American Ivy, Chapter 1
In the first episode of the Articles of Interest topic titled “American Ivy”, Avery Trufelman introduces the topic of trends. We may think of trends as short, popular styles of fashion that come and go, but Trufelman successfully demonstrates that that’s not always the case.
She first introduces the company WGSN, which is a “trend forecasting” company. Trends that we think are our own free will, in reality, are sometimes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Companies like WGSN research trends, and sell their predictions to companies that stock products following said trend, and eventually those clothes end up in our closets. The reason that trends are able to be forecasted, men’s apparel stocker Peter Guy explains, is because “at their root, trends come from the tension between wanting to stand out and wanting to fit in” (00:25:35).
At their root, trends come from the tension between wanting to stand out and wanting to fit in.”
American Ivy: Chapter 1 (00:25:35)
This urge to stand out and fit in can best be explored in a Japanese fashion book called Take Ivy, which contained pictures of young men on Ivy League campuses and the clothes they wore. Their style is described as “preppy”, but Trufelman says that “preppy” isn’t a trend. What we call “preppy” is just a combination of layered clothes, “it’s just what people wear” (00:25:56), which is then aggressively capitalized upon by large companies.
Research Questions
Research Question 1: Are trends, to a degree, something innate in human culture?
Research Question 2: Do people buy the trends just because they are
there?
Research Question 3: How has American society changed so much that “prep” has come back in?
Research Question 4: How has the Ivy Style stood the test of time?
Claims
Claim 1: Class plays a big role in the making and spreading of trends.
Claim 2: Anybody can spot megatrends but not everybody can see the trifecta, or the intersection between crises.
Claim 3: Preppiness is not a trend, rather it’s something that just always exists.
Claim 4 (Preliminary Thesis): The prevalence of preppiness has superseded its classification as a “trend”.
A Response
This episode lays out the broader context of trends before Trufelman formally introduces to us the trend/anti-trend of Ivy. Because as important as it is to identify trends, we have to identify why they exist.
Though there is a multitude of stimuli, trends are always a reaction. A reaction to a combination of changes in culture, politics, inequality, marketing, advertisement — the list goes on. This podcast makes it its goal to study every aspect of change that led up to the proliferation of Ivy: Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Environmental, and Legal.
By the end of this podcast, we’ll have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of trends, through the lens of what’s happening around them. The zeitgeist.
Works Cited
Cambosa, Teddy. “WGSN Launches Consumer Tech Vertical to Aid Asian Brands in Future Trends.” MARKETECH APAC, 7 Oct. 2021, https://marketech-apac.com/wgsn-launches-consumer-tech-vertical-to-aid-asian-brands-in-future-trends/.
Trufelman, Avery. “American Ivy: Chapter 1.” American Ivy: Chapter 1 – by Avery Trufelman, Articles Of Interest, 26 Oct. 2022, https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/american-ivy-chapter-1.