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| Photos by Salt Water New England |
What furniture, dishes, clothes, or accessories do you have around your home or office with your day school, prep school, college, or grad school name on it?
Monday, June 12, 2023
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Photo by Muffy Aldrich
The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy
Muffy Aldrich
Editor, Salt Water New England - The Modern Guide to The Thing Before Preppy, since 2010. From a 12th Generation New Englander.
- Original Photographs.
- Timeless, Preppy Clothing.
Most Items Sent By Vendors.
College - a t shirt, a sweatshirt, a ball cap. Sweatshirts, ball caps, maybe a pair of shorts from where the kids went to undergrad. Nothing from high school or grad school; used to have a law school sweatshirt, but we turned it into a dog bed because he liked it so much.
ReplyDeleteProbably my favorite is my college rowing team jacket. You had to “earn” it because they were not given out until the end of your sophomore fall season. I still wear it on very rainy days. From prep school I have a sweatshirt that somehow still fits and gets trotted out once the temperature starts to drop.
ReplyDeleteBesides my undergraduate class ring and ball cap from grad school, just the two decals from those schools on the rear window on my SUV.
ReplyDeleteFor me-HS letterman sweater, college sweats, rugby, mug, baseball hat, stadium cushion, umbrella, lawn flag, tie; daughter’s-prep-water bottles, umbrella; college-umbrella, tie, polo, belt, mug, baseball hat; her grad school-umbrella, baseball hats, mug
ReplyDeleteI'm sixty and sentimental. I just ordered a sweatshirt from my old school, because it never occurred to me to get one at the time. I consider it retroactive sentimentality.
ReplyDeleteEmory & Henry College in Virginia, stadium tumblers, old fashioned glass, ash tray, stein, keychain, window stickers, and sweatshirt (worn by the wife); BLZ fraternity bandana, wooden box, and pledge paddle. Fries High School in Virginia: athletic letters, baseball cap, state championship tennis mementos. JDV
ReplyDeletePlates, mugs, sweatshirts, t-shirts, flags (trotted out once a year in December for the big game), baseball hats, subtle license plate cover (one of those iykyk), class ring, bits of memorabilia picked up over the years, commemorative class items - hrplo
ReplyDeleteThe only clothing I will wear with a logo of any kind is a baseball cap for some strange reason. With baseball caps I limit them to my prep school, college, and law school. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteBack in 1966-67 I rode the New Haven Railroad to school every day. I was 14 years old. We sat in the smoking car and looked askance at those who smoked round cigarettes. A pack of those ordinary cigarettes cost 29 cents. But we smoked English Ovals. They were actually oval shaped. They cost 69 cents a pack. We thought we were “cool.” I never smoked again after that year. But not long ago I came across a grey hat with an orange, white and black railroad engine embroidered on it. The engine has the NH logo on the front. Back in the 60’s logos weren’t as prevalent as they are today. So I also picked up the habit to only wear a logo if it’s on a baseball cap. I have a few of those caps; schools, ski areas, etc.. Which do you think is my favorite?
ReplyDeleteA couple of key fobs from our daughter's prep school and, stashed somewhere, a few (very few) items from my father's times at USNA, Stanford, and MIT.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not ivy, trad, or prep, but. . . I have and wear a baseball cap (university seal), a fleece (Bucky Badger), a necktie (UW seal), and a short-sleeved polo top (badger) in cardinal red with University of Wisconsin emblems Somewhere there is also a gray t-shirt with Wisconsin across the chest, but I hardly ever wear it. And yes. I admit to owning one of those yellow foam rubber cheeseheads (I know. I know.), purchased for me by my late mother before I left Madison for a Fulbright in Norway in May 1999. It used to reside on my grad teaching assistant desk when I later taught Norwegian just up the road at the University of Minnesota, where I met my wife. She has a few similar items from that school, but isn't as obnoxious as yours truly about wearing them in public Especially here in Michigan..
ReplyDeleteUnabashedly,
Heinz-Ulrich
A heavy dark green mug with my college's seal in gold which now holds pens and pencils, and a miniature white and gold mug from my grad school which now holds toothpicks. Also my green freshman beanie cap with "73" in yellow felt numerals.
ReplyDeleteCollege: Old golf team hats, sweatshirt, and still some golf tees/towels in my golf bag for the last 15+ years. Law school: desk box received as a graduation gift and baby blankets they sent both me and my wife (also an alum) for the birth of both of our daughters.
ReplyDeleteGood question. Turns out I have more stuff than I thought: Oxford University and Keble College ties (though the OU tie in its native habitat is less for graduates and members than for University staff like the security men at the Examination Schools). Oxford University Athletic Club sweatshirts and warmup suit. OU sweatshirt and T-shirt. Keble scarf, cufflinks, polo, cap, and coffee mug. Small OU and Keble plaques in the study and a few framed photos and watercolors at the office. I kept a scarf from the theological college I transferred out of because they were trying to rip off foreign students, but I sold the cufflinks to an American clergyman who was claiming to be an Oxford man because he had taken one of those summer tourist classes there. And of course I wear my scars everywhere.
ReplyDeleteMy maternal uncle attended Keble! in the early 70s.
