99% Invisible - Articles of Interest: American Ivy

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

Articles of Interest is a show about what we wear. Host and producer Avery Trufelman investigates our collectively held beliefs about fashion and explores topics like the intellectual property law behind knockoffs, creation of tartan and the history of plaid, and how a dolls in a rural museum in Washington state saved French haute couture. This new season investigates a style that keeps coming back again and again and again.Previously part of 99% Invisible, the show is now an independent production and a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

This is 99% Invisible. I'm Roman Mars. Articles of interest is a show about what we wear. For its first two seasons, it existed nestled warmly within the 99% Invisible Nest. But for season three, host and producer Avery Troubleman has taken it to New Heights as a completely independent production, and I couldn't be more pleased and proud. This is the only episode of Articles of Interest that we will feature, so you have to search for

articles of interest in your favorite podcast app and subscribe to get the rest of the story, which is a season-long investigation into a particular look that has come back in style, again and again and again, and Avery is going to find out why. It is a great honor to present to, and Avery is going to find out why. It is a great honor to present to you Avery Trouffleman's Articles of Interest. Oh, my God. Okay. Chapter one. Once upon a time, six years ago, I was given a glimpse of the future, but that future is now the past, so at this point, you've seen it too.

Oh, my God. So these are jeans for 2018. Oh, my God. for 2018. Oh my god! In 2016 I was allowed to see what blue jeans would look like in 2018 because I was at the office of WGSN, perhaps the world's largest trend forecasting company, almost every major brand and retailer consults them. And they're subscribing and asking to kind of get a projection of what to expect and consume a pan's and changes over the next two years. And it was so exciting that Trend4Caster Sarah Owen

would let me look at WGSN's website to see the genes of the future, because normally WGSN charges thousands of dollars to look at their predictions. What does WGSN stand for? This is why I'm not sure, because I know you went through some rebranding and it's kind of become an acronym

that doesn't really have a meaning. So that was all from a story I did about WGSN in 2016. And ever since I've been mildly obsessed with this company, it kind of gave me the same feeling as when I was a kid and someone told me what sex was and I was like Is everybody doing this? Is it everywhere?

But no one is talking about it In the case of WGSN it turns out like yeah kind of so many companies do use WGSN And as I did more and more stories about clothes and fashion I started asking everyone I spoke to, whether or not they consulted it. Even this director of menswear at a company that makes Hawaiian shirts. You use WGSN? Yeah.

This company makes a low-hashirts. The directive seems pretty clear. We all know what a low-hashirts are supposed to be. But the design department of this company wants reassurance and a second opinion when they're seeing silhouettes shift There's a big shift happening now because it was huge boxy shirts, right? And that was the norm for a long time and it started to get smaller and trimmer fit

So we started to bring our fits in but now it's shifting the other way and becoming boxy and oversized again So sure everything's a cycle. That's a truism But once I learned about WGSN, I couldn't help but wonder the role that forecasters play in the trend cycle. Like if every company is consulting WGSN, is WGSN creating the trends, and then do people buy the trends just because they're there?

Is the tail lagging the dog? I mean, so many people subscribe to WGSN if you said you know clear plastic studs are gonna be in style in you know 2018 people would probably use them and then we'd let you know how much of it. The chicken all the egg. Yeah that's always a hard one because like I said we do have some of the most influential and recognizable brands in the world using us so if we are giving them that insight and information that they should be doing a certain trend, it's like, did we create it or was it actually about to come to fruition?

So that's a hard one to like directly answer. And you would think that I now in 2022 as a person of the future would know the answer. Like at this point, I could see if WGSN was right about the genes of 2018. And ever since I did that story, I have periodically been asked what I saw if the genes of the future ever came to be. And I have to admit that I absolutely forgot.

