# Differences between Trad and BCBG



## KenCPollock (Dec 20, 2003)

When in Paris recently I stopped in Berteil, capital of BCBG and bought an olive heather herringbone (with windowpane overplaid) tweed sport jacket and some argyle socks. The jacket was very J. Press, except for a very squared-off and somewhat built-up shoulder. The argyles are first-rate. I noticed a big stock of Alden tassels loafers. All in all, the place seemed more Trad than not, but what are the main differences between BCBG and Trad?


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by kencpollock_
> 
> When in Paris recently I stopped in Berteil, capital of BCBG and bought an olive heather herringbone (with windowpane overplaid) tweed sport jacket and some argyle socks. The jacket was very J. Press, except for a very squared-off and somewhat built-up shoulder. The argyles are first-rate. I noticed a big stock of Alden tassels loafers. All in all, the place seemed more Trad than not, but what are the main differences between BCBG and Trad?


I've been there -- I didn't see the argles but plan on going back there. Some nice tweeds. I thought the jackets rolled to the top button not the second, right?

Ken -- I found some Canali and Zegna at 279Euro -- "I give you the price". Let me know.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

BCBG can be very Bohemian at times (intervals) in their fashion lines and Bohemianism is the opposite of Trad a.k.a colloquially "young fogyism".


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

To me, BCBG is a look, Trad is something we just grew up with and either decided to maintain as we grew older, or move away from. For me, Trad is the ultimate neutral way to dress. BCBG is a style which is self-conciously elitist.


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

Is BCBG what we Brits call 'Sloane' (American 'Preppie'?) and Trad what we call 'fogey'? 
I think the former is the uniform of a social class ('they don't know any different'); the latter a style adopted by those who like it ('they like to be different').


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## Vettriano Man (Jun 30, 2005)

Trimmer, yes you are correct, and although I cannot speak authoritively about American 'Trad', I can about the English term 'Sloane' which only became apparent at the time Lady Di came into being in the early eighties, which is basically the same as the French 'BCBG'. However I believe the term 'bon chic, bon genre' is used more for females than males, but it is undoubtedly the natural inherent style of those with old class and breeding - families that stretch back hundreds of years - hence the word 'genre' and is what is sometimes referred to in modern terms as the 'Notting Hill' style which took over from the 'Sloane' label for those who inhabited the Sloane Square area where Diana lived before marrying Charles.

Particularly for females, the 'BCBG' term is as much about what is under the skin as what is clothed over it, such as complexion, bone structure and deportment which is derived from the genes - however when it comes to breeding, no amount of 'Roedean' or 'Cheltenham Ladies College' can genuinely create this from nothing for the nouveau riche.

For males it is basically the same and they continue to wear the styles that their father's and grandfather's wore - sometimes referred to as the 'Hackett' style - but always worn with the 'signet ring', of course, _(with the genuine family crest - not one's initials, oh no!)_ and the smart casual look can be cavalry twills or jeans with tweed sports jackets and brogues - all in a tradition which just really cannot be bought!


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## Trimmer (Nov 2, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Vettriano man_
> 
> Trimmer, yes you are correct . . . modern terms as the 'Notting Hill' style which took over from the 'Sloane' label . . .


'Notting Hillbillies' - that'll confuse our American friends!


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by xcubbies_
> 
> To me, BCBG is a look, Trad is something we just grew up with and either decided to maintain as we grew older, or move away from. For me, Trad is the ultimate neutral way to dress. BCBG is a style which is self-conciously elitist.


BCBG, like sloan rangerness and trad, is something that somebody else grew up with.

of course, there are a lot of people, on both sides of the atlantic, that take up the look even though they didn't grow up with it.


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## Étienne (Sep 3, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by xcubbies_
> For me, Trad is the ultimate neutral way to dress.


From what I gathered on the forum, Trad seems anything but neutral to me.


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## shuman (Dec 12, 2004)

Forgive my niavate, but I thought BCBG was simply a womens designer label! How interesting... Please keep the discussion going. Is this what is discussed in the Sloane Ranger Handbook? I cant find a copy on this side of the pond, but am interested in its contents.


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Vettriano man_
> 
> Particularly for females, the 'BCBG' term is as much about what is under the skin as what is clothed over it, such as complexion, bone structure and deportment which is derived from the genes - however when it comes to breeding, no amount of 'Roedean' or 'Cheltenham Ladies College' can genuinely create this from nothing for the nouveau riche.


Quite right, V man: pedigree is an essential part of BCBG (more so of Sloane). As the old European elites favoured prowess at sport, natural selection ensured that the girls were slim and "leggy". Add good posture and deportment - needed to walk about gracefully in large rooms, and inculcated at an early age, the self confidence conferred by an ancient family name, and an upbringing among horses and dogs. This produces the "debbie" look. The effect of this breeding on males is less immediately obvious, I find.


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## KenCPollock (Dec 20, 2003)

Twenty years old, but of interest:

The Rules of the Game - French preppies are bons, chics and a genre in demand

Time, March 3, 1986 Reported by Harriet Welty Rochefort

Dear Muffy,

What a hoot! Here I am just bumming around in good old Paris on winter break from Wellesley, and guess what? The French have gone absolutely overboard for all that old preppy stuff! I cruised over to Angelina's tearoom, on the rue de Rivoli, and do you know what I found? The place was packed with all these French people in plaid skirts and tweed jackets, chatting very quietly about the "right" schools. Meanwhile, at Carette's, the tearoom on the Place du TrocadÃ©ro that Mummy loves, it looked like a loden cloth convention; everybody had one of those cute green coats. Isn't that a stitch and a half?

Remember when that ridiculous Official Preppy Handbook came out in the U.S. six years ago and sold more than a million copies? It had all that junk about what shoes to wear and what prep schools to attend. You simply couldn't get into Brooks Brothers because all the nouveaus (hey, listen to that fractured French!) were fighting to buy button-down-collar shirts. How rude. Then the British came out with the Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, named after those elegant young things who shop around Sloane Square in London. Now the Parisians have joined the crowd with a guide for their own preppies and Rangers: BCBG, Le Guide du Bon Chic Bon Genre, by Thierry Mantoux, who works at the Saint Louis Crystal Co. (the outfit is 400 years old and it is not in Missouri). Bon Chic Bon Genre (B.C.B.G. for short) sort of means elegant and well mannered and is what the call preppies here. The term isn't really new, and it wasn't always fashionable to be B.C.B.G. But now it seem that everybody here is trying to look and act just like the British gentry, Muffy. Do you remember how inconvenient it was when our lifestyle became a fad? Well, Mantoux's book has already sold about 100,000 copies, and there's going to be a paperback edition next month.

I met this trÃ¨s straight guy named Adrien in the Bar Saint-James (acceptably B.C.B.G.), and he explained the whole business over his fruit juice while I got absolutely wrecked on Dom PÃ©rignon. Adrien explained that B.C.B.G have nothing to prove because they already know and possess everything that's important. They have been around for simply ages and have their own way of dressing, talking, growing up and going to school. You get the feeling that one can become rich, but one is B.C.B.G

Money is O.K. for B.C.B.G. to have, particularly if it's Mummy's or Daddy's money, but the real important stuff is family background, education and manners, which take longer. Real B.C.B.G.s hate showing off. A non-B.C.B.G. would say something tacky like "I bought this chÃ¢teau ten years ago". A real one would just tell you that the house has been in the family a long time. A B.C.B.G. simply never discusses money or personal problems, never wears loud colors and is never seen on the Champs-ElysÃ©es during the week-end. 
The names are a riot, Muffy.It's proper to call your daughter Florence, Capucine, Emilie and Tiphaine; but Odette, Chloe or Deborah seem to be out. For boys, it's Alexis, Henri, Thibaut and, of course, Adrien; but never Albert, Alfred, David and Jonathan. B.C.B.G. children are flung by their parents into rugby, polo, ballooning, field hockey and scouting and steered away from such dangers as television, chewing gum and jeans. A solid B.C.B.G family has a member in the military or the Roman Catholic priesthood; pacifism and anticlericalism are definitely out. B.C.B.G. sex is extremely discreet, if you know what I mean. But they still marry each other in church, and the brides wear white. Adrien says the B.C.B.G. life style became popular, ironically enough, when FranÃ§ois Mitterand, a Socialist and definitely non-B.C.B.G., was elected President in 1981. Premier Laurent Fabius is B.C.B.G., however, as is former President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Adrien, like a lot of B.C.B.G.s is a "nap"- meaning someone who lives in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly or West of Paris in places like Auteuil and Passy. The kids are prepared for elite schools like the Ecole Polytechnique, Sciences Po (as in Politics) or the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (E.N.A. for short and its influential grads are known as Ã©narques). Young B.C.B.G.s gravitate towards jobs in finance or government. Bo--ring! But that's the B.C.B.G. style. They eat at solid restaurants like Julien, Chez Jenny and Le Petit Machon, drive aging Renaults and 2 CV 6 CitroÃ«ns and wear clothes that your grandmother would love.

They're really into loden green and navy blue. They hate our colors like lime, green and pink. But they do wear our favorite tennis shirts with the little alligator. Adrien says he couldn't walk without his "Weston's", clunky British-made shoes like his daddy wears. He shops at Mettez, on Boulevard Malesherbes, and Berteil, on Place Saint-Augustin, when he absolutely must have new grey flannels. Adrien says you spot a real B.C.B.G. woman at 20 kilometers because of her HermÃ¨s scarf- the bright one with horseshoes all over them. But that's about it for color; the rest is plaid and Austrian dirndl skirts right out of The Sound of Music. The only acceptable jewelry: perfect pearls and a ring bearing a coat of arms.

