In fact the New England WASP Fourth of July experience has its own feel, tangential to the nation’s as a whole.

The arbitrariness of “The Fourth of July” certainly stands out. When did this country start? What is the single defining event over all others that should be celebrated?

There is the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth, which of course, no.

How about the Winthrop fleet landing in June of 1630? Yes, to a point. It was a Puritan beachhead. But just getting across the Atlantic was no big deal. Even Pilgrims could do that.

The establishment of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 could be a satisfying place to start. The Puritans love order. It reflects the victory of control over chaos, so, well, a contender.

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J. Crew Factory Khakis/Chinos - ★★½ (out of five).

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Here’s a fun game. Pick up an item in any of the clothing store chains. Don’t look at the price. Try to guess how much that item actually cost that clothing store chain to procure.

Picking up J. Crew Factory khakis, I would be shocked if they cost more than ten dollars to make. But, of course, the price then gets layers of padding on it, so much so that a 40% sale then gets closer to a competitive price. It is a scam to which we’ve all become desensitized. In The Wire parlance, it is one of those silver bowls described by past-Baltimore mayor to Tommy Carcetti.

And that a collusion of influencers then “ooh” and “aah” over these mediocre, overpriced khakis is another bowlful. (A collusion might not be the exact right collective noun for influencers, but it works for me. Or perhaps it should it be an ostentation of influencers? A Ponzi of influencers? A boogle?)

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This is also true when watching TV. I need to see competence, integrity, decency, wanting the right outcome. Now is definitely not the time for viewing Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

I have long watched British shows for warmth and soul, extraordinary landscapes, and spectacular architecture. And often, some quite clever writing. So now when I need to escape (and boy do I) that is where I go first. But I am in a holding pattern as I await the next seasons of some of our favorite British shows to come out —Ludwig, Blue Lights, Line of Duty.

When I need a bit of energy, I might even watch some American shows. Although honestly, aside from The Wire, Sopranos, and Breaking Bad, I see very little American TV. Does Ted Lasso count?

But when I want a certain set of standards—restraint, taste, and intelligence (with no obvious plastic surgery or Botox shellacking)—I head for Nordic Noir. Despite it being fiction (and the number of grisly murders), the shows give you a good feel for so many cultural norms.

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Here’s my problem, and I should put problem in quotes. It is that at this time of year, when technically summer has not even begun (although just barely meteorologically speaking) and many schools are still in session, part of me is done with summer clothes.

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All Photos by Muffy Aldrich

One of the most glorious things about the New England coast this time of year is that there are now boats everywhere. And what gives it soul are the wooden boats.

To me, there are no more beautiful wooden boats than the original Herreshoffs that can still be spotted up and down the New England coast. Whether it’s their commanding NY50 SPARTAN, or their comparatively more diminutive 12 1/2(s), to the impressive restoration of their 1902 built NELLIE, under the tutelage of Wayne, of Marblehead’s F.L. Woods. And it is particularly exhilarating to see so many clustered, whether at the Classic Yacht Regatta in Newport, or Maine’s Camden Classics, or Marblehead’s Corinthian Classic Yacht Regatta.

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Suddenly the downtown and beach parking areas are packed with out-of-town license plates. Some residents bemoan having to share their streets and beaches, but, as I have said before, I find it all rather jolly. For one thing, they are happy, on vacation. Where smiles—replacing those every day furrowed brows—accompany those brisk clips when walking down sidewalks.

And—as when a prospective house buyer makes snap decisions almost immediately when driving into a driveway—we are also hit by a shedload of information when observing people in just seconds. This provides endless amounts of entertainment, at least for me. I can’t help myself but try to match the people to their particular regions, with license plates providing a cheat sheet (or reinforcement learning, as the AI people say). This is an admittedly parochial version of the Eurail pastime of trying to identify the nationalities of the people around you.

There are all kinds of clues, from hair colors and styles, to clothing choices, to gait, to overall health focus, to general bearing. Some of this is made easier, as so many these days want to signal. And my hit-rate is not bad. Helped, no doubt, by all those years of sitting in the Stop and Shop or Hannaford’s parking lots in the summer months waiting for my groceries to be brought out, matching up people with their cars and license plates.

And I can glean even more when waiting in line. Whether its in the grocery store, hardware store, a bakery, the post office, or the Farmers’ Market.

There are clear tells of regionalization, recalling the models of Joel Garreau back when he wrote The Nine Nations of North America. For me, regions seen through a wash of people who choose summering (or at least summering’s less-heeled relative weekending) on the Maine coast.

A big giveaway is often attitude. Do they make eye contact? And if they do, is it to smile and say hello, or just to give you the up-down, sizing up their competition. And while I’ll chat with just about anyone, I seldom make the first move. I find people love to talk about themselves and I am often a willing listener. Far better than talking about myself. I find I can ask just one not-too-probing, but genuine, question and off they go. Most people are far more interesting than they might appear, if asked the right questions. Everyone has their story. As with all of life, the only boring people are the dishonest people.

