is a wistfulness to this whole preppy thing that reminds me of Jay Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s great fake who stared into the night at the green light at Daisy Buchanan’s dock across the bay, aching for the woman.

The reigning king of preppy wistfulness remains Ralph Lauren, born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx, who has created the ultimate illusionary preppy world. His efforts are nothing if not about a yearning for a past he never knew. His ads relentlessly portray a life of white flannel, wooden tennis racquets, and elegant old cars.

His threads are beautiful, in contrast to parvenus like Vineyard Vines, an upstart that makes clothes for men and women that are parodies of preppiness. J.Crew still answers the bell because it sells smart preppy knockoffs.

The preppy look, it should be noted, is global. When I lived in Italy during the ’80s, I bought a pair of Timberlands in the great city of Bologna, home of the oldest university in Europe. In Italy and France, rich kids wore alligator jerseys with collars up and striped Brooks Brothers button-downs. Ditto for the well-heeled in Latin America.

The choice of preppy clothes among the young and rich abroad had nothing to do with the past. It was simply a matter of style. Remember, it was in France that the alligator jersey (Chemise Lacoste) was born. Countless American kids today want them simply because they look good, oblivious to any larger meaning.

“NYC Prep,’’ ludicrous and dispiriting, has zero to do with the true preppy culture, which means old preppy culture. Love it or hate it, the real thing is pretty much sepia-toned by now. Every once in awhile, marketers will try to sell patch madras or seersucker again. What they’re selling is the past. No one drinks gin and bitters anymore, but who cares?

Sam Allis can be reached at: allis@globe.com



Posted by Tod

Don't do this at home...OUCH!

I just saw this post on another blog called Preppy Pettit...here is the picture but check her blog out ...

Love Cigars.....BUT

Full disclosure Preppy Guy loves cigars. I and my mates have one once and a while on the golf course, or I'll grab a nice one on the back deck. Even love taking one along for those long walks in the woods (with a flask of course)! But today reminded me of something I wanted to write about for a long time.

I was walking to the office this morning early, most of the street was deserted and there he was- a guy hanging outside smoking a cigar. As we have all gotten used to seeing the cigarette smokers all huddled in their groups grabbing a quick "fix" before the run back to the corporate world, but a cigar?

Cigars to me are a relaxing thing, never hurried. I and most men I know use the cigar as major down time, even sometimes the only downtime in this crazy world. So why would you turn something like that into a "ciggy break"? Most good cigars take 20 mins or more to smoke, could this guy really stand on the corner in NYC for that long? And how relaxing is watching taxis speed past you as people bump you on their way to work? A little jack-hammering with your cigar sir?

A whole other thing, a cigar in the early morning ? Your mouth will fee like an ashtray the whole day!

What say you?

Tod

Twitter

Anyone else on twitter? I've heard so much about it so I am trying it out...I think blogs are much better as you can delve into more topics (more than 180 characters) as well as add pictures etc.

However I think many people are doing both...Are you on?

Follow me

http://twitter.com/preppy_guy

And help me along this

Tod

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAY

Has this rainy weather driven anyone else mad? What is a beach? or a pool or a nice walk in the park? I've been putting off a sailing trip with the kids and friends for weeks..

Also I think I have lost more umbrellas than I even own....

