I used to wear a lot of clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch. At first it was just because they were popular and everyone was buying them; then I actually started developing my own taste in clothes and decided that I liked some of their preppier polo shirts - also they make quality clothes that don’t fall apart like Old Navy or American Eagle and their stores are everywhere.
Then in college I started wearing even preppier clothes than that - Lacoste argyle sweater vests, J.Crew sweaters, dress shirts, that type of thing. Now Abercrombie feels like a step DOWN, and I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. There are, it seems, two kinds of men’s shirts at Hollister, Abercrombie, American Eagle: polo shirts and T-shirts with “surfing” motifs (what I like to call fake authentic shirts, advertising little mom-and-pop surf shops and auto shops and restaurants and stuff that don’t actually exist in real life.)
These clothes are very fashionable with high school and college students. They’re not cheap - they cost just as much as their counterparts from Eddie Bauer, J.Crew, high-end department stores or wherever; also the material, in my opinon, is just as high-quality. But I can’t bring myself to call them “preppy” because they seem a little too bright and colorful, rather than understated. To me preppy means the kind of clothes you’d wear to a golf club or a semi-formal function - not brightly-striped polo shirts, multi-colored belts, puka-shell necklaces, and fake-weathered jeans - but a high-school student wearing the outfit I’ve just described would be called “preppy” by his peers.
Is there some other word for that Abercrombie style?