Just when Adrien and I were about to partir back to his place on the Rue de Passy to see his Daumier drawings (he just hates abstract art, and Andy Warhol is passÃ©), someone really not our kind came over and asked, "Hey, how can I get to be a B.C.B.G.?". Adrien was too reserved to respond but told me later, "It's easy, just wait four or five generations." Well, gotta run now, Muffy. Adrien and I are going off for the week-end to a chateau he says has been in his family for a long time. See you in four or five generations.

Love and stuff, Corky. 



Back to the list of articles


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## marc_au (Apr 22, 2004)

Thanks Mr Pollock! l really do appreciate the input you put into this forum Sir.

From: one of your fans, The shoeman.

*GR8MAN (The shooman) B8MAN.

*


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## ice (Sep 2, 2005)

> quotearticularly for females, the 'BCBG' term is as much about what is under the skin as what is clothed over it, such as complexion, bone structure and deportment which is derived from the genes - however when it comes to breeding, no amount of 'Roedean' or 'Cheltenham Ladies College' can genuinely create this from nothing for the nouveau riche.
> 
> For males it is basically the same and they continue to wear the styles that their father's and grandfather's wore - sometimes referred to as the 'Hackett' style - but always worn with the 'signet ring', of course, (with the genuine family crest - not one's initials, oh no!) and the smart casual look can be cavalry twills or jeans with tweed sports jackets and brogues - all in a tradition which just really cannot be bought!





> quote:Quite right, V man: pedigree is an essential part of BCBG (more so of Sloane). As the old European elites favoured prowess at sport, natural selection ensured that the girls were slim and "leggy". Add good posture and deportment - needed to walk about gracefully in large rooms, and inculcated at an early age, the self confidence conferred by an ancient family name, and an upbringing among horses and dogs. This produces the "debbie" look. The effect of this breeding on males is less immediately obvious, I find.


This is laughable. I can't believe anyone still believes in these old 18th century ideas of class. Have you two missed the past 150 years of history? Come on - natural selection? genes?

Roman nobles were considered crude Etruscan peasants by the Egyptians. Frankish kings were barbarians to the Romans. The most upper crust English families are descended from the homeless, penniless Norman knights who came over with the illegitimate King William the Conquerer. The current American elite families started as poor immigrants from Scotland and Ireland.

Hereditary class is an illusion. Throughout history, certain people have found themselves in a position of wealth and power. They invented this notion of class and breeding to make themselves feel better about being richer than everyone else, and continuing to act in their own self interest by passing their wealth and privilege on to their children. This is all luck, greed, and circumstance, nothing to do with the mythical abilities of one family being greater than another. The past 150 years have proven this so completely that I do not need to provide any examples or proofs. It is self evident.

However, class as a set of mannerisms, beliefs, and circumstances, does still exist. But it is not exclusive, and can be attained by anyone who wants it, or most often, is taught it by their parents. Likewise, it can be lost and disappear within a generation. It does not confer any special abilites or unique qualities. Class is just a way of wrapping a person. It isn't the person.

Every person in this world should be judged by their actions, not who their parents are. To do otherwise is folly.


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by shuman_
> 
> Forgive my niavate, but I thought BCBG was simply a womens designer label! How interesting... Please keep the discussion going. Is this what is discussed in the Sloane Ranger Handbook? I cant find a copy on this side of the pond, but am interested in its contents.


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Beware of showroom sales-fever reasoning: i.e., "for $20 . . ." Once you're home, how little you paid is forgotten; how good you look in it is all that matters.


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## Doctor Damage (Feb 18, 2005)

I always get a kick out of people (thankfully no-one on this forum) who fret about 'breeding'. From a practical standpoint, family trees look like pyramids, which means a whole lot of watering down over the long-term and family branches which may be shunted aside but are no less legitimate. Thus breeding, from a geneological standpoint, is meaningless.

Breeding in terms of good manners, etc., is another matter.

Hopefully we'll hear from Harris on the Trad issue.

DD


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

Unfortunately my ancestry suffers from a great deal of pedigree collapse. Not only are my siblings my siblings, for example, but they are simultaneously my cousins...3rd once removed, 4th twice removed, 5th, 6th, 7th, and so on to such degrees God only knows. It has seemed to produce the effect of distilling by repeated accumulation both the best and worst traits of our forebears. Some might say only the worst. [8)]



> quote:Hereditary class is an illusion. Throughout history, certain people have found themselves in a position of wealth and power. They invented this notion of class and breeding to make themselves feel better about being richer than everyone else, and continuing to act in their own self interest by passing their wealth and privilege on to their children. This is all luck, greed, and circumstance, nothing to do with the mythical abilities of one family being greater than another. The past 150 years have proven this so completely that I do not need to provide any examples or proofs. It is self evident.


This is not quite as axiomatic as some would wish to believe.


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## LabelKing (Sep 3, 2002)

> quote:Roman nobles were considered crude Etruscan peasants by the Egyptians. Frankish kings were barbarians to the Romans. The most upper crust English families are descended from the homeless, penniless Norman knights who came over with the illegitimate King William the Conquerer. The current American elite families started as poor immigrants from Scotland and Ireland.


The elite families of the US mostly started out as Protestant emigres on a rickety ship.

Look to the royalty of Japan or China for centuries of breeding.

*"In truth, I am not altogether wrong to consider dandyism a form of religion."

Charles Baudelaire*


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

Didn't the people with all the taste get guillotined?


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## Horace (Jan 7, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by ice_
> Hereditary class is an illusion. Throughout history, certain people have found themselves in a position of wealth and power. They invented this notion of class and breeding to make themselves feel better about being richer than everyone else,


Just to split hairs in your definition, the below proves the existence of the above.



> quote:
> and continuing to act in their own self interest by passing their wealth and privilege on to their children.


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## Anthony Jordan (Apr 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by crazyquik_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I spot these occasionally when browsing the bookshops and if anyone particularly wants one I can probably sort one out for about $12 including postage to the U.S.A.

Anthony.


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## ashie259 (Aug 25, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by shuman_
> 
> Forgive my niavate, but I thought BCBG was simply a womens designer label! How interesting...


I thought it was a club in New York where Iggy and the Ramones used to play. 

And to anyone associating old-money families with ipso-facto superiority, I would simply point out the fact that all their women look like horses.

(Edited for typo)


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

I don't think that old money, or money for that matter, gives anybody superiority. it does help greatly with style - 

my fathers family has been in this country since the mayflower, in the late 19th century they had some money, which was lost in 1929. one of my uncles married into a family that had a lot of old money (I think by anyone but Bill Gates's standards, but then again, I don't have anything, so it seems like a lot). my unckles and cousins are very "trad" in their style and in their lifestyle, in a lot of their actions. my "rich" cousins are very stylish, and live very comfortable lives, with their kids going to good schools, and living a very "trad" lifestyle. on the other hand, on this side of the family, nobody has done anything terribly special in 4 generations or so. 

my wife's family are new rich - her grand father was selling magazines at age 30 from a kiosk, and at age 70 he owned 5 factories. her grandmother had horrible taste - diomond crusted watches and very ungly jewlery. but aside from her grandfather making his money, they also build a school allowing thousands of poor south american peasant girls to get educations, and created an art collection that became the most serious collection in their country. so they might not have had style, but they were very serious people.

the best way to be trad or BCBG is to be born into it. that doesn't make you a better person, it makes you a person who understands certain style rules from birth.


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by ashie259_
> 
> And to anyone associating old-money families with ipso-facto superiority, I would simply point out that all the women look like horses.


They have to look like horses because they're competing with real horses for their husbands' attention (in Europe, anyway).


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## ashie259 (Aug 25, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Rich_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Or maybe what's happened is that horses have evolved to look like Sloaney women in order to remain popular with men. The two species certainly share a number of speech characeristics. Neigh-gh-gh!


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## AlanC (Oct 28, 2003)

> quote:_Originally posted by Vettriano man_
> 
> ...I was indeed 'issued' with a crested signet ring on my eighteenth birthday...


That's great!

Don't worry Vettriano Man, some of my best friends are aristocrats...


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## Vettriano Man (Jun 30, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by ice_
> 
> This is laughable. I can't believe anyone still believes in these old 18th century ideas of class. Have you two missed the past 150 years of history? Come on - natural selection? genes?
> 
> ...


Well, ice, I can see this thread turning into another mammoth one like 'American Trad'! Yes, in theory, you are absolutely right in most of what you write but the climate is very different over here, all these thousands of miles away. The whole thing is laughable - don't get me wrong I'm not agreeing with it and I'm merely just stating the reality, but it is certainly _not_ an illusion and is alive and well in Britain today! And goodness knows I could write a book about it.

Unfortunately, as is well known, dear old Queen Victoria sadly left a ghastly legacy that is so deep rooted that it will never disappear - although watered down somewhat - in the form of the class tier structure which is as evident today as it was 150 years ago. It still exists at all levels too, with equal amounts of distinction, but it is not unlike the heirarchy of the military or the animal world. It is indeed sad enough to see ordinary suburban people play out the rules of one-upmanship in all aspects of their lives _(marriage, homes, jobs, cars etc),_ but it is a totally different ball game to be a part of the upper middle class and the aristocracy, which in themselves have their own fierce degrees of 'acceptance' of each other. Yes, it's true - I speak from authority and I also find it absurd, and I am always the first to say that we all come into this world with nothing and we go out with nothing.

I openly admit that I am ensconced in the upper-middle bracket by birth and upbringing _(very grateful to my parents, too, for the threshold in life this gave me)_ and I was indeed 'issued' with a crested signet ring on my eighteenth birthday which I don't wear all the time, but fortunately the richness of life has forcibly educated me well, so that I equally enjoy people at all levels of society - I am certainly not a snob and I do not think myself superior to anyone, but I am just myself with everyone as any true gentleman would be. My Father's and my own generation have had to learn how to deal with class distinction in everyday life, though it has not been as hard as it must have been when my Grandfather went to the front line in 1914, after having been coocooned in Victorian cotton wool from birth.