I don't remember at all because I don't know, a bunch of other stuff came up in the last six years. Oh my God. So these are these are jeans for 2018. Oh my God. So everyone's always like, where they write? What are the jeans of the future? Do you remember? Sarah Oh, and didn't remember the jeans of the future either. I don't remember the visually looked at, but I can definitely find out. Sarah is not a WGSN anymore. She went on to found another company called Soon Future Studies,

which takes more of an academic approach to future research. Sarah will write up these long, comprehensive, multipage in-depth analyses about everything. What I'll do and what we'll do on our team when we're looking at trends is we'll always look at it in a context of mega-macro and micro- because that helps you differentiate between what's kind of a fad and what has longer legs and is really going to make

a shift in the world. Trends often get talked about like fads, but trends and fads are different. Trends are longer than fads. Fads are often a look or a product or an idea that gets really popular in a small subset of the population. They hit, and then as quickly as they came, they go away, but a trend has resonance because it hits the zeitgeist. That's what Sarah Owens' true trend forecasting is all about.

Connecting micro trends like clothing to larger societal shifts, aka mega trends. The mega framing of the world, which is decades long, to me that's really how you start to kind of talk about trends in their context of the time horizon, though, they'll exist in. So, do you want an actual trend report? Do you want to know what the real mega trends are? Here's your trend report. We are seeing demographic polarization. We are seeing increasing wealth inequality. We are seeing a weakening of global institutions. We're seeing the climate

crisis unfold, and then there's also the mental health crisis. I may be missing a couple, and there's a lot more. Are you worried about that? I think a lot of people could look at your macro trends and be like, yeah, those are all the things that keep me up at night. I think so.

In the sense that you're saying that the mega trends were so in it that they seem obvious, is that what you mean? Yeah, especially for like, well then, what is this? What is trend prediction? Yeah, I mean, I think Anyone can identify a trend whether it's a mega macro micro what people can't do is Tell the story or see the context of the marriage of those trifecta

coming together. So, yes, you could exist in today's current climate and feel the burden of the climate crisis. You could suffer from anxiety. You can see and spot the mega-trans, but can you understand the connections and the impact, but it's not saying that, oh, weakening global institutions means you're going to be wearing this kind of pattern. It's not that clink cut.

You can reverse engineer into those stories. I think a lot of trends are getting reverse engineered right now, or at least some have to be, because there are so many trends right now. Fairy Grunge, ballet core, weird core, the weird of course. Let's talk about the twist that are from the late 2000s. There are simultaneously more trends than ever, and also it seems like trends don't really seem to matter anymore. Clown core also known as Circus core or Clown Prince core.

We'll swing back to Indie Slee's hipster in the next couple of years. And this attitude towards trends really does feel different from the first time I talked to Sarah back in 2016. There are just too many trends now, or maybe there are just more trend forecasters. Sarah says it's just because there's so much data. Because you see so much pattern recognition and connect the dots and therefore,

oh, three's a trend, you know, there you go. And so all of a sudden, you could almost reverse engineer anything to be a trend, just by the default that was so much collateral and data and research out there. Everything is almost a trend in the sense. This influx of trends creates the illusion that almost nothing is out of trend. Like, there are so many styles happening all at once, you can choose whatever you want and everything is sort of up for grabs and okay. And as if to prove that point, Sarah Owen did very kindly

end up asking a colleague back at WJSN for the trend report from 2018 and she sent it to me. And sure enough, there were the jeans of the future that had shocked me so much in 2016, they were wide-legged genes with dark-died accents on the sides. And it was so funny. I mean, when I first saw these genes, they did look very new, so much so that I gasped at them.

But looking at them now, I was sort of indifferent to them. Those genes did not look cutting edge, and they did not even look outdated. They didn't really look like indifferent to them. Those jeans did not look cutting edge, and they did not even look outdated. They didn't really look like anything to me. They were just another style of pants. Another trend in the veritable ocean of trends. Everything is a trend. We're constantly being told that this is a trend, that is a trend.