Mr. Sun . please come back


Tod

Preppy Fashion in today's NY Times

June 17, 2009
Dress Codes
The All-American Back From Japan
By DAVID COLMAN
AS you have surely noticed, all- American preppy style has come back for another goround. There is madras everything, button-downs everywhere. Nantucket reds — washed-out pink pants — are the new khakis; Sperry Top-Siders are more common on roof decks than top decks; and the Polo pony and the Lacoste crocodile are now but two of the critters in a zoo of polo shirt insignia.
Lately the trend has taken on a new dimension, via the Internet, with a resurgence of interest in once obscure American brands. Alongside the familiar L. L. Bean duck boots, Brooks Brothers shirts and Ray-Ban Wayfarers, there are Filson duffel bags, Gokey boots, Alden dress shoes, Gitman oxford shirts, Quoddy Trail moccasins, Wm. J. Mills canvas totes — to name but a few. Moribund brands like Southwick and Woolrich are being revived with new designs. And the old-school look has been furthered by popular American fashion labels — small houses like Thom Browne, Band of Outsiders and Benjamin Bixby along with megabrands like J. Crew and Ralph Lauren.
As fashion moments go, this is as all-American as it gets, right?
Actually, no. What makes today’s prepidemic so fascinating is how it is, surprisingly enough, so Japanese. The look has its roots in the United States, to be sure. But the spirit, rigor and execution of today’s prep moment is as Japanese as Sony. One need only flip through the intriguing Japanese book “Take Ivy,” a collection of photographs taken in 1965 by Teruyoshi Hayashida on Eastern college campuses, to get the drift.
“Take Ivy” has always been extremely rare in the United States, a treasure of fashion insiders that can fetch more than $1,000 on eBay and in vintage-book stores. But scanned images from the book have been turning up online in recent months. Ricocheting around the network of sartorially obsessed Web sites and blogs (like acontinuouslean.com and thetrad .blogspot.com), it has aroused renewed interest for its apparent prescience of preppy style. (In the United States, the word preppy came into popular use only in 1970, thanks to the best-selling book and top-grossing movie “Love Story”; and the full flowering of preppy style would not arrive until 1980 with the best-selling “Official Preppy Handbook.”)
But “Take Ivy” was not prescient; it was totally timely, having been commissioned by Kensuke Ishizu, who was the founder of Van Jacket, an Ivy Leagueobsessed clothing line that was a sensation among Japanese teenagers and young men in the early 1960s. Mr. Ishizu was a kind of Ralph Lauren avant la lettre.
“You could have called it a Van look,” recalled Daiki Suzuki, the designer and founder of Engineered Garments (channeling vintage workwear) and the designer of the revamped Woolrich Woolen Mills line (channeling 1950s New England). He remembers “Take Ivy” from his childhood in Japan and how the Ivy look, as it is generally called there, became basic in the ’70s and ’80s, as the craze for American things like Levi’s and Red Wing boots accelerated. In 1989, Mr. Suzuki moved to the United States to work for a large Japanese store scouting for new American designers and obscure brands to import, like White’s Boots from Washington, Russell Moccasin from Wisconsin and Duluth Pack backpacks from Minnesota.
“It’s funny — this authentic Americana, people in the States didn’t care about it at all,” Mr. Suzuki said. “But I would take it back, and everybody would say, ‘Wow, this is really great, what is this?’ Now it’s different. People here like it now.”
HE would know. In 1999, once the Internet began eroding the specialness of his small “Made in the USA” finds, he founded Engineered Garments with the idea of updating vintage American pieces for modern tastes, and for five years he sold the line only in Japan. In the last couple of years Americans have come around, and now the line is a hot seller at Barneys New York.
As curious as this American-export style of business sounds, it is not unusual. Post Overalls, a Japanese- owned line based (and made) in America since 1993, started selling here only this spring. J. Press, the venerable Ivy League clothier founded in New Haven in 1902 and bought by the Japanese fashion giant Kashiyama in 1986, has four modest stores in this country — in Cambridge, Mass.; New Haven; New York; and Washington — but sells roughly six times as much as American made J. Press merchandise in Japan at department stores like Isetan.
