Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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"Please watch your profanity, preppy." "Why do y ou think I went to prep school?" "You look stupid and rich." And so went the exchange between Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal as star-crossed college students (Radcliffe/ Harvard) in the 1970 tearjerker Love Story. And while the term "preppy" was certainly nothing new, that line brought it into the limelight. Remember, stylistically, the late '60s were about as far away from preppy as punk or goth. Pant legs were elephantine to accommodate platform shoes, shirts were cut from clingy fabrics like Qiana that demanded near-anorexia, and hair was long, frizzed, or feathered. This mas- sive attack on taste was a direct response to the repressed, buttoned-up '50s and early '60s, the turbulence of the race and gender wars, and, more than anything else, drugs. For a while there, it seemed as if every- body had just stepped out of a Peter Max poster. "We wore our own clothes for the unscripted scenes," remembers MacGraw. "Most of mine came from The Villager." (For those under 50, The Villager was a leading women's sportswear company founded by Max Raab and famous for its Ivy League styling.) MacGraw's wardrobe of peacoats, turtlenecks, kilts, tights, and long scarves became the uniform of preppy girls in cold climates everywhere, along with O'Neal's shearling coat, Shetland sweaters, and pinwale cords. Though it was filmed 45 years ago and took place in Cambridge and its environs in Massachusetts, the preppy sartorial style of Love Story is alive and well in Chicago today, as Chicago's core prepsters will attest. Just look at folks like local designer Brion Judge, whose carefully considered ensembles of Tattersall, tweed, and rep stripes outdo the latest rigs from the Polo empire. John Cialone—another Chicago designer who Nearly 35 years after the publication of The Offi cial Preppy Handbook , Windy City residents' penchant for plaid is alive and well. By Steven Stolman YOU BETCHA, BIFF PREPPY CHICAGO? MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 117