Rachel Taschen, the fashion news director at Harper's Bazaar, is tired of talking about trends. It's funny. A lot of what is happening now is not forecasting. It's really like saying something is already happening. And a lot of it is because so much of this is manufactured by social media. By its nature, social media encourages trends,

and encourages many people to act in a similar way. They're all sort of meaningless because there are so many of them. It's like grains of sand or something. I would say probably the only real trend right now is like trendiness itself. So I've been reading a lot of trend forecasting books and a number of them have said that a lot of trends come with counter trends. And that's different from a backlash.

A counter trend just means that two opposing trends can be in at the same time. They're just opposite reactions to the same set of circumstances. So minimalism can be in at the same time as consumerism. 24-7 connectivity can be in at the same time as consumerism. 24-7 connectivity can be in at the same time as the desire to disconnect and go live in the woods. And so, while trendiness itself might be a trend, I think there is a counter trend. A trend that turns away from trends entirely. And there's a look that goes with it.

Well, it seems like it's a reaction to trends. It seems like people are tired like you are. And they're like, yeah, just these are trendless clothes. Right. I definitely think there's something to it. I think I do have an idea of what we will be wearing in the future. It's a style so obvious that I didn't realize it was a style at all. Americans have been wearing some version of this style since the early days of our nation, and this look has since been exported all around the world. And I think we will continue to wear some version of this look going forward,

and I think I know why. But I am going to need to use trend forecasting company like WGSN and be like, aha, C trends or a conspiracy. But WGSN is just one company, one of many. And ultimately, as much as designers and manufacturers can follow WGSN's lead and obey their predictions, the clothes still have to be purchased for them to actually make them in trend. They need to find their way into stores and retailers for them to be successful, which means the clothes need to be selected by someone like Peter. I'm an apparel buyer, I'm a man's apparel buyer.

At the time I talked to Peter in the spring of 2022, Peter worked for a very big online fashion retailer. And his job was to determine what this massive online shop would stock and what would actually be available for the consumer to buy. I am pitching my trends for fall 22 right now. And of course, Peter was not judging whatever he would want to stock. He had to think of what the consumer would be likely to purchase.

What is in trend? What is connected to larger, impactful forces in greater society? And so it seemed counterintuitive that in spring of 2022, Peter would show me a book from 1965. It's an English translation of the 1965 book Take Ivy. Take Ivy was an anthropological study of what the students on Ivy League College campuses wore in 1965. This English translation of the book didn't come out until 2010, and I'm pretty sure

around that time I encountered it for sale at a J-Crew. Originally, it's published in Japanese for the Japanese market. Take Ivy is mostly pictures of beautiful young white men walking to and from class, lounging in archways, going to sports practice, and you lose track of which college is which, and it all blends into a beautiful mid-century homoerotic American dream. But it's actually quite comprehensive as a culture study. So there are short essays about Ivy League students and culture.

There are these miniature glossaries about different apparel terms terms about the colleges themselves. Like it talks a lot about the architecture of the schools about how large the campuses are, how students need bicycles, that kind of thing to inform the conversation that it's having about dress. And my God, how to explain how these college guys are dressed. Ivy style is kind of difficult to explain. Jason Diamond is a writer and contributor to GQ. I just tell people you start with this book called

Take Ivy. And intake Ivy, they are wearing khakis like loafers and like a pair of modrous shorts, chunky knit sweaters and sweater vests. There's a guy with a blazer and a collard shirt, but it's not like a pair of modrous shorts. Chunky knit sweaters and sweater vests. There's a guy with a blazer and a collard shirt, but it's not like a collard shirt with a suit. It's IV style. It just looks so neat to me. It's kind of a variation on the style more commonly known as preppy,

although some real diehard fashion nerds are definitely gonna get mad at me for calling IV Preppy. Because some people say, oh, well, IV and Preppy are totally different. And I don't really think they are. Why, why not? I just think they're one developed from the other. Describing the difference between IV and Preppy is like parsing the difference between rock and roll and rock.