DeleteH-U
Anonymous, I am glad to hear it!
DeleteTwo full sets of Wedgwood plates, one red, the other blue, crew shirts, sweats, letter sweaters, hats (baseball and boater), chairs, bookends, sailing team trophies and burgee, wall banner, pens, plus final club plates, glasses and cups (absconded), tie, banner, cummerbund and cocktail shaker, all from Harvard.
ReplyDeletePrep school blazer patch, tie, crew shirts, hat and winter scarf.
Pre-prep banner and tie.
I didn't know I had all that until you asked!
Never. Strikes me as putting on the dog. Having served as a Duck Commander, our members consisted of Harvard, Yale, Duke, University Of Houston, Skidmore, University of Texas, & Texas AM graduates. Only the AM member wore his school ball cap which is par for the course. No advertising, you ought be so good that you don't have to prove it.
ReplyDeleteWhat is a "Duck Commander?" I googled it and got a flood of links to the Duck Dynasty show. I assume I was led astray.
DeleteShot glasses and ties from Penn.
ReplyDeleteLike you, the same Brown University plates by Wedgewood. But there's more, there's always more. One of my treasured possessions is an entire set of Wedgewood Yale University china I bought for cheap at an auction in Madison, CT, about 15-20 years ago. The set even includes grand serving platters with beautiful lithography. My favorite shows the State Capitol designed by Ithiel Town that once stood on the New Haven Green. As a resident of the New Haven area I am thrilled to have such lovely mementoes of the area.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I've only saved my uniform t-shirt from school and I've saved my rugby team jacket. The only logo thing I wear routinely is an old baseball cap from Upperville H & C show from several years back.
ReplyDeleteMugs. That's it. Gave up on alma mater sweatshirts. I didn't replace them when they became too ragged for wear.
ReplyDeleteMy brain.
ReplyDeleteThe hat in the opening photo: Fenn School? Fay? Fessenden?
ReplyDeleteIt is from my husband's day school, Fenn School for Boys, Concord, Massachusetts, given to him by the person who interviewed him for Fenn's Alumni Magazine.
DeleteNothing is really out on display except an old desk, a Yale--Deke desk, very old, up in one of the bedrooms(some of the drawers still have DKE medals/ribbons in them) I have some Yale plates-Wedgwood, very old, mixed in with some other china in the pantry. I have an old Yale stuffed bulldog with the eyes chewed off(dogs). You wind it up and it plays the Yale fight song. That used to sit on the piano bench until the dogs got at it. More DeKE highball glasses in the pantry; DKE ashtrays and coaster; a few things from Bowdoin up in the attic; maybe a few sorority/fraternal jackets from State schools in mothballs.
ReplyDeleteDid you pledge at Phi or Theta?
DeleteWhat is the school of the hat in the opening photo?
ReplyDeleteIt does not have the name on it other than what I wrote on the back. Every Christmas the college put up a tree in the Dinning room. A friend "took" an ornament off the tree and gave it to me. Every Christmas when we put our tree I am sure the ornament is displayed. This is in addition to the logo sweat shirts and the Cross Pen with a logo.
ReplyDeleteI must confess to being very sentimental in that regard. As I look around my home, garage, etc, there many mementos of those days, I enjoyed, and treasured so very much! But my old rugby shirts, from playing all those years ago, are my favourites! Cheers!
ReplyDeleteAs a proud Northwestern graduate, I have three crewneck sweatshirts (gray, purple and black), two black T-shirts (pretty much for working out and maybe the beach, as I don't really wear T-shirts as ordinary clothing), a couple of caps, a pair of socks from my 30-year reunion last year and a set of golf-club covers. Go 'Cats!
ReplyDeleteI have thrown out all Lawrenceville and Yale gear after being told by my employer that they were elitist and made others in the company uncomfortable.
ReplyDeleteOK, I'm going to take the opposite tack. I have three post high-school universities, and they are were all formative in some sense. But my adult life began after leaving all of them, and I have no souvenirs around me, whether clothing, pottery, or whatnot of those institutions. Others can do as they like; it's not for me.
ReplyDeleteYou look so well wearing this cap!
ReplyDeleteFor many of us, undergraduate experiences are some of our most formative. However, the other day my wife and I were talking about potential day schools for a child, and she mentioned offhand that today going to a good day school is the cultural equivalent of going to a good college a hundred years ago. Or at least knowing that someone went to a particular day school is more predictive of their behavior and character than knowing they went to a particular college or university.
ReplyDeleteReasons:
- People still send their kids to good day schools for educations broadly conceived, including academic, character, social, physical, more and less explicitly religious, but usually coming out of a mainline Protestant tradition.
- Day schools are still something of an end in themselves. You send a child to first grade to get a good education, not because that education will lead to some narrow set of results.
- Day schools continue to be small.
- Day schools continue to be unproblematically intergenerational.
None of the above are really true of most of the leading colleges and universities anymore, as they've gotten into instrumental, exchange-based relationships with students who are attending for career advancement more than education.
At least within our social circle, people who went to a good day school tend to feel more loyalty to it than subsequent universities, even top ones that advanced them much more directly in their careers.
I graduated from Bennington more than 30 years ago and have nothing to show for it.
ReplyDelete