There is an automatic 'knowing' when one meets someone of the same class - especially noticeable for me when I started courting - a sense and confidence that needs no introduction and which one recognises immediately, but which cannot always be deduced by accent and manners which of course can be bought, but those who aspire often go overboard with these attributes. I cannot speak for the aristocracy as I do not move in those circles, but people who do have told me that it is even more of a closed shop 'clique' and, apparently, in some cases it can be a lifestyle that has gone almost full circle where manners hardly exist and life is lived to grotesque extremes to the disregard of 'outsiders'!



> quote:_Originally posted by ice_
> 
> Every person in this world should be judged by their actions, not who their parents are. To do otherwise is folly.


...ice - wonderful pipe dream!, which I would embrace if it was possible!


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## EU-Flaneur (Jul 30, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by ice
> 
> This is laughable. I can't believe anyone still believes in these old 18th century ideas of class. Have you two missed the past 150 years of history? Come on - natural selection? genes?
> 
> ...


_

BRAVO. Well said._


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## Clovis (Jan 11, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Rich_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Rich_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Related, from MSN:

Boldface added to clothing content by me.



> quote:"Madonna may want to rethink her attempts to morph into British gentry, 'cause it doesn't seem to be working out all that well. Not only did she break several bones while horseback riding a few months back at her country estate, but she gave up another upper crust sport after a bloody encounter. "I was mad for shooting a couple of years ago," the erstwhile Esther admits to Tatler magazine. *"I loved my bespoke outfits and everything. It was so much fun.* That all changed when a bird dropped in front of me that I'd shot. It wasn't dead. It got up, and it was really suffering. Blood was gushing out of its mouth." Madonna says her shooting days ended then and there because "I realized I had a kind of bloodlust, and was manically shooting things and trying to kill as many birds as possible." That's quite a change from 2001, when the Big M was crowing to the BBC about her love of picking off her feathered friends: "I eat birds. You have more respect for things you eat when you go through, or see, the process of killing them."


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## kidkim2 (May 31, 2004)

shuman--

There are currently 163 copies of the Sloane Ranger Handbook listed on AddALL. (Google AddALL; then click on AddALL Used and Out of Print.) The prices average about $12 or so.

BTW, AddALL, a used bookstore meta-site, is a tremendous resource for used and rare books. You can even find out the retail value of your own treasures. (I don't own any shares of AddALL stock--though I wish I did!)


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## kidkim2 (May 31, 2004)

Please excuse me for saying so, but the topic "social class" seems to make us rather defensive. It certainly does me. And defensiveness hardly ever enhances clarity.

The fact is that the way we appear is a major contributor to our social acceptance. This is just a fact. Maybe the world would be a better place if others could peer into our hearts and judge us on our deepest inner qualities. But that isn't what happens. And so almost all of us decide whom we want to associate with--intially at least--on the basis of external cues like dress, deportment, accent, etiquette. The "social class" indicators are among the most powerful of these cues.

So rail against the social "rules" if you wish. But never for a moment believe that they can be ignored without consequence.

I, for one, enjoy the company of the well-bred and high-born. They are often accomplished, cultured, witty, good-looking, and charming. And why shouldn't they be? They've had all the advantages! If learning a few rules can enhance my opportunity of being welcomed into their company, I am not too proud to try!


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## shuman (Dec 12, 2004)

Could someone compare/contrast the styles of BCBG, Trad, and perhaps Milanese for the forum members. Thanks.


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## ice (Sep 2, 2005)

Let me clarify.

These two things do not exist:

1. class as a hereditary trait

2. a person's class conferring special abilities or attributes, beyond that persons inherent ability and attributes



But classes in society do exist, of course. Mostly they are harmless, but in some cases, especially when tied to the idea of genetic characteristics, they are wicked and inhuman, such as the old caste system in India or the slave and freed slave class during certain periods of United States history. You will understand by those examples why the notion of class tied to genetics is an especially dangerous fallacy.

There is nothing inherently wrong with class in society, and in fact it is probably beneficial because it creates cultural diversity. Certain classes can make special contributions to industry, agriculture, politics, science, the military, religion, or the arts, depending on the values and habits of that class.

But remember this: you do not need to be born into a class to participate in it. It is not hereditary. It is not genetic. Any person can be part of any class if they really want to, simply by assuming the habits of that class. And no one class of people has any special values that make them better than any other class. 

There is no "higher" class. I can't even imagine a way of defining what a higher class would be or what attributes they would have that would make them higher. Money? No, anyone lucky and clever can have money. A special accent? That can be learned. Attending a special school? No, anyone can attend any school. Perfect clothes? No, anyone can have a great tailor.

Since dress is such a strong cultural characteristic, it is natural that different classes in society will dress differently. On this forum, we enjoy discussing those nuances of dress. But don't ever think it signifies anything more than clothing.


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## Doctor Damage (Feb 18, 2005)

Now that we're all really far off-topic in this thread, let me just add one thing: Everyone bleeds red, as we'll find out after the Revolution!

Anyway, I think the club that ashie259 mentioned was the CBGB, where The Ramones got started...along with Blondie, if I'm not mistaken, plus a few other leading-edge American punk bands. Was it located in the south end of Chicago, maybe? Can't remember...

DD


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by dopey_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


it is going to close in the coming months. an end of an era


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## AlanC (Oct 28, 2003)

> quote:_Originally posted by dopey_
> 
> *B*lues *C*ountry and *B*lue*G*rass.


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

The Upper Class has traditionally been the prime torch-bearer of civilisation. One can grant suffrage to the undiscriminating bumpkin, to keep him subdued, but long after he and his pop-culture have vanished the heirs of the Upper Class will continue to sip tea from imari cups under the gilt-windowed majesty of Titian, attired in bespoke [8)]


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by ice_
> 
> There is no "higher" class. I can't even imagine a way of defining what a higher class would be or what attributes they would have that would make them higher. Money? No, anyone lucky and clever can have money. A special accent? That can be learned. Attending a special school? No, anyone can attend any school. Perfect clothes? No, anyone can have a great tailor.


This may be the case in the US, but it certainly isn't in Europe. It takes generations to acquire the subtleties of behaviour, speech, etc. (and the relations) to be recognised and accepted as upper class. Even in France, where class discrimination is not immediately apparent (or condoned) in public institutions (unlike the UK), the niceties of class status are discreetly at work in the wings - indeed the higher up you go the more subtle and the more exclusive are the class pointers. This doesn't mean that the upper classes are inherently any better than anyone else, of course. But they are a repository of traditional elitist values, and they have unassailable social and sometimes institutional power through their personal relations. This is what makes them "upper". Actually I suspect that something very similar exists in the US among the "patrician" families.


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

I nominate JLPWCXIII as gatekeeper to the Forum to keep the hoi polloi away from us. He is obviously someone of the highest standards and pedigree, which is essential.


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## Hugh Morrison (May 24, 2005)

I don't think anyone has seriously thought that 'class' was genetic for the last 200 years or so. 

However, 'breeding' is not generally thought of as being genetic in the strict sense of the word in the UK. As I understand it from Julian Fellowes' excellent novel 'Snobs' and Jilly Cooper's book 'Class', it is more to do with 'who you know' (what Mr Fellowes describes as 'the name game') and this naturally extends to 'who you came from'. It is your familial and proprietorial connections to your family and your ancestors that denote breeding, not your DNA. 

There is also a belief that 'breeding will out', ie certain genetic characteristics are passed on from your parents - this is mentioned by Miss Mitford in 'Love in a Cold Climate' but this is less common. 

My personal view is summed up in the lines by Tennyson: 
'Kind hearts are more than coronets/And simple faith than Norman blood'.

'The casual idea is the triumph of misguided egalitarianism. By playing to the desire to seem non-judgmental, the Slob has succeeded in forcing his tastes on the world at large (because to object to inappropriate dress would be judgmental)'- Patrick07690


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## 80FJ40 (Sep 26, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


yes, CBGB OMFUG to be precise. Country, BlueGrass Blues, and Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers.

80FJ40


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## crazyquik (Jun 8, 2005)

Found this online:



> quote:The BCBC (Bon Chic Bon Genre), the French equivalent of the British Sloane Ranger or the American preppie, can easily be spotted in their remain stamping grounds of Neuilly, Auteuil and Passy, the rich suburbs of the 16th and 17th arrondissements. They are easy to recognise sporting the Hermes scarves decorated with dead grouse, the velvet hairbands and the Chanel, Prada, Gucci, Hermes and lately Burberry quilted handbagsâ€"real, not imitation. For men, Lobb or Hogan shoes, Dunhill pipes and even cravats are still in vogue.
> Like their British and American counterparts, a profound conservatism, adherence to classicism and traditional values and a marked dislike of anything new or trendy are the dominant traits of this species of Parisian. You want to see them in their natural habitat? Try the VIP enclosure at Chantilly race course or spy at them sipping â€œchocolat africainâ€ with pet poodle in tow at ANGELINA salon de the on rue de Rivoli, well known by a lot of tourists, or tearoom-chocolatier â€œLADUREEâ€ on the Champs Elysees. For the â€œmore branchÃ©â€, (literally â€œplugged inâ€), of the species, dancing the night away at LES BAINS DOUCHES, Parisâ€™s perpetually â€œinâ€ nightclub located in old swimming baths.


---------------------

Beware of showroom sales-fever reasoning: i.e., "for $20 . . ." Once you're home, how little you paid is forgotten; how good you look in it is all that matters.