There is a difference, but it's mostly a matter of chronology. So for now, I'm going to use the terms IV and Preppy interchangeably. It's all about evolution. It's like if you want to like say IV, Preppy, whatever, technically you are talking about going back to that book. You're talking about that one. That's like, again, the Bible for this. So take IV is an amazing document because these guys really look fantastic. And it's not for the clothes themselves. The garments are pretty conservative. It's about how the students are wearing this stuff.

So you have these guys who come from these like really well to do upper-crust white families, and they're kind of going out of their way to dress down a little bit, but it looks kind of cool. So it's sort of anti-style without even being anti-style. Because these guys are making some choices. You know, rolling up the sleeves, like layering shirts over other shirts, layering shirts over sweaters. Rachel Tashton is all about it. To me, that's what the best part about this clothing is like layering the things and like rolling things up in a strange way. You know, there are such great images of like these guys going to crew practice and they're wearing like sweaters and like shorts and

like athletic shorts or they have their pant, they have chinos on, but they're rolling them up because they're getting into the water. Like that sort of style that comes from utility and sort of this kind of self creation, that's what makes it really fun. And that's what the Japanese authors of Take Ivy are so fascinated by. They keep coming back to this one point over and over again. Like, wow, these kids aren't even trying. They're just tossing these things on, and yet they each look so unique and good and different from each other.

That's what the clothing is about. That's why Take Ivy is so popular, because you see people given the same limited palette who are doing these ridiculous things, you know? They're really strange choices made by the people wearing those clothes, especially in that book. That's why I tell people, like, go back to the book, like, go back to take Ivy, because, like, you look at these guys and they're not trying. That's it. That's like, if you're not trying

and you look cool, you're cool. Like, I can't really, I can't fight that. And so, take Ivy is kind of a cult classic, especially for menswear nerds. It's kind of helped define what mid-century style was, and it's become sort of the definitive record, because no American would have thought to photograph and observe all of this.

Only someone visiting from another country would have bothered to catalog and recognize this look so thoroughly. It was funny to me to read about this writer's experience of men and loafers without socks on and how subversive and rebellious he found that. Peter The Men's Where Buyer says the authors of Take Ivy really nail it on the subtext. They know that this is not a look about dressing appropriately for the occasion of learning. That what these students are really playing with

are markers of class. They're like cutting denim into shorts. They're cutting the sleeves off of a sweatshirt. Like they're walking barefoot between classes. And that was such an interesting tension for me between like these markers of obvious wealth, but that the real signposts, at least for these people writing this book, are those things that suggest the opposite, right? Like this kind of uncarriedness. But it's not like you would look at these clothes and be like, hey, everyone looks really

good. The stuff is still in style. Well, this very much is. Peter pointed at a coral colored cardigan. And then he went through, take Ivy methodically and pointed out... Tweeds, tartans. All the other items that were similar to what he was intending to purchase for fall 2022.

This kind of loafer. This, I just bought from bleped brand for fall 2022. This kind of loafer. This I just bought from bleeped brand for Fall 2022. No way. Yeah. This is still very much a part of the conversation. Preppy comes back in and out.

Yeah. You agree that it's a trend right now, the preppy thing? Yes, very much so. Oh my god, so much so. Of course, I asked Sarah Owen for her trend forecaster take. You do see the manifestation of preppy clothing coming through the mainstream for sure. If I had to start to cross-analyze why on the spot. Thanks, Avery. It might be about wanting some control in the world.

