Ferd Week continues with a comment left by Ferd, September, 2010. Redacted for civility.
First, let me say that I am uncertain how I found your blog. In all events, after skimming so of your posts I am compelled to write. Prep is not about clothing, or schools, or cars, or dogs, or cocktails. It is an attitude. It is wiser, wealthier, more insular. It is oblivious to much of what the remainder of the world considers vital. It is bored. It is aloof. It is ultra cool. It doesn't exist south of Newport or west of Williamstown. If you are writing about it, you aren't it. If you went to an Ivy League school or Andover, Exeter or Choate after 1980, you aren't it. If you use the word Preppy, you aren't it. And, most importantly, if you speak about, write about and rank clothing, you aren't it. Caring about clothing is vulgar. True Prep wears whatever his grandfather left in the closet at the house in Marblehead. My God, woman, are you really suggesting that a True Prep would be caught dead in something from Barbour? Isn't Barbour the company that dresses all those [*****] real estate executives in New York racing for their train in the rain on 43rd street? True Prep wears their son's hockey jacket from St. Marks in the rain or doesn't go out in the rain. And Jesus, Ralph Lauren? Are you high? He is, well, [*****]. Don't [****] wear his shirts? All in all, you are silly and uninformed.
The immortal Ferd!
ReplyDeleteWhere have you gone? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
I hope you'll publish more of the Tao of Ferd. It's been too long.
Oh my God, the language! But he was funny. And truth be told, I have always been just a bit self-conscious that I care too much about clothes!
ReplyDeleteBefore I admit that I have no idea who Ferd is, all of these are delightful! The one today above...the Prep....the Real Prep....I am reminded of a trip to Maui a few years ago and we were staying at the Grand Wailea hotel because the amateur golf tournament that my husband had entered was attached to it. A Waldorf Astoria property, there we were the first afternoon in the pool. Over to the side was a very perfect body of a lady in a skimpy yet expensive two piece swimsuit trying to hoist herself up on a big round pool float. She didn't just have on a sensible big hat, it had a big be-jeweled brooch on it. Her much older husband was coming and going, with a bottle of beer in a little cozy. A pool boy from time to time would announce loudly, "Here's your new beer, DOCTOR...."
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, not far away, trying to stay upright in the waist deep water was a dried up looking little bald man, gingerly making his way around. I said to my husband, "Wouldn't it be funny if that was....we'll say....Wally Waldorf....who owns the whole place...he looks like a homeless person but he might be more well off than that flashy couple?" I worked up a story of Wally Waldorf, going all over the world, keeping an eye on his properties, just like Sam Walton did, under the radar by blending in! It was fun!
Mr. Ferd? Well, he was always entertaining and highly intelligent - if not exactly tactful with his bulldozer opinions.
ReplyDeleteAnd like Sidney "The Fat Man" Greenstreet laughing at Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon: "By gad, Sir, you're a character, Sir!"
Taken to the woodshed and schooled, we are.
ReplyDeleteOne must appreciate the understatement.
ReplyDeleteIf you say the word, "Prep," you lost the game.
ReplyDeleteWould love to read the unredacted version!
ReplyDeleteNo you wouldn't.
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