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## Emma (Jan 29, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by kencpollock_
> 
> When in Paris recently I stopped in Berteil, capital of BCBG and bought an olive heather herringbone (with windowpane overplaid) tweed sport jacket and some argyle socks. The jacket was very J. Press, except for a very squared-off and somewhat built-up shoulder. The argyles are first-rate. I noticed a big stock of Alden tassels loafers. All in all, the place seemed more Trad than not, but what are the main differences between BCBG and Trad?


Messieurs,

I happen to own a photocopy taken of one unis piece of Thierry Mantouxâ€™s BCBG (1986) and have had the time to translate a bit of it for you (copyright watchers, take this as an marketing opportunity, would you please?). As Iâ€™m no native English speaker, nor native French speaker, I have to use the original French wordings somewhere. But if you more able francophones will give the appropriate words Iâ€™ll replace the French ones later.

So letâ€™s begin with â€œGuillaumeâ€, the young BCBG of 1986. This is his tenue.
-	Arrow shirts, or similar ones (cotton, button collar, stripes or one-coloured)
-	some fantasy bow tie (club ties restricted to emergency cases, from fatherâ€™s armoury)
-	foulards, silk or cashmere, olive green or bordeaux
-	Lacoste [meaning shirts of course] or similar branded ones bought in braderie [cheap shops. Outlets?] in Sciences Po
-	lambswool sweaters (Benetton), in varying colours, base colour: marine blue, grey.
-	tweed west, multicoloured for going out, meeting friends, â€¦
-	blazer
-	grey flannel trousers a revers [gosh I know this one but you can guess], perfect for family reunions
-	light beige velour trousers a pinces [with pleats?]
-	beige trousers a pinces [with pleats?]
-	grey flannel suit from 16 years on
-	501 Leviâ€™s jeans
-	in pockets: agenda and address book
-	Burlington jacquard socks
-	green loden and a cap in houndstooth check (for cold weather)
-	rain coat in genre BurberryÂ´s or military style khaki (surplus de Neuilly)
-	underpants: ridiculous (Arthur) or more classic (Fruit of the Loom)
-	shoes: always well polished
-	Weston moccasins black or maroon
-	Church shoes maroon (or similar genre)
-	American moccasins, college style [Iâ€™d say penny loafers]
-	Docksides for summer
-	Rasurel surf swimming pants, tricolour, some Bermudas
-	Cotton pyjamas, sky blue, marine blue or bordeaux, and a tartan housecoat
For evening
-	black tie, ultra classic, shawl collar
-	white pique shirt, col casse
-	black Westons
-	black shades, used also against the sun (Ray-Ban or Vuarnet)
Accessories
-	Leather belts and fabric belts with motifs (golf clubs, boats, geese)
-	Zippo lighter
-	Blue Rothmans [so cigarettes]
-	round eyeglasses (if needed), genre ecaille
-	cashmere scarf
-	gloves (leather) from September to June whatever the weather [quelque soit le temps]!
Scents
-	Paco Rabanne
-	Phileas, Nina Ricci
-	Vetyver, Guerlain
-	Azzaro pour homme
-	shaving soap, deodorant, etc. from Roger et Gallet.

The places to shop [I didnâ€™t check if all of these still exist]
-	Sappes
-	Smuggler
-	Surplus de Neuilly
-	Alain Figaret (shirts)
-	Benetton
-	Cyrillus
-	Manfield (Church and Docksides)
-	Weston


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## KenCPollock (Dec 20, 2003)

I have always been surprised that certain USA brands, which are thought of as very ordinary, or worse here, have great prestige in France:
(a) Arrow shirts
(b) Fruit of the Loom 
(c) BD Baggies
(d) Marlboro (they even sell Marlboro branded clothing)
(e) Levi's (always 501s)
(f) Burlington argyle socks


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

American brands of varying degree are in evidence. Here in Geneva they have a McGregor store which I'm not even sure is still producing for the US market any longer. Prices were very high, especially if you know McGregor from the past. There are a number of shops that sell American brands in small quantities, i.e. Timberland, Gap, RL, Tommy H, and sell for probably double what they'd cost in a department store in the US. Not sure to what degree duty place a role; probably not that much. It's not AAF quality, but it represents a look. For me, BCBG is synonomous with 'snob. But people can wear buttondowns, and/or chinos, albeit with pleats, and not necessarily think of themselves as BCBG.


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by kencpollock_
> 
> I have always been surprised that certain USA brands, which are thought of as very ordinary, or worse here, have great prestige in France:
> (a) Arrow shirts
> ...


[:0]I've been wearing Burlington argyle socks on and off for 30 years without knowing they were an American brand. I must have bought hundreds of pairs in that time - Burlington are the gold standard for argyle socks in France - good quality, and a very wide range of colour combinations that change every season.


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## KenCPollock (Dec 20, 2003)

[/quote]

[:0]I've been wearing Burlington argyle socks on and off for 30 years without knowing they were an American brand. I must have bought hundreds of pairs in that time - Burlington are the gold standard for argyle socks in France - good quality, and a very wide range of colour combinations that change every season.
[/quote]

They are not at all popular here, except with a very few old preppies and are sold mostly in cheap stores, like JC Penney, for about 1/5 the Paris price.


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by kencpollock_
> 
> [:0]I've been wearing Burlington argyle socks on and off for 30 years without knowing they were an American brand. I must have bought hundreds of pairs in that time - Burlington are the gold standard for argyle socks in France - good quality, and a very wide range of colour combinations that change every season.





> quote:They are not at all popular here, except with a very few old preppies and are sold mostly in cheap stores, like JC Penney, for about 1/5 the Paris price.


Interesting - what would you say would be the top brands of argyle socks in the US?


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## KenCPollock (Dec 20, 2003)

[/quote]

Interesting - what would you say would be the top brands of argyle socks in the US?
[/quote]

Although I occasionally see some for sale made by Pantherella, Byford and Polo, it is just not a popular look in the USA and has not been so for 40 years.


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## manicturncoat (Oct 4, 2004)

There has been a lot of talk on this about how class attributes or a class can be reached by assuming the proper dress, manners, language etc. This is true but not as simple as it seems, apart from the people granted automatic entry due to their pedigree, pretenders will be subjected to a minute and constant examination. The bar can be set impossibly high and the gatekeepers are most often those whose position is the least assured, the true grandees, assured of their position, usually display a blithe indifference, when a member of their family threatens to make an inappropriate marriage they will be roused to action.


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by kencpollock_
> 
> Interesting - what would you say would be the top brands of argyle socks in the US?
> 
> Although I occasionally see some for sale made by Pantherella, Byford and Polo, it is just not a popular look in the USA and has not been so for 40 years.


Argyle socks - several brands, of which Burlington is the most classic - can be found in abundance in every men's hosiery store or department in France. This has been the case for as long as I can remember. The design is vaguely associated in people's minds with Britain and the Duke of Windsor, rather than with American Trad.

Incidentally,the Arrow brand is or was associated with the typically American button-down box-pleated often non-iron shirt that became readily available in France in the fifties and sixties. Such shirts can still be found but are rare, the design having been copied by cheap French shirtmakers.

On close inspection, a lot of the stuff distributed under the Cyrillus label in France seems to me rather American in inspiration - two-button double-vented sports coats rather than the three-button single-vented slant-pocketed English style (e.g., Burberry). It would seem that BCBG has been infused with American Trad/college style, though I think French people may not be aware of this.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

*The Young Fogey*: an elegy

Harry Mount mourns the extinction of young men who wore four-piece tweed suits, including â€˜westkitsâ€™, and loved the old Prayer Book Theyâ€™re playing rap music in the jewellery department at Christieâ€™s South Kensington. In T.M. Lewin, the Jermyn Street shirtmakers, you can dip into a fridge by the cufflinks counter and have a frozen mini-Mars while you are leafing through the chocolate corduroy jackets.

But who is left to mourn these things? In the old days, the Young Fogey, the character invented by Alan Watkins on these pages in 1984, would have been in the vanguard of the protesters, shrieking and whinnying away about the desecration of his haunts. He is silent ...because he is no more.

Twenty years after his creation, the Young Fogey has pedalled off into the sunset on his sit-up-and-beg butcherâ€™s bike, broad-brim fedora firmly on head, wicker basket strapped to the handlebars by leather and brass ties.

He hasnâ€™t actually died. The two archetypes of the Young Fogey mentioned by Mr Watkins â€" the journalist and novelist A.N. Wilson, and Dr John Casey, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge â€" were only in their thirties at the time, and so are now in their fifties and in rude health. But there is no one following in their footsteps and they have abandoned the whimsical attitudes that once defined them.

The grown-up Young Fogey â€" now, typically, in a position of power, as are Mr Wilson and Dr Casey â€" will live in some style, but heâ€™ll no longer be interested in style. You might not even notice him in a crowd. Goodbye, braces with old-fashioned fasteners and trouser waistbands strapped perilously close to the nipple line. Farewell, frockcoats cut for long-dead Victorians. No more the endless pairs of black brogues. Hello, suit of modern cut. Hello, moccasins. Hello, loafers.

The term â€˜fogeyâ€™ dates from the 18th century, and is related to the slang word â€˜fogramâ€™, of unknown origin, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. â€˜Old fogeyâ€™ was used of old-fashioned people for several hundred years before the Young Fogey came along. Alan Watkins acknowledges that â€˜the phrase had first been used by Dornford Yates in 1928â€™. He also specifically acknowledges that he borrowed the phrase from the literary journalist and Proust translator Terence Kilmartin, â€˜who had used it of John Caseyâ€™.