Very controlled, aesthetic. Like it's very put together and it seems to kind of have this visual cue of being, oh, I've got my shit together. Or it could be because, as Sarah says, looking educated is in and being smart is sexy. We saw that when we thought about the changing face of influences and how we saw influences five, 10 years ago, being very lifestyle and fashion and aesthetic driven,

and now it's more about like, who's got a, and who's got opinion, who's an expert, who's that psychologist you follow, who's that engineer you follow and try to, like who's learning things opinion? Who's an expert? Who's that psychologist you follow? Who's that engineer you follow on Twitter? Like, who's learned things like to come? Yeah, like people are hungry for knowledge in a world of fake news and misinformation. But do note that Sarah did not give

what I thought would be the most obvious answer, which is that dressing Ivy makes you look rich. It makes you look like you went to private school and you have no debt. It makes you look like you went to private school and you have no debt. It makes you look like you can pop into the lobby of the Yale Club with no eyebrows raised. Like you know how to write a horse. Which, in 2022, makes no sense that it would be entrenched. I just don't think that the social connotations of Ivy are easy to swallow.

Derrick Guy writes for, put this on, and his own website, Die Workwear. People do not necessarily want to dress like these people. So these people being basically like rich white people, like a risk of old money people. So it's hard to sell that image when we're a little bit more politically aware of what are some of the darker sides of that world.

Right. But if Ivy is indeed back, maybe that means it's no longer the look of rich white people. Maybe the meaning of the look is shifting or has shifted. I think what a lot of fashion is is like convincing people of things through imagery. It's not necessarily making a great product. Rachel Taschen of Harper's Bazaar again. Most designers today are not really, a lot of designers really are stylists, right? They're not necessarily like inventing or creating new clothes. There are very few who actually can do that.

And also finding an entirely new way to cover a shoulder. Exactly. Essentially, these days trends are less about, many skirts are in or skinny ties are out. I mean, to some degree, this can be true. But more often, looks are not about individual garments. And they're more about a vibe. Like, I think of outfits, not so much as artistic expression

but social language. So I think of outfits not so much as artistic expression, but social language. So I think of when people put together an outfit, I think of it as in like writing a sentence. An outfit is a sentence that says, this is what I'm doing today, this is what the weather is, this is who I am. So as menswear writer Derek Guy puts it, a lot of mainstream fashion references, archetypes. The punk, the cowboy, the raver, the blue collar worker. These are frames of references that already exist.

And you can tell subtly, even if you don't overtly name it, if a jacket is sort of workwear looking or western looking or biker looking. Implicitly, you sort of know if you're dressed up like a business person, or a bohemian, or an intellectual, or whatever, like normcore, coastal grandma, whatever the new archetype might be. It can't be a completely new thing. You can't just introduce a random word and then expect it to catch on. It has to be a way that people can fit into the way they use language.

If you were to leave the house wearing, say, a feather boa with a fireman's jacket, it wouldn't send a clear message. It's also why something totally new on a runway looks ridiculous to the point where it almost doesn't register and you're like, whatever, that's weird. Because it's a totally new thing. It's illegible. You know, Nome Chomsky says you can make up

this random sentence. Nome Chomsky created this sentence that's grammatically correct. But doesn't necessarily mean anything. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. That's what it's like if you're wearing a fireman's jacket and a feather boa. You can wear a clothes, but sometimes they don't make sense together. Because you have to communicate with people, and I think dress is very much the same way is that people dress in a way to communicate certain messages. together. So this is part of why commercial mainstream fashion tends to stay within the symbols

and the messages we already know. When clothing is understandable, it references a world and a set of meanings, even if we don't consciously realize it. And so I think for a long time, a lot of us have been dressing in reference to one particular world. I think a lot of us have been dressing like college students. Everybody wears ivy because there's a certain section of Ivy that's just close. Flat front chinos is just close. A Oxford button down is just a dress shirt. It's what people wear. This is why no one calls it Ivy and no one really uses the word preppy. Now these clothes are mostly called classics or basics. So these things have become so popular and so consumed by

everybody that they are no longer an aesthetic they're just clothing. So it's difficult to say whether or not Ivy's gonna come back because it's here. It's here. It's just cannon. It's just what people wear. It's just clothing. They're just standard. They're not the clothing of a subculture. It is the clothing of the dominant culture. And Ivy has gotten to this place because it has weathered massive mega trends in culture. Like not only has it survived trends,

it has survived trends in how trends themselves have operated. But I'll tell you what I mean. After the break. in how trends themselves have operated. But I'll tell you what I mean. After the break. When you think about clothing as a language that needs to be registered and understood, it makes sense that groups of people would all want to use the same words and slang.

