The all-American preppy look is a sartorial staple.  It has continued to appear in various forms in fashion and popular culture.  Lisa Birnbach, who first authored The Official Preppy Handbook in 1980, has recently published True Prep: It’s a Whole New World, a reexamination of American prep in the 21^st century; Tommy Hilfiger described his most recent menswear collection as “indie prep;” this month Gant reissued its iconic Yale Co-Op shirt once sold at the Yale bookstore in the 1960s; and in the summer of 2010 for the first time in 45 years, Take Ivy, a compilation of photographs about Ivy-League prep, was reprinted in the United States.  But what happens when urban street-wear goes to prep school?  Thanks to bloggers Josua Kissi and Travis Gumbs, this dialectical style is displayed on StreetEtiquette.com.

Based out of the Bronx, the duo claims to proffer an urban perspective on classic menswear.  They aim to reinterpret historic menswear trends with Kissi and Gumbs’s signature aesthetic.  This aesthetic is best described as an urban male’s foray into gentlemanly dressing.  It combines classic menswear tailoring with street swagger, American prep with New York cool, a little black radicalism and some camp.  More a canvas for their own personal style, Street Etiquette touts black gentlemanliness and respectability – it is not gritty street style but a more refined version.

Classic American prep is in danger, but in a good way.  When Take Ivy was first released in the sixties to the American public, it served as a window into the lifestyle of an exclusive body of people.  Now that window has been broken.  Influences of grunge, punk and hip-hop have entered the prep sphere.  With the confluence of distinct cultures and styles magnified by the Internet, the Street Etiquette aesthetic is only one mimetic example of a 21^st-century reinterpretation of this American style.  So what happens when prep interacts with the street?  How has the Internet contributed to this shift toward style hybridity?  What was once a clearly delineated style of the elite, prep is now adapted for a modern sartorial democracy.  Is there really "true prep" anymore?