Consider me Schooled.

"Let me school you about preppies" - thus Sam Allis in this 2009 Boston Globe article. It's a wonderfully succinct overview of the phenomenon. This excerpt captures the core of it:

"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."

Prep as an aspirational illusion - of course. An American archetype, like The Frontier and Baby Boomers, which may well fall apart upon closer examination. But I do enjoy the unraveling.