That people would dress in similar ways, and they wouldn't want to just be like, blah, colorless green ideas sleep furiously. And it makes me think that trends are not some sort of conspiracy of magazines and social media and WGSN, that maybe trends are, to a degree, something innate in human culture, a way we know how to follow each other and move within our time. I mean spring blossoms come out and everyone is suddenly aware of new life and the presence of spring and that's associated with different colors and we're all feeling that collectively together because we're living in a world that changes every day and we're all responding

to those changes together. Sophie Tannhauser is the author of Warn, a people's history of clothing. And I think sometimes the corrosive feeling part of trends is that they're so aggressively capitalized on. But I don't think there's anything innately wrong with the way we feel things in unison sometime. I was in Wyoming a few years ago and I went to this bluegrass jam and you could participate and I had a guitar with me and I just came and I was wondering how everybody knew when to do the chord changes and I didn't understand how but being in the circle you could just feel, oh it's time to change. And I think it's sometimes like that with trends.

Obviously it can be brutal too. I mean I remember junior high sometimes like that with trends. Obviously, it can be brutal, too. I mean, I remember junior high and the way trends happened. It wasn't fun. It was just survival. Trends can be vicious, and they can be a weapon of mass consumer culture. But as much as I would like to accuse trends of being a byproduct of capitalism, I think trends are larger than that. There were, of course, trends under feudalism.

In the court of Louis XIV, high-end fashion trends were there. They were just very strictly dictated by the monarch. And the deal was, you can't wear silk after such and such a date. You have to switch over from winter fabrics to summer fabrics on this date. No questions asked. Because trends were set by the King, no wondering where they came from, you had to keep up with trends as a show of obedience and patriotism. Louis would change fashions every season as an active way

to help the French textile industry. Yeah, so Leon was the center of silk making at that time. And the silk makers in Leon changed patterns every year so that it's obvious if you're wearing last year's silk. But in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, when suddenly there were no more strict overt rules about what to wear and there were no longer permanently affixed stations in the court, suddenly you couldn't tell what class someone was

by what they wore. Once the noble woman is no longer the only one allowed to wear silk, for instance, if the rich lawyer's wife can also wear silk, then the noble woman has to wear her silk dress in a way that cannot be imitated by the lawyer's wife. So then, of course, the lawyer's wife wants to have that. And so then the aristocratic woman has to move on, and it becomes more and more rapid.

And this became sort of the 19th century definition of how trends start and spread. If the elite are wearing something, then you want to dress like the elite. Derek, I again. Just because you want to portray yourself as being of a better status. So that whole trickle-down theory doesn't entirely hold up now, which I'll get into, but it is the most simple manifestation of what trends are at their core, which is a ripple effect of imitation. At their root, trends come from the tension between wanting to stand out and wanting to fit in. trends come from the tension between wanting to stand out and wanting to fit in. Both desires have to be present for trends to disseminate, because if everyone wanted to

stand out, we'd all be just dressed in our own weird nonsense way, like colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and if we all wanted to dress the same, we'd just wear little uniforms and that would be that. Fashion is both your desire to project yourself as an individual within a group, but also say that you are part of a group to outsiders. So most early 20th century writings about trend dissemination use these ideas of an in-group and an out-group based almost entirely around class and economics. And class is at play in trend dissemination, but it's really not as clear-cut as trickle-down effect anymore. It's no longer the case that you just want to dress like rich people.