But it is Mr Watkins who put flesh â€" and tweed â€" on the skeleton. As he wrote in his Spectator piece, the Young Fogey â€˜is libertarian but not liberal. He is conservative but has no time for Mrs Margaret Thatcher and considers Mr Neil Kinnock the most personally attractive of the present party leaders. He is a scholar of Evelyn Waugh. He tends to be coolly religious, either RC or C of E. He dislikes modern architecture. He makes a great fuss about the old Prayer Book, grammar, syntax and punctuation. He laments the difficulty of purchasing good bread, Cheddar cheese, kippers and sausages.... He enjoys walking and travelling by train. He thinks the Times is not what it was and prefers the Daily Telegraph.â€™

There was a significant sartorial element to the Young Fogey. Dr Casey remembers the architectural historian Gavin Stamp matriculating at Cambridge in 1968, at the height of the Paris Revolution, wearing â€˜tall collars, very wide lapels and double-breasted waistcoatsâ€™. And that fed in turn into Dr Stampâ€™s architectural interests and the emphasis on High Victoriana â€" the books on Alexander â€˜Greekâ€™ Thomson, George Gilbert Scott junior and the late Gothic Revival.

But it wasnâ€™t just clothes that defined the movement. â€˜Roger Scruton had a strong architectural Young Fogey reaction,â€™ says Dr Casey, â€˜but he never followed the sartorial line.â€™

The Young Fogeys were also concerned with gentle and gentlemanly attitudes. â€˜I thought that was more striking than their way of dressing â€" a genuine idea of gentlemanliness,â€™ Dr Casey continues. â€˜Oliver Letwin wasnâ€™t a Young Fogey when it came to clothes. But at Cambridge he had that gentlemanly air that he still has; that I think goes down very well.â€™

For a while, the Young Fogey ruled. â€˜Everyone went mad,â€™ recalls Alan Watkins. â€˜The fierce Veronica Wadley [now the editor of the London Evening Standard], even then a power in middle-market journalism, declared that for the moment she was interested only in articles about Young Fogeys. I was asked to write a book about them, to be called The Official Young Fogey Handbook.â€™

Mr Watkins declined, but the Telegraph journalist Suzanne Lowry did end up writing a book on the subject. And for a while after, the Young Fogey had his time in the sun (always the English sun; foreign holidays were not for him). There were buttressing forces at work. The 1981 television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited reverberated in slowly declining waves for more than a decade. When I was at Oxford in the early Nineties, it was still working its effects through a regular crop of about 30 undergraduates a year, who had been 10-year-olds when it was first shown and had been knocked sideways by it, much as other 10-year-olds were overwhelmed by catching the Sex Pistols in 1977 or would be overwhelmed by Michael Jacksonâ€™s Thriller, which came out the year after Brideshead.

Seersucker jackets, ploversâ€™ eggs, wind-up gramophones on purple velvet cushions in punts â€" these were the toys of some of my contemporaries as late as 1993.

â€˜I had a four-piece light-green tweed suit â€" without trousers â€" made when I was at Oxford,â€™ says Richard De Moravia, 34, now a media lawyer. â€˜With a flat cap, jacket, waistcoat and a cloak lined in bright gold. The tailor wanted to make it a five-piece by making me some tweed spats. I thought that was too much.â€™

Daniel Hannan, at Oxford at the same time and now MEP for South-East England, marvels at some of the lengths the Young Fogeys went to. â€˜One particularly recherchÃ© affectation was to use old constituency names; so instead of saying Mid-Staffs or South-East Staffs, theyâ€™d say â€œLichfield, Rugely and Stoneâ€ or â€œTamworthâ€. A similar thing today, which I admit Iâ€™m rather in favour of, is consciously to convert all prices into the pre-euro currencies when travelling in Europe. But I think itâ€™s all in decline now. Fish need water to swim in. To sustain a few people with silver-topped canes and monocles, you need a critical mass in cords and shiny brogues.â€™

Thereâ€™s hardly a teddy bear or a bottle of Madeira between the undergraduates at Oxford now. When I returned there at the end of last term, on a boiling hot summerâ€™s day, there wasnâ€™t a single boater to be seen.

Look in vain round St Jamesâ€™s these days for the etiolated 30-year-old making his way from London Library to Georgian terrace home in Islington, sniffing the evening air for incense seeping under the doorway of All Saints, Margaret Street: â€˜Decidedly north German in effect â€" strong whiff of the Marienkirche at LÃ¼beck, donâ€™t you think? Or maybe Freiburg im Breisgau.â€™

Heâ€™s gone for good.

John Casey, the original target of Mr Watkins and Mr Kilmartin (â€˜I didnâ€™t mind. I thought it was amusingâ€™), agrees. â€˜There are a few undergraduate Young Fogeys left at Cambridge, but any organised body of sentiment attached to the ceremony of life has gone.â€™

The Young Fogey had looked as though heâ€™d last much longer than a decade. He was certainly robustly built to withstand the buffeting of the years, with his thick, thornproof tweed jacket, matched with a waistcoat â€" pronounced â€˜westkitâ€™ â€" the bushy mutton-chop whiskers lovingly cropped at Trumperâ€™s, doused in pomade and bordered by baby-pink skin shaved with badger-hair brushes, shaving soap and cut-throat razors.

Why has he gone? Itâ€™s not that Britain is no longer fogeyish or that the institutions the YF took to â€" the National Trust, Latin Masses, the Georgian Society â€" have disappeared; theyâ€™re flourishing. Gentlemenâ€™s clubs are as difficult to get into as they have ever been. â€˜The waiting list for the Garrick is eight yearsâ€™ long,â€™ says a spokesman for the club. If you walk down Pall Mall, youâ€™ll see a huge glossy poster that spans the full faÃ§ade of the RAC Club showing its Turkish baths in all their newly refurbished beauty. Croquet is as popular as it has ever been since its heyday just before the first world war. The Daily Telegraph does a brisk trade in boxed DVD sets of Brideshead Revisited and The Forsyte Saga. And more children now attend public school than ever before.

That very success killed off the Young Fogey. Like the SDP wilting after its great triumph â€" forcing the modernisation of the Labour party â€" thereâ€™s nothing left for the Young Fogey to fight for. â€˜It was a rebel movement,â€™ says Dr Casey, one that developed in reaction to the naked materialism, the blurring of class boundaries and the boxy, square-shouldered, belted suit of the early Eighties.

â€˜It was a reaction to bohemianism, too,â€™ says Craig Brown, the satirist. â€˜People are much more work-based now. Then there were many more people being bohemians, and the Young Fogeys took against them. I noticed the other day when I was dropping my daughter off at Marlborough, the children all seemed conventional. They all looked the same and were thinking about what jobs they were going to do.â€™

The in-yer-face, â€˜I love 1830â€™ Young Fogey spirit â€" as vigorous in its way as the Club 18-30 spirits of the Faliraki partygoers â€" had to disappear once everybody came round to its way of thinking: to buying Regency rectories, coating them with National Trust paint combinations and taking holidays in Landmark Trust follies.

â€˜I joined the Travellersâ€™ Club at a very young age as a sort of rebellious gesture,â€™ says Craig Brown. â€˜And I suddenly got worried that Iâ€™d got to the stage where I had become the real thing, so I gave up my membership. It was the same sort of thing with A.N. Wilson â€" no one could ever call him conventional.â€™

The Young Fogey was as cut off and contrary as the Millwall fan. The hooliganâ€™s cry â€" â€˜Nobody likes us, we donâ€™t careâ€™ â€" might just as well have applied to the Edwardian-suited architectural historian of 1984. When the public started to love him â€" and even imitate him â€" he had to shuffle out of his Huntsman suit and head for Armani, perhaps mournfully fishing a frozen mini-Mars out of the T.M. Lewin fridge on his way over.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:From Library Journal
> 
> This cultural history explains the European settlement of the United States as voluntary migrations from four English cultural centers. Families of zealous, literate Puritan yeomen and artisans from urbanized East Anglia established a religious community in Massachusetts (1629-40); royalist cavaliers headed by Sir William Berkeley and young, male indentured servants from the south and west of England built a highly stratified agrarian way of life in Virginia (1640-70); egalitarian Quakers of modest social standing from the North Midlands resettled in the Delaware Valley and promoted a social pluralism (1675-1715); and, in by far the largest migration (1717-75), poor borderland families of English, Scots, and Irish fled a violent environment to seek a better life in a similarly uncertain American backcountry. These four cultures, reflected in regional patterns of language, architecture, literacy, *dress*, sport, social structure, religious beliefs, and familial ways, persisted in the American settlements. The final chapter shows the significance of these regional cultures for American history up to the present. Insightful, fresh, interesting, and well-written, this synthesis of traditional and more current historical scholarship provides a model for interpretations of the American character. Subsequent volumes of this promised multivolume work will be eagerly awaited. Highly recommended for the general reader and the scholar.
> - David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
> ...





> quote:
> 
> In, Albion's Seed, author David Hackett Fischer traces the origins of four major immigrations to America and shows how cultural norms were transplanted from various parts of England to America. He theorizes the folkways they brought with them explain how and why different regions in America developed as they did. He believes they are still having an impact today.
> 
> ...


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

I suppose some minor French styling can be added into Scotch/Scots or American Scots wardrobe :

"The Auld Alliance was an alliance between Scotland, *France*, and Norway which had its origins in the Orkneyinga saga and the colonisation of Normandy. It was the first recorded treaty for mutual self-defence between European nations. Although Norway never took much part in it, it played a role in Franco-Scottish (and English) affairs, until 1746. Although Norway never invoked the treaty, she was involved in Franco-Scottish politics until 1746.