The Japanese penchant for Americana is not merely a story of economics; it is a matter of style. It has not been unusual for Japanese men to wear the Ivy look in head-to-toe extremes once unthinkable here — say, a blazer, tie, plaid shorts and knee socks. But given the zeal for American designers like Thom Browne and Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders, who tinker with old-fashioned Americana (and whose lines are made in the United States and are very popular in Japan), extremism is finally becoming fashionable here. A column in this month’s GQ by a to-the-boatshoe- born Cape Codder even inveighs against the trend, labeling it a case of arrivistes going overboard. But whose Ivy look has the more valid claim?
Mr. Suzuki remembers the first time he met Mr. Browne, when they were both starting their lines. “He was wearing a gray suit, button-down shirt, tie, cashmere cardigan and wingtips,” he recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘I’ve never seen an American dress in such Japanese style.’” Mr. Browne is flattered. “It’s amazing,” he said. “The Japanese get the whole perfect American thing better than Americans. They understand that it’s an identifiable style around the world, this American look. We think we appreciate it, but we really don’t, not like they do.”
But that’s changing. Not long ago, men scoffed at dress shorts, let alone wore them to work. Now, they are a summer norm, along with seersucker suits, ribbon belts and horn-rimmed glasses. While some men still prefer it low-key — plain boat shoes, a faded Lacoste shirt with jeans or a khaki suit with a madras tie — even full-on Japanese prep — blue blazer, button-down, bermudas, loafers — can look good if you have the attitude to carry it off.
As fascinating and confusing as this cross-pollination is, the story of ostensible outsiders borrowing from and bettering the holy tartan has an august history. Brooks Brothers, the country’s oldest operating men’s clothier, and the venerable Ray-Ban brand are owned by the Italian Del Vecchio family. Erich Segal, the author of “Love Story,” and Lisa Birnbach, who put together “The Official Preppy Handbook,” are Jewish, as is Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders (who this week won the Council of Fashion Designers of America award for men’s wear, in a tie) and, of course, the look’s most famous exponent, Ralph Lauren. And, by the way, those two most prep fabrics, gingham and seersucker, came to the United States, via Britain, from India.
André Benjamin, a k a André 3000, the designer of the bright Ivy-inspired Benjamin Bixby line (perhaps the only celebrity line with a truly fresh viewpoint), grew up in Atlanta amid the preppy boom of the ’80s and early ’90s. He remembers how schoolmates spent their money on clothes and cars, wearing two or three polo shirts at a time and fetishizing prepmobiles like the Volkswagen Cabriolet.
“I can’t speak for how it’s been taken up in Asian community,” he said, “but in the black community, you’re always striving to rise above. Most black kids don’t even go to college, and you just hope you can will yourself to get there.
“Like a lot of things, the myth is greater than the actual thing. The WASPy lifestyle, with the parents and traditions, it looks great, but appreciating it from the outside brings a whole different perspective. Ralph didn’t come from it, either. It’s all about having your own twist.”
To Mr. Benjamin, the most appealing part of the old prep look was not its WASPiness but its suggestion of an easy, well-dressed freedom from anxiety, the same entitled naïveté of Oliver Barrett IV, the WASPy Romeo of “Love Story.”
“This golden age of Ivy League style we’re talking about — the blue blazers, the chinos, the sweatshirts, the tweed jackets — what I like is that it’s a look without looking like you thought about it. It looks like you care, but you don’t care.”
Of course, as one of the world’s best and most colorfully dressed men, Mr. Benjamin cares deeply, and it shows in his clothes, as it does in all the new prep gear. And so what if it does? It may not be true of love, but as any boarding-school student can tell you, preppy means never having to say you’re sorry.

NYC Prep on Bravo

Has anyone seen this latest Bravo TV "reality" show? Looks so stupid, although the "Real Housewives of..." sometimes makes me laugh so much. I always thought the Real Housewives of Fairfield County would be funny---truth the TV people want the loud obnoxious families not classic preppy types. Would it really be funny?

Anyway, I have not seen this new show just wondering if it is funny....


Tod

Preppy Summer...if it ever stops raining

I can't believe it as it seems that it has been raining for weeks, and the next week more of the same...Is anyone else sick of this?

The only upside is seeing all those wellies. The only think J Crew is selling a lot of...

Off to the wet US Open...


Tod

Spring in the Air

Newest collection of seersucker shorts/pants just hit the email from VV...