Rich people might want to dress like artists and artists might take inspiration from the working class. Some people might take their fashion sense from the working class that's not even existing today. They might take it from like 1930s or 1940s or whatever. So I think class plays a role but it's not as simple as who owns money. It's more like who has social capital. It's not necessarily financial capital.

It's clout. Yeah, it's clout. Yeah. Because in the mid-20th century, there was this shift. From wanting to look rich, to wanting to look cool, that nebulous, unknowable, undefinable thing that you really only know when you see it. And that's what the Japanese authors of Take Ivy loved about Ivy. It wasn't because they wanted to look American

or look rich or look like they went to Harvard. They just thought Ivy clothes were cool. And I guess they are. I guess they are a bit cool. I just didn't recognize them as a look at all. My wife always makes film, and she's like, why do you have so many navy blazers, like the the Brooks Brothers? And like, navy just looks good. You can wear it with pretty much anything. A button-down shirt sort of like looks great on everyone.

Ivy was also this kind of development of this like middle class uniform that masked class to some degree so that the bosses and the employees dress the same. Part of the experience for preppy women's wear, like it's the act of borrowing from the boys that is still like essential to the style. Martin Luther King, he's kind of got this like preppy look or look at a picture of Alan Ginsburg and he's kind of got this preppy look or Jack Kerrow act. They all have a little bit of preppy look or look at a picture of Alan Ginsburg and he's kind of got this preppy look or Jack Kerrowack. They all have a little bit of preppy in them. There is something sort of rebellious about this and you don't have to be like a member of like the Young Republicans club

to dress this way. It was the uniform of Black Jazz musicians. It was the uniform of people who didn't even go to college. It was just an American look. It was just an American look. And yet, take Ivy is ultimately a vision of America that does not exist anymore. And maybe never did. If you go to Harvard and Princeton and Yale, the majority of students are not dressed like this. So when take Ivy was written, the majority of students were also not dressed like this. When Take Ivy was written, the majority of students were also not dressed like this. Because Take Ivy, that Bible, that reference, that cult classic authority on what this look is, turned out to be not exactly true.

They staged this whole thing for the book. So that world that died long, long time ago. Take Ivy, as you will come to learn in the course of this story, was made as a form of propaganda. For the company that published this book, there were very high stakes to make the Japanese public think that Americans dress this way. Which like, sure, some Americans used to dress this way, but it was once a very small, very elite world, and that style should have died out or disappeared entirely at various points in history. But against all odds, Ivy has been reincarnated over and over again.

For the point where, I think, it will never quite go away. But for now, it's really hard to say what the future holds for that. Like I would have to spend three months kind of analyzing the macro landscape to understand what preppy will look like in two years, where will it resonate and things like that. So I kind of, now I'm like, I think I might be doing that. In fact, I did do that. So this is my trend report. Let's take IV. Articles of Interest is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

It is written cut and performed by Avery Trouffleman. Kelly Prime edits the scripts and makes them make sense. Ian Coste does mixing mastering in sound design, Jessica Seriano checks all the facts. The logo art is by Helen Shewell sang with photo by Madeline Barnes. The theme songs are by Susami, with a collegiate reinterpretation by the Bielzelbubs, the Tufts University Acapella group. Additional music by me and Ray Royal is work you can find at raydawne.com for R-H-A-E. Special thanks this episode to Zach Fishman and Sai Sian, and gratitude forever to Roman

Mars. You can and should subscribe to Articles of Interest, wherever you get your podcasts. 99% invisible is Delaney Hall, Kurt Colstad, Vivian Le, Christopher Johnson, Emmett Fitzgerald, Swan Riau, Chris Barupet, Lashemadon, Jason Dillion, Martin Gonzales, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, Jacob Maldonado Medina, Sophia Klesker, intern Olivia Green, and me Roman Mars. We are part of the Stitcher and Serious XM Podcast family. Now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building. And beautiful. Uptown, Oakland, California. Keep up with us at 9i9pi.org.

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