The alliance is thought to reach as far back as 1165, and William I of Scotland; although the first documentary evidence dates from the treaty signed by John Balliol and Philip IV of France, in 1295. The terms of the treaty stipulated that if any country was attacked by England, the other countries would invade English territory, as became evident at the Battle of Flodden Field, 1513.
"

*BCBG* stands for the *French* phrase, "bon chic, bon genre," meaning, "good style, good attitude.

"Although principally a military and diplomatic agreement, the alliance also granted "dual citizenship" in both countries. Thus, its influence also extended into the lives of the Scottish population in a number of ways: including architecture, law, the Scots language and cuisine, due in part to the Scottish mercenaries participating in French armies. Scots also greatly enjoyed having their choice of France's finest wines."

"Relationship with France

In 1336, at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War, the French king Philip VI provided military support for David II, who fled to France after being deposed by Edward III of England.

In 1346, under the terms of the Auld Alliance, Scotland invaded England in the interests of France. However, they were defeated, and David II was taken prisoner at the Battle of Neville's Cross.

In 1421, at the Battle of Bauge, French and Scots forces dealt a crushing defeat to the English, for which the Scots were richly- rewarded. However, their victory was a short-lived one: at Verneuil in 1424, the Scots army was annihilated. Despite this defeat, the Scots had given France a valuable breathing space; effectively saving the country from English domination.

In addition, in 1429 Scots came to the aid of Joan of Arc in her famous relief of OrlÃ©ans; many went on to form the Garde Ã‰cossaise, the fiercely-loyal bodyguard of the French monarchy. Many Scottish mercenaries chose to settle in France, although they continued to consider themselves "Scots".

It is worth noting that the form of Protestantism that was established in Scotland followed the model set out by the Frenchman John Calvin. So that most Scottish of institutions, the Kirk, has French roots.

____

__


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## n/a (Sep 4, 2002)

> quote:_Originally posted by FrancisPlantagenet_
> 
> *The Young Fogey*: an elegy
> 
> ...


----------------------

Many thanks for the post. This paragraph in particular prompted a sigh of agreement:

"But it is Mr Watkins who put flesh â€" and tweed â€" on the skeleton. As he wrote in his Spectator piece, the Young Fogey â€˜is libertarian but not liberal. He is conservative but has no time for Mrs Margaret Thatcher and considers Mr Neil Kinnock the most personally attractive of the present party leaders. He is a scholar of Evelyn Waugh. He tends to be coolly religious, either RC or C of E. He dislikes modern architecture. He makes a great fuss about the old Prayer Book, grammar, syntax and punctuation. He laments the difficulty of purchasing good bread, Cheddar cheese, kippers and sausages.... He enjoys walking and travelling by train. He thinks the Times is not what it was and prefers the Daily Telegraph.â€™"

The American version of the "young fogey" differs a bit from the British version; still, the same idea is at work. The reaction against (response to) "bohemianism" is also right on the mark. Right on.

Again, thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Harris


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Harris_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


That is why I linked to "Albion's Seed"; that is a goodway of gauging just how much it differs or deviates from the British version.

"Each of these four folk established an amazingly enduring culture in their region, a culture that successfully incorporated later immigrants from other origins who shared little or none of the dominant folkway that had become established in their new home. Their contrasting concepts of liberty are among the most visible today. The Puritan concept of liberty, "ordered liberty" in Fischer's terminology, focused on the "freedom" to conform to the policies of the Puritan Church and local government. The Virginia concept of liberty, "hegemonic liberty", was hierarchical in nature, ranging from the great freedom of those in positions of power and wealth down to the total lack of freedom accorded to slaves. The Quaker concept of liberty, "reciprocal liberty", focused on the aspects of freedom that were held equally by all people as opposed to the unequal and asymmetric freedoms of the Puritans and Virginians. *Finally, the Scotch-Irish concept of liberty, "natural liberty", focused on the natural rights of the individual and his freedom from government coercion--* *Mostly Presbyterian but a tiny minority Anglican for the last group there.*

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195069056/

"

Historian Walter Russell Mead recently proposed his own fourway division of Americans in terms of their foreign policy orientations. He divided Americans up into isolationist Jeffersonians, commercial Hamiltonians, moralistic Wilsonians, and aggressive Jacksonians. (every single one of those men were of Scots descent).

"In addition, in 1429 Scots came to the aid of Joan of Arc in her famous relief of OrlÃ©ans; many went on to form the Garde Ã‰cossaise, the fiercely-loyal bodyguard of the French monarchy. Many Scottish mercenaries chose to settle in France, although they continued to consider themselves "Scots"."

Of course New Orleans exists in America (USA) and has a French population as well which explains "cajun".

The French and Indian War is the American name for the decisive nine-year conflict (1754-1763) in North America between the Kingdom of Great Britain and France, which was one of the theatres of the Seven Years' War. The war resulted in France's loss of all its possessions in North America except for some Caribbean islands and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, two small islands off Newfoundland. The British acquired Canada while Spain gained Louisiana in compensation for its loss of Florida to the British.


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## n/a (Sep 4, 2002)

Should you become curious about a fine portrayal of the American "young fogey" in action, turn your attention to Whit Stillman's film "Metropolitan." There's a trinity of characters who, hypostatically combined, represent the (American) "young fogey" species. The three characters (Nick Smith, Tommy, and Charlie) merge to serve as the paragon of (American) "young fogey." They lament the passing of quality habits, people, and manners from bygone days, and they fear a future without them. They are proudly old-fashioned, and, in their conservative (reactionary?) attempt to preserve and protect time-tested way of life, their vulnerability to change is revealed.

Cheers,
Harris


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Harris_
> 
> Should you become curious about a fine portrayal of the American "young fogey" in action, turn your attention to Whit Stillman's film "Metropolitan." There's a trinity of characters who, hypostatically combined, represent the (American) "young fogey" species. The three characters (Nick Smith, Tommy, and Charlie) merge to serve as the paragon of (American) "young fogey." _*They lament the passing of quality habits, people, and manners from bygone days, and they fear a future without them. They are proudly old-fashioned, and, in their conservative (reactionary?) attempt to preserve and protect time-tested way of life, their vulnerability to change is revealed.*_
> 
> ...


What vulnerability and passing exactly ? Whatever vulnerability and passing you may have thought you saw praxeologically or experienced was a mere false illusion of your cognitive apparatus and nothing more :

Kant demonstrated that the world we experience is not the real world. That world does not embody our speciesâ€™ concepts of space, time, and causality. We perceive things through a scaffolding of three-dimensional space, in a tense of past-present-future, and within a framework of casual connections. As an 18th century philosopher would not have known, but 20th century physics has confirmed, these constructs are not even a component of the world that we can describe mathematically and measure with special instruments. Newtonian concepts of space and time do not apply to the macro world of special and general relativity or to the micro world of quantum mechanics. The real world is something altogether different from what we human beings experience and measure. Kant concludes that the deepest level of reality is inaccessible to human thought and knowledge. He terms the ultimate, rock bottom reality â€" of "_*things*_ as they are in themselves" â€" that underlies the perceived world the Noumenon.

There are, in addition, Biblical elements: there are Biblical passages in which the word of Yhwh is regarded as a power acting independently and existing by itself, as Isa. lv. 11 (comp. Matt. x. 13; Prov. xxx. 4); these ideas were further developed by later Judaism in the doctrines of the Divine Word creating the world, the divine throne-chariot and its cherub, the divine splendor and its shekinah, and the name of God as well as the names of the angels; and Philo borrowed from all these in elaborating his doctrine of the Logos. He calls the Logos the "archangel of many names," "taxiarch" (corps-commander), the "name of God," also the "heavenly Adam" (comp. "De Confusione Linguarum," Â§ 11 [i. 411]), the "man, the word of the eternal God."

The Logos is also designated as "high priest," in reference to the exalted position which the high priest occupied after the Exile as the real center of the Jewish state. The *Logos*, like the high priest, is the expiator of sins, and the mediator and advocate for men: ("Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit," Â§ 42 [i. 501]), and ; ("De Vita Mosis," iii. 14 [ii. 155]).

In accord with this ontology, the Stoics, like the Epicureans, make God material. But while the Epicureans think the gods are too busy being blessed and happy to be bothered with the governance of the universe, the Stoic God _is_ _*immanent throughout the whole of creation and directs its development down to the smallest detail*_. God is identical with one of the two ungenerated and indestructible first principles (archai) of the universe. One principle is matter which they regard as utterly unqualified and inert. It is that which is acted upon. *God is identified with an eternal reason (logic)*(*logos*, Diog. Laert. 44B )

"

In 6.13 Wittgenstein says: "*Logic* is not a doctrine, but a mirror image of the world. *Logic is transcendental*.

1.1

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

We could present spatially an atomic fact which contradicted the laws of physics, but not one which contradicted the laws of geometry.

I.E Michio Kaku's concept predestination as a fourth dimensional pattern in hyperspace predetermined and your life is just your soul moving through it :

2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts (Sachverhalten).

2.01 An atomic fact (Sachverhalt) is a combination of objects (entities, _*things*_).

2. What is the caseâ€"a factâ€"is the existence of states of affairs.

2.01 A state of affairs (*a state of things*) is a combination of objects (_*things*_).

2.0121
It would seem to be a sort of accident, if it turned out that a situation would fit a thing that could already exist entirely on its own. If things can occur in states of affairs, this possibility must be in them from the beginning. (Nothing in the province of logic can be merely possible. Logic deals with every possibility and all possibilities are its facts.) Just as we are quite unable to imagine spatial objects outside space or temporal objects outside time, so too there is no object that we can imagine excluded from the possibility of combining with others. If I can imagine objects combined in states of affairs, I cannot imagine them excluded from the possibility of such combinations.

2.0251
*Space, time, colour (being coloured)* are _*forms*_ of objects.

