My god, that was awful!
I knew the term “preppies” in the mid 1960’s. I don’t know whether it was new then. I was going to prep schools, though I didn’t fit in real well (to be fair, I doubt I’d have fitted in real well much of anywhere.)
(I have no idea when I first heard “yuppies”, except that I’m pretty sure it was later than that.)
The Yippies were from the 60s ( the Chicago 7), a revolutionary group.
Jerry Rubin was one.
When he got a professional job and started wearing a suit, he became a Yuppie.
There was a series of debates, Yippie Vs. Yuppie, he and Abbie Hoffman supposedly had.
When I went to college in the early 90s, the preppie fashion was to dress like a hick farmer. We used to get these J Crew and LL Bean catalogues. Abercrombie & Fitch was only in a few shopping malls and still looked like the sort of place Ernest Shackleton would buy his clothes. A lot of people dressed in flannel shirts and barn jackets and oversized wool fishermen sweaters.
I guess the equivalent now is “finance bros” or “tech bros” with corporate casual clothes and Patagonia vests.
1985ish
Preppies and yuppies were easily confused but there was one key difference: preppies were “old money” and yuppies were “new money.”
It’s not exactly that. Preppies and Yuppies differed the most in their ages. Preppies were children and young adults while Yuppies were working college graduates. Some Yuppies had been Preppies. ‘Preppie’ was more about an attitude of style and cultural superiority that included plenty of middle class new money. Of course there were tiers of preppinicity based on particular schools and family wealth, but it was also an aspirational approach for achieving new money by association with high end of the status. Yuppies were as defined, young urban professionals, college graduates making good money in the corporate boom years of the 80s.
I just did a Google Ngram search on “preppie”, “beatnik”, “hippie”, and “yippie”. It’s unlikely that any of these first appeared in writing rather than speaking. “Preppie” first began to be common about 1940 or so. It presumable began in areas where there were in the same general area both relatively well off people who could send their kids to private schools if they wanted and people who could never possibly afford to send their kids to them. The 1967 novel The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton makes this distinction with the terms “socs” and “greasers”. She began writing the novel in 1964, so the distinction began at least that long ago.
“Hippie” began about 1960. It replaced the term “beatnik” which had existed since about 1951. The term “hippie” was originally about the general attitude and style, not the political opinions, of them. About three years later, the term “yippie” was created to describe hippies who considered their political opinions important.
Now I’ve done Google Ngram on “yuppie”, which began being used about 1978.
“Preppie,” as a fashion trend as opposed to a social caste, in its resurgence 50-40 years ago, was a response to the previous trends of the 1960s-70s. Not coincidentally along with the reemergence of conservative politics.
The flair of Glam Rock and Disco brought Latin and African American into men’s fashion. On the other extreme was the remnants of the hippies. Now, Hollywood thought and still thinks that hippies wore tie-dye headbands, Edwardian top hats, sunglasses with small, rectangular purple-tinted lenses, and fur-trimmed vests. But in reality it was blue denim workwear and olive drab army surplus. And, to be resurrected in the 90s, flannel.
Preppie jeans were white, paired with polo shirts or chambray button-down, and ‘weegin loafers (no pennies of course). The look said yes to relaxed standards of formality, but no need for frugality.
The preppies at my school wore two polo shirts, one over the other, with upturned collars. These were usually Lacoste polo shirts with the stupid embroidered crocodile logo. Then as now, they are expensive shirts; $125 at Nordstrom.
There was certainly some tie-dye; and a lot of embroidered patches on the blue denim. I don’t remember any top hats, purple sunglasses (or many sunglasses at all), or fur-trimmed vests.
ETA: The preppies I knew at school wore school uniforms, and complained about them. I didn’t know what most of them wore outside of term. We weren’t allowed to wear jeans in school, except when doing cleaning duty.
Or as George C Scott called them, those shirts with the alligator on the tit.
I remember Jerry Rubin turning from hippie to capitalist (pretty sure that was the late’70s).
But the big speaking tour of him and Abbie Hoffman, billed as “Yippie vs. Yuppie” wasn’t until the mid-'80s.
See post 42 above.
I didn’t hear this term for Young Urban People until the late 80’s.
Nitpick: the term yuppie means “young urban professional” not “young urban people”.
Then I must insist that I and my impeccable sources are…probably wrong.
Mad magazine, circa 1990 or so. I would’ve been 7 or 8 at the time. I found it an odd thing to be making fun of because I didn’t know any adults who were like that.