What is that WASP aesthetic?
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Anonymous
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Tory Burch
Not as a brand but as a personality. WASPy in my opinion and Reese witherspoon. |
Anonymous
What does WASP mean? |
Anonymous
Jews and Catholics hitting a lot of home runs on this WASP thread. |
Anonymous
| I really want to understand this thread. Can someone explain what WASP means? |
Anonymous
| White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. At least at the inception that’s what it stood for. |
Anonymous
As noted earlier in the thread, term has roots in the Ku Klux Klan. |
Anonymous
There really is a divide between northern and southern WASPs. As a northern WASP (who doesn’t really identify bc I don’t like the culture), I really don’t know any southern ones. We are New England types, very old money, but we do hunt (on horseback, not w/ guns). |
Anonymous
I’m UMC California and have never heard of Jenni Kayne. I had to google her. |
Anonymous
Agree, as a fellow NE WASP. Part of it I think is the definition of the P. I think NE WASPs would generally consider Protestant to be mainline high Protestant religions (Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc). A lot of the Southern faction is Baptist and I think that's a real stretch for anyone in the NE and pushes the WASP label a lot. I went to school in the South and no, no NE WASP would dress in LP cosplay and then speak in tongues to the Baby Jesus. I don't really count whatever you want to call that. |
Anonymous
Seriously? She has stores in nicer areas. That’s pretty surprising. Definitely the CA vibe |
Anonymous
| I pretty much don’t think there are Southern WASPS. There are a lot of Southern hyper preppy conservatives. WASPS I know: ride, wear little makeup are long limbed, value the outdoors, sail, travel, emphasize education, cooks simple food well, have slightly dated but beautiful homes that are not McMansions, drive luxury understated cars, always wear good shoes, don’t wear rayon, are Episcopalian or Congregationalist, are well read, write hand written thank you notes, have beautiful gardens, May highlight hair but never to extremes, are careful about too much sun, don’t wear stilettos, resolve good shoes, entertain a decent amount, ski, have second homes often in Nantucket or Maine, or more remote Hamptons areas, belong to country clubs, golf, like simple cocktails, wear solid colors, like fair isle, fisherman knit, tweed, cashmere, and waxed coats, camel hair, and plaid.. are charitable, but not showy about it, look down on new money, hate labels, like crew, lacrosse, tennis,golf, skiing, club swim team. Have lots of bookshelves and wood floors, fresh cut flowers, hand towels from Yves Delorme or similar, have a penchant for early riding, eat moderately and fairly healthfully |
Anonymous
| Early rising and re-sole-shoes per typos above |
Anonymous
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Notes on WASP
Technically, I am pretty much 100% wasp. Sure, there may be a few Catholics here and there, but even my ancestors who settled in Maryland in the 1600s were the Protestant kind. I have both Northern and Southern WASP lines. I grew up in a northern east coast waspy city surrounded by people with summer houses in Maine who went fox hunting. I love horses and I used to ride. I am a member of one hereditary organization (I feel like saying which one would be un-waspy) and eligible to join others. Maybe even all of the others. Now, all that being said, my family hasn't been wealthy or amassed any heirlooms for at least the last few centuries. A large chunk of them came to America and immediately headed for the hills, perhaps longing for the freedoms they had enjoyed in the lawless borderlands before being... arrested or needing to suddenly leave town. This is true of both the northern and southern branches. A lot of the northerners went south. The ones who landed in New England almost immediately abandoned it, and frankly, I can see why. Nearly every generation moved west. Fortunes rose and fell. There were a lot of preachers and postmasters. All the Protestant religions, an errant Swede in 1904 when they reached Montana. Before leaving Montana for Nevada and then California, where they ran out of land. I believe they wore flour sacks, which had colorful patterns on them and could be sewn into dresses. Shoes optional. Lots of blondes, but that might have been the sun bleaching their hair when they worked in the fields. By the 20s one branch had shed their planter roots enough to be in a Steinbeck novel. (They weren't, but might as well have been.) When you have ten children with nearly every generation (as astonishingly many did), you don't have land enough for all ten. Some move on. And America was handing out land like lox at a bar mitzvah. True, mostly stolen, but history isn't a morality play, it is just is. There is a term for my family, and it isn't "low WASP" although that would be the polite term. I didn't know my mother's family was southern (they're the exception they never left the one state), and I didn't know my father's family had roots that spread so wide. Nobody really knew, we had fragments of family trees, whispers of Cherokee chiefs (debunked), and a long stretch of empty when people asked where we were from. No one was really sure, although the records show respectable farming folk popping out tons of kids and going to church, fighting American wars. On my mother's side there is more than one death by train and one by lightning. And some of them were, I think, a bit lower wasp than the others. But I didn't know any of this, growing up, only child in a single parent (divorced) household, 3000 miles from the rest of my kin. So I wouldn't say I am from the same tribe as the eastern wasps, even if I am probably related to a lot of them. My hereditary organization is full of wasps like me. We all have mostly straight hair. Wear a lot of sweaters. I don't dress the part, but at my boarding school (I did go to a waspy boarding school, listed in the Preppy Handbook) we all wore our father's shirts, boxer shorts, men's blazers, and leggings or joujou jeans. I guess the sporty wasps wore levi's. Never Lee's. I have no family jewelry. You wouldn't recognize my family name, although it is ancient and English. I am the farthest thing from preppy but I still retain a fondness for LLBean shoes, back from the times when I was trying to fit in. For what it's worth, the high wasp families I know have sailboats. Two of them, unrelated, actually build them as an occupation. For money? I don't ask. One is bohemian and sold their family place in a Hampton for a house in Maine. The other still has the family place in Maine as they have since at least 1850. My father had a sailboat for a few years, but he never really learned what to do with it and finally he gave it away. (It was more expensive to keep than it had cost.) I have never seen the point in sailing but I do like the horses. My waspy BFF whose family is a lot like mine except they founded Alexandria, is horse crazy, and so are her kids and her husband, who dresses like a perfect wasp and is High Church... Although his family were sikhs like three generations ago. She wears a lot of prints, straight skirts just to the knee, and pearls. I have no idea where they get their clothes, but I would guess not in America. (They don't live in America.) Another wasp friend is Catholic and third generation Irish... But she married an English title so I guess that should bestow some honorary status. This is probably too long and rambling. Apologies. Point summary: high and low WASP is an accurate thing. Straight hair. (I hate straight hair, but I am cursed with it as are a startling number of wasps I know.) LLbean shoes. Sailboats. And, I agree with the conclusion most have drawn on this thread: most wasps are Catholic or Jewish, although I suspect around here there's a chunk of Asian wasps representing as well with sweaters and pearls and Swiss boarding schools. |
Anonymous
| Re. Notes on WASP - fantastic piece of writing! |
Anonymous
| Ty. Glad my insomnia was productive. |