The Rules of Prep

(Used with permission from The Navy Blazer)

It's no secret that I am the queen of the wannabe preps. It's taken a long, long time for me to find my personal style. And in that time, I learned a lot about fashion and clothes. Those lessons were, in short, painful, ugly, and often did not match. Now that I've finally realized that my style is really sort of low-key preppy, I'm very slowly moving my wardrobe away from it's hot-mess-express phase into a I-swear-I'm-not-colorblind phase and eventually to the final look-I-really-can-dress-myself stage.

As I move into a more preppy style, I have come to understand the phenomenon known as snobs. While I myself am a bit of a snob (hey, everyone has flaws!), the painfully preppy people around here are just snobby to the point of rude. There is two points of view on preppy. There are people like me, who think that preppy is just as much, if not more, a mindset. Then there are those people, who judge someone's worth by how many Shep shirts and Lilly dresses they own. I've never really liked that latter, as I cannot afford Vineyard Vines or Kate Spade or even Nordstrom Rack for that matter. It's very hard to transition into a preppy style if you don't fit in with that group.

I've been struggling to do so, when I stumbled upon a true gem, a new fabulous blog called Navy Blazer. Grown out of the preppy centered subreddit, the beautifully designed blog covers definitely caught my eye. I first opened it up, expecting to read a few posts and then move on. Instead, I opened it up, and read pretty much every single post on the site. Describing themselves as a "modern community dedicated to classic American style, I can pretty much tell you I love the site, I just might submit a post this summer!

I wanted to share my thoughts on one my personal favorite posts of theirs, The Ten Commandments, the ten rules of prep to live by. My favorite rules?

1. Ignore Fashion - Basically a golden rule for how I dress. While I do eventually accept the longer standing trends, and every now and again I'll get a trendy necklace or scarf or something, all it takes it one look at, like, anything on 99% of the runways during fashion week to remind me why I love the preppy style.

2. Quality Over Quantity - The reason why I loathe shopping at stores like H&M or Forever 21. Some of the cloths may be cute, but I guarantee they'll fall apart after two washes, max.

3. Old Over New - This one speaks to me on so many levels. I live in what I call the Poor Prep style. I'm on a super strict budget, so consignment and thrift shops are like the homeland. So many preppy pieces stand up incredibly well over time, I can't tell you how many amazing Ralph pieces I've picked up on consignment. They might be 10 years old, but a quality sweater never goes out of style.

4 Thou Shalt Not Try Too Hard - If you don't understand the need for this rule, you're the reason we have it.

5. Thou Shalt Not Brag - I don't begrudge anyone their success, if you can afford everything in Ralph's summer line good for you! But when people flaunt their clothes for the sake of bragging? Yeah, not a fan. Modesty and Humility are a thing. This really fits into the next of my favorites too.

8. Attitude - Preppy is such state of mind, I can't even express this enough. Don't be a stuffy spoilsport all the time. While it's good to hold yourself to a high standard and have an appreciation for the finer things, it's also good to be able to take off the blazer every now and again. Toss on a T shirt and roll down a hill or grab a hairnet and volunteer at the local soup kitchen for a few hours. High standards doesn't have to mean you're a too-good-for-you kind of snob.


So those are my thoughts on the Navy Blazer's Ten Commandments, you should definitely go check out the post for the rest! I 100% recommend their blog to anyone, its pretty amazing.

That's all I've got for now, so until next time,

Writing to you from M, Personally