2.023
Objects are just what constitute this _*unalterable form*_.

2.0231
The substance of the world can only determine a form, and not any material properties. For it is only by means of propositions that material properties are represented--only by the configuration of objects that they are produced.

2.026
There must be objects, if the world is to have unalterable form.

2.027
Objects, the unalterable, and the subsistent are one and the same.

2.0271
Objects are what is unalterable and subsistent; their configuration is what is changing and unstable.

2.0272
The configuration of objects produces states of affairs.

2.03
In a state of affairs objects fit into one another like the links of a chain.

2.031
In a state of affairs objects stand in a determinate relation to one another.

2.032
The determinate way in which objects are connected in a state of affairs is the structure of the state of affairs.

2.033
Form is the possibility of structure.

2.034
The structure of a fact consists of the structures of states of affairs.

2.04
The totality of existing states of affairs is the world.

The totality of true propositions is the *whole of natural science...*" (Tractatus, translated by D.F. Pears & B.F. McGuinness, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961 & 1972, Â§4.11)

"

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." --
Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Philosophy could turn within, seeking an understanding of human behavior, of ethics and morality, of motivation, and responses. Or it might turn outside to an investigation of the universe beyond the intangible wall of the mind - an investigation, in short of nature.

Those philosophers who turned toward the second alternative were the natural philosophers, and for many centuries after the palmy days of the Greeks the study of the phenomena of nature continued to be called natural philosophy. The modern word that is used in its place - science, from a Latin word meaning "to know" did not come into use until well into the 19th century. Even today the highest university degree given for achievement in the sciences is generally that of "Doctor of Philosophy".

*The word "natural" is of latin derivation, so the term "natural philosophy"* stems half from the Latin and half from the Greek a combination usually frowned on by purists. The Greek word for natural is *physikos* , so one might more precisely speak of "physical philosophy" to describe what we now call *science*. " -- Isaac Asimov

physikos = physicos = physics

Hard and soft science :

1.) Lockean (John Locke) -- empirical, agreement on observations or data, truth is experiential and does not rest on any theoretical considerations.

2.) Leibnitzian (see Wittgenstein's use of truth tables in the Tractatus for an example) :

"p,x, N(x,)]
where:
p stands for all atomic propositions.
x, stands for any set of propositions.
N(x,) stands for the negation of all the propositions making up x.

5.101 The truth-functions of a given number of elementary propositions can always be set out in a schema of the following kind:

"










Formal model, theoretical explaination, truth is analytic and does not rest on raw data from an external world.

3.) Kantian (Noumenal and Phenonemonal states of affairs) --- theoretical model and empirical data complement each other and are inseperable, truth is synthesis, multiple models provide synergism.


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## SmartDresser (Jan 10, 2005)

However, class as a set of mannerisms, beliefs, and circumstances, does still exist. 
Every person in this world should be judged by their actions, not who their parents are. To do otherwise is folly.

[/quote]
Thanks, Ice. I was thinking I had no place in this thread. During the day, I met hundreds of people and get to know them despite where they live or who were their parents. Manners, consideration and passion, these traits make our world better.


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## bosthist (Apr 4, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by FrancisPlantagenet_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

&lt;edited out&gt;


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## bosthist (Apr 4, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by FrancisPlantagenet_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by SmartDresser_
> 
> However, class as a set of mannerisms, beliefs, and circumstances, does still exist.
> Every person in this world should be judged by their actions, not who their parents are. To do otherwise is folly.





> quote:Thanks, Ice. I was thinking I had no place in this thread. During the day, I met hundreds of people and get to know them despite where they live or who were their parents. Manners, consideration and passion, these traits make our world better.


Having pedigree, class, breeding, etc. doesn't make you _better_ - or even more likeable. Real upper-class people don't regard themselves as fundamentally better than anyone else - they see themselves as lucky, privileged custodians of certain social values and finely distilled traditions they hold dear. Some of them consider that their social position gives them special responsibilities, and are eager to serve the common good. People who think they are better than others merely because of their background are the worst sort of insecure snobs and nouveaux riches.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by bosthist_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## bosthist (Apr 4, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by FrancisPlantagenet_
> 
> What defines the young fogey is dress and manners. Nothing more than that. You lack critical thinking skills. How are these things not related to that "language, architecture, literacy, dress, sport, social structure, religious beliefs, and familial ways" etc.. ?
> 
> What about the Presbyterian doctrine of "decently and in order" in public at all times which has earned the sect the name the "Frozen Chosen" ? Do you not think that is related to "manners" in public ? What about social structure and family upbringing ? You must be a real rocket scientist, hmm *snicker* *laugh* ?


Here's the problem Francis:

You've not read the book so far as I can tell. You see a couple of keywords: "mannners", "dress", etc. and automatically think that the concepts in Fischer's book will apply to any discussion regarding "manners" and "dress". They don't, because Fischer is dealing with the idea of cultural transferral in the 17th and 18th centuries. Do we recognize some of what Fischer describes in ourselves today? Of course, but not the manners and dress. And no, I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm a historian specializing in the history of the early republic with a focus on economics and urban life. Being a rocket scientist really wouldn't help in this situation.

If you're truly interested in a book that would help folks on AAAC understand the American variant of the "young fogey", I would suggest John Kasson's "Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America" which deals extensively with dress, deportment, and manners, including the codifying of rules concerning the same.

Regards,

Charles


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## Innovan (Dec 7, 2005)

>Every person in this world should be judged by their actions, not who
>their parents are. To do otherwise is folly.

Even Nelson W. Aldrich in "Old Money: The Mythology of Wealth in America" https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1880559641
notes the best polo player at his school who everyone thought "born to manners" --was actually the son of a plumber who had speculated in Las Vegas real estate. But the American system too often results in "shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations". Perhaps in old europe they don't drain their rich back to poverty as quickly as we do here in the land of the self-made man.

That said, the way people *treat* their parents is a huge tip-off as to how they will act in marriage. Those that treat their family rudely will treat you just as rudely as well when you legally become their family. And if the family relishes shrill accusations and screaming fights as a way of resolving inter-family disputes, well, there's some that enjoy that kind of high drama home life, I suppose...


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by bosthist_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## Rich (Jul 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> >
> 
> ...


Social mobility (both up and down the ladder) is at least one generation slower in Europe than in the US, I'd say.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

&lt;edited out&gt;


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

I love a good punchup; if I could only figure out what is going on.


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## jlmwrite (Dec 27, 2005)

I'd earlier written -- and thankfully had not posted -- a rather self-important diatribe regarding class in modern day America. Luckily, my wife peered over my shoulder and burst out laughing!

However... Class DOES still exist, albeit not to the extent it once did. This is in part to the homogenization of America but mostly to the general rise in disposable income. Ask anyone who attended the "right" prep schools and colleges. Although eastern schools are the most visible, we southerners have long prided ourselves on our prep schools (most of which have military roots).

Believe me, even in our callow youths, we could spot the outsiders or intruders, no matter how perfectly they wore the school blazer and tie, or worked to imitate our particular drawl and dialect. It takes several generations to be accepted into any social class.

Buying his-and-her Mercedes SUVs and a McMansion in a posh area of town will never make you part of a social class. They'll take your money, let you attend charity balls, speak to you at the trendy eatery-of-the-month, put you on the list at the country club, but you'll never truly be part of their class. I've observed this happening even more so in Colorado in the fifteen years I've been here. 

Ok, ok, so I still sound like a stuffed shirt. No Kant, no broad discourses on historical developments -- just an observation from a guy who grew up preppy. It's something from which you can never get away!


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## kidkim2 (May 31, 2004)

"I love a good punchup; if I could only figure out what is going on."

LOL!

Mike


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## Acct2000 (Sep 24, 2005)

Do you consider that a good thing? 

I grew up around a lot of wealthy people in a small town, although our family was more upper middle class. While I may not have learned all the preppy stuff, I did learn that money does not solve all problems or guarantee happiness.

The wealthy families that were good families (not the majority) would have been good poor families because of their values and the people they were.

I hope I'm not offending you. I think that "class" based on birth is irrelevant. The kind of "class" that relates to manners, integrity, etc. is invaluable. 

(And yes, I know that those who have "class" would never actually use the word in that sense.)


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## kidkim2 (May 31, 2004)

While many "upper class" Americans have a good deal of money, this is neither a necessary nor (especially!) a suffcient condition of upper class membership. There are many, many more rich people in America than there are aristocrats. Take a peek at the Social Register. Or try to buy your daughter's way in to Miss Porter's.


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

When I was a little bitty baby my mommy would bounce me on her knee and tell me things for use in latter life. I think it was she who said something like 'people who talk about class don't have it." Or was it Mae West. Can't remember but the point is still valid.


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## kidkim2 (May 31, 2004)

People who talk about class don't have Mae West?


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## SmartDresser (Jan 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Rich_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Breeding and pedigree were not mentioned. Manners, consideration and passion are attitudes toward the world, not born with.


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## Innovan (Dec 7, 2005)

&gt;Talking about class is taboo. Only bad people talk about class.

Nonsense! 

Ever since Thorstein Veblen's one-joke-that-goes-on-too-long parody, we've had the idea that the lower classes can freely attack the upper at any time and place, however they want, and the upper classes are just supposed to lump it out in silence, taking it lying down. That the upper class is to play the doormat, and let everyone else loudly clod upon them, while they in return are allowed to say... nothing. And saying anything at all means that they instantly are no longer... upper class.

What rubbish!


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by jlmwrite_
> 
> I'd earlier written -- and thankfully had not posted -- a rather self-important diatribe regarding class in modern day America. Luckily, my wife peered over my shoulder and burst out laughing!
> 
> ...


I would agree with what you are saying, but I am not sure with the complete idea.

