Prep’s family tree: The Garden Un-even
On the connection between prep fashion and Eastern Suburbs gardens. Art by Ellie Stephenson
April 18, 2021
Prep in Australia, generally speaking, is dead. In a country colonised long after the establishment of the British and American colleges where prep fashion was derived, the many bastions of prep fashion have faltered. Qualities such as age, parentage, and cultural proximity to the Ivy Colleges have lost their draw in a country two steps and several centuries removed from prep’s source (the Preparatory schools of England). Even the University of Sydney, inarguably the country’s preppiest tertiary educator (Vampire Weekend’s photoshoot on the campus tennis lawns comes to mind), maintains none of the cultural cohesion of universities such as Yale or Oxford. The ivy on the Quadrangle’s walls is just for show.