I think that it is very hard to fake your way into being preppy. I have no intention of trying. every now and again you get some idiot, like that map dealer who was cought recently stealing maps from a library, who spends their life trying to fit in, and do a pretty good job. Doesn't appeal to me at all.

and, yes, it is hard to aquire class, if you don't get it as a kid - I know a lot of new rich people who are simply horrible people.

on the other hand, the only really wealthy people I know, who are very trad, aren't the nicest people, with the happiest lives, either.

you can have class without having wealth. you can have wealth without having class. and you can be happy with both, or with niether.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

Frank P,

I am not sure what you are trying to exmplain with your out of context quotes of philosophy. care to explain?


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> >Talking about class is taboo. Only bad people talk about class.
> 
> ...


Here here, Sir!


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> Frank P,
> 
> I am not sure what you are trying to exmplain with your out of context quotes of philosophy. care to explain?


I have no doubt he will attempt to do so, once his jacket is again removed by the friendly people in white.

(For more of his wisdom, have a glance at the thread on Civility on the Interchange forum)


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

> quote:_Originally posted by JLPWCXIII_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


yes, I saw that, I was hoping for a few more chuckles.


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## 16128 (Feb 8, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> Ever since Thorstein Veblen's one-joke-that-goes-on-too-long parody, we've had the idea that the lower classes can freely attack the upper at any time and place, however they want, and the upper classes are just supposed to lump it out in silence, taking it lying down. That the upper class is to play the doormat, and let everyone else loudly clod upon them, while they in return are allowed to say... nothing. And saying anything at all means that they instantly are no longer... upper class.
> 
> What rubbish!


How do the lower classes attack the upper class? Would you post some examples?

I can't remember the last time I heard anyone attacking "old money" except in the course of a political race (fair game because attacks go both ways) or a white-collar criminal trial. Picking on patrician values/tastes isn't that widespread, really, whereas the "wife-beater" wearing, NASCAR-watching, rap-music-buying members of the Joe Sixpack nation have certainly been ridiculed quite a bit.


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

My momma meant class as in 'you ain't got no class,' not 'though we are of the lower classes, in America, if we study and work hard, and dress well, we can rise to be president.'


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## Innovan (Dec 7, 2005)

>How do the lower classes attack the upper class?

It started with "Theory of the Lesiure Class", which takes language used to describe ape courtship behaviour and applies it to the upperclass. Not the middle class. Not Joe Sixpack. Not the poor. Nope, only the upper class. Ha ha.

Of course there's wastepits of fear and loathing like https://www.democraticunderground.com

But if I were to restrict myself just to popular culture cinema, it's always the upperclass guy who's square, who doesn't have a clue. And that rascally self-made man is always showing his betters up and mugging to the audience the entire time at what a pompous and ridgid bunch of stuffed shirts these upper class boobs really are.

Fred Astaire always shows up the upper crust who despite many more years of education and opportunity, all are stiff bores. Even the ones who went to ballet school, they just can't dance as well.
Rosie O'Donnel still sits in reruns on her ugly crochet couch yowling at her better class neighbors that they are soulless, intellectually vacant and without heart.
Michael Dougles in Wallstreet was the usual cliche. Sure he had clothes and power. But no one ever becomes upper class through hard work and talent in the movies. No. It's always because they're a liar and a cheat.

Now in every modern film, the instant you see the well dressed, educated man, you've met the secretly evil antagonist. Just to draw a few out of the pot: (And I'm no movie buff so it's far from exaustive)

The Thomas Crown Affair --he's upper class, well dressed, polished in manners --and criminally insane.
The Silence of the Lambs --he enjoys fine wine, is an expert on the classics, and is a homicidal maniac.
Harry Potter --the upper class are all either homicidal racists or ineffectual buffoons. Only the scrappy self-made child who started out in the cupboard under the stairs can ever do anything right.

Aldrich makes the same point in his book (and more at length) about the now standard media cliches the upper class endures. He also points out and how silence hasn't made them go away but only allowed the attacks to become more institutionalized by the media now.

Even Paul Fussel in https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671792253/ is harsh on the upper class, calling them savages ignorant of their own nation, unable to follow even the most basic news events, overwhelmed and ineffectually feable in all endeavors, eventually reduced to speaking only in grunts and pointing.

One wonders how all these so quickly poised to slide down the social slope upper class folks ever managed to rise in the first place. Or why you would ever aspire to better yourself.

Search for an upper class character who you'd actually like to be in the movies and you'll find a strange timeline. As far as I can tell, only merchant ivory films set safely in the past (pre-WW I ) allow the upper class to be portrayed in a positive light.

People wonder why the Jane Austen stories keep being remade in the movies so many times over and over. But only in her world are the better people also higher class. Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was educated, elite, well dressed... and a man of action willing to marshal his wealth and power to protect the weak and right the wronged.

So unlike the modern media cliche of the upper class, where an upper class man is a bad man, an idle man, a lying man, a cheating man. An evil man. A man to be hated, a man to be despised.


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> 
> 
> ...


In physics, a wormhole, also known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge (and less commonly as an Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky bridge or Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen bridge), is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is essentially a "shortcut" through space and time.

Time doesn't exist (it's not a fact) since it is merely a form of an object rather than the object itself etc... Time is a human concept (thing) one uses in science within Kant's phenonemonal realm (states of affairs). In the Noumenal realm space and time (things) are in themselves in states of affairs--a unified all encompassing oneness (existence) where these things (combined "in themselves") are asymptotic to a movement such as up, down , left or right etc..



> quote:Originally posted by Harris
> 
> *They lament the passing of quality habits, people, and manners from bygone days, and they fear a future without them. They are proudly old-fashioned, and, in their conservative (reactionary?) attempt to preserve and protect time-tested way of life, their vulnerability to change is revealed.*
> 
> ...


__________
"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-Bertrand Russell


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## DougNZ (Aug 31, 2005)

I quite enjoyed the discussion on the differences between Trad and BCBG ...


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> >How do the lower classes attack the upper class?
> 
> ...


"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
-Bertrand Russell


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

Frank P

I have no idea what you are trying to say with your almost random philosophic quotes. having gotten my degree in philosophy, I am more than familiar with what you are saying, I do not understand why you believe it is relevant. care to elaborate?


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## FrancisPlantagenet (Oct 1, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by globetrotter_
> 
> Frank P
> 
> I have no idea what you are trying to say with your almost random philosophic quotes. having gotten my degree in philosophy, I am more than familiar with what you are saying, I do not understand why you believe it is relevant. care to elaborate?


I'm afraid the sad answer is that most people don't understand science at all.


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## globetrotter (Dec 30, 2004)

science?


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## SmartDresser (Jan 10, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> >How do the lower classes attack the upper class?
> 
> ...


Well said!
Check out the mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newson. A man of money, that spends lots of time solving the problem of homeless people, not putting them in shelters, but helping them get out of the cycle, getting them into housing, getting medical attention.
He is setting an example for all of us.


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## 16128 (Feb 8, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by Innovan_
> 
> >How do the lower classes attack the upper class?
> 
> ...


Those are some very good examples, but I believe there are some differences in perception regarding many of these. I think a popular disdain for the upper classes is in force in England but much less so in the US.

Veblen has nothing on the study of the Jukes and the Kallikaks.

Hannibal Lecter is one fictional serial killer. Contrast that with the many, real and non-fiction, who hail from the underclass and are the subject of films; Henry Lee Lucas, Aileen Wuornos, the maniacs in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the other fellow in Silence of the Lambs (Buffalo Bill?) Lecter's character is so interesting because there's such a dichotomy there; why would an educated person of impeccable taste choose to _eat people_? That's putting aside the inference that most serial killers ARE bright and possess social capital (not that all bright people are necessarily members of a certain class) - which is why they can get away with killing a string of people, ala American Psycho.

In the Harry Potter series, (sorry, I can't speak for the books) Hermione Granger is the most upper-class character, judging purely by accent, and she's not an evil twerp/buffoon.

Nobody listens to Rosie O' Donnell. Can anyone stand her or take her seriously? Yowling is the right term.

It's true that it is easier for most auteurs, middle-class directors or people who perceive themselves as being removed from any kind of social hierarchy, it is easier to pick on the upper classes than the lower, except in the realm of tastes. To make fun of the peasantry when you're not one seems to be cruel, whereas whe upper classes won't suffer any indignities because those below them in the pecking order think they're say, stuffy, or have old-fashioned manners.

To be honest, people still do aspire to better themselves, but the perceived message from a portion of the upper classes, whether it is true or not, is that no matter how much someone does so, he's still not really one of them: Paul Fussell skewered everyone, with a special focus on the social-climbing portion of the middle class. But anyone who reads his book, or who has a set of eyes, has to come away with the perception that no matter what someone might say about the upper class, it's better to be a part of it than to be a proletarian in purple polyester.


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## xcubbies (Jul 31, 2005)

Using films as reference points in real life is very dangerous. Characters in most films are not benchmarks, but images created to suggest personalities to the viewing public. It's manipulation, not real life. You know that!


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## Vettriano Man (Jun 30, 2005)

"...people still do aspire to better themselves" - VS

Absolutely true, and this is the same in all forms of life - look at the ant and bee kingdoms. There has to be aspiration to hierarchy in life, otherwise total equality would mean every living creature would go around like a headless chicken!


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## Fogey (Aug 27, 2005)

> quote:_Originally posted by VS_
> 
> Hannibal Lecter is one fictional serial killer...Lecter's character is so interesting because there's such a dichotomy there; why would an educated person of impeccable taste choose to _eat people_?


Dr Lecter can justify eating people for the same reasons that people can justify eating animals: 1) he is superior, 2) he wants to, and 3) he can.


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