So, embracing the reductionism this format requires, here are some of the tribes I meet.

The Midwest

When I encounter the friendliest and most open visitors, they invariably hail from the Midwest. Open, smiling, gracious. And very chatty. With that “clean clothes and appropriately dressed” vibe. This is where you are most likely to have a genuine conversation. After which they part with a gentle touch to your arm accompanied by a “God Bless”.

Not a whiff of sharp elbowing. (They leave the social climbing, and I will take a stab at my own tribe here, to the Connecticut people, who have been honed by generations of social strata fine-tuning.) And as I left this particular bakery, I spot an impeccably clean four door pick-up truck with Ohio plates parked just outside. Bingo.

Mid-Atlantic

The preppiest bunch, or as I call them “our friends to the south” seem to hail from the mid-Atlantic region—Maryland, Virginia, and the general D.C. area. These license plates are scattered everywhere on Audis, Volvos, Mercedes and BMWs. Some with Annapolis Yacht Club and Washington and Lee stickers.

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All color photos by/of Muffy Aldrich

The dreaminess of Maine lobster has been around seemingly forever, and shows no sign of abating today. Glance at social media and the lobster icon is ubiquitous—on sweaters, hats, belts, Monopoly sets, etc.

(And as an aside, I do have mixed feelings about the overuse of icons and motifs—”Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” and all.)

But there is good reason for that—Maine lobster truly is magnificent. It’s not just that the lobster tastes good. It does. (But you dip anything in a your personal reservoir of melted butter, and you’re off to a good culinary start.)

It is more because it is an all-inclusive package, which includes the geography and the culture around it.

At its heart, the fierce independence that drives someone to wake up, every day, in the wee hours of the very dark mornings to head to a tucked away harbor, which at the beginning and the end of the season is, well, not warm. To head out, often alone, with only a bright spotlight leading the way to start pulling traps. (This is not the time for celestial navigation.)

It is a way of life, where nepotism is a mark of culture and continuity, not incompetence and line cutting. Where there is a code of trust amongst lobstermen. (And yes, there are more women these days, but they are still called lobstermen.)

Up and down the Maine coast are countless yards scattered with lobster boats. And traps. And buoys.

Obviously, lobstering can be found all over. But in Maine it is different. Growing up on the Connecticut shore it was unthinkable that my parents would allow me to eat the lobster from Long Island Sound. We had to wait for Maine. The waters of Long Island Sound are much cleaner these days, but still, I wait for Maine.

When in Maine, as a child, I dearly loved the lobstering culture. I would hear the aforementioned lone passing of a pick-up truck heading down to the harbor at around four in the morning. A few minutes later, another one. Then the silence again. (The Maine coast is incredibly silent at night.)

This would be followed shortly after by the not so silent sounds of the boat engines on the water, heading out. Jumping out of bed, I could see that lone light on the lobster boats, sometimes paralleling the single star-like glow of Mercury or Venus.

The boat engines would throttle down and up, down and up, as they went from trap to trap—pulling, emptying, pulling, emptying. Then the rhythm would be be broken by a stronger engine sound as it headed out to the next cluster of traps. Every lobsterman has his own traps clearly marked with his own buoys, and nobody else messes with them. Ever.

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Now say it got damaged.

Would you rather it was repaired or replaced?

When buying clothes, there is one thing that gives me confidence in the vendor. And that is the small sign tucked away in a corner that reads some variation of, “Wear and tear repaired at a reasonable cost.”

This tells me everything that is important.

This tells me that the company expects what I buy to be around for a while. And that the company is interested in a fair relationship with their customers.

It also tells me that the company has the ability to improve what they sell. They have a built-in feedback loop. When they see, for example, that the same seam is giving out, they know what needs to be improved.

And perhaps this point is more saliently made by considering the opposite. How do companies without this feedback know how to improve what they sell? How can there be institutional knowledge in an organization without knowing how customers are faring? (Sales and surveys fall well short.)

So, returning to the original question, what are the use cases when repairing wins versus replacing?

Famously, Elizabeth II wanted her Barbour repaired, not replaced. In some cases—and I learned when talking to the manager of the US Barbour repair facility—owners will pay as much as the cost of a new jacket to keep it wearable.

That is partly because Barbours get broken in. They mold to the shape of the wearer. There is also some evidence that in different locations, waxed jackets develop different colors over time. The patina changes. And even the traditional WASP advice of “tears are fine, stains are not,” breaks down when talking about Barbours. The whisky, gun powder, animal remnants, and so on get subsumed with every new waxing.

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So despite this, or perhaps because of this, and with apologies to George Orwell, if there is hope for character building in the next generation, it lies in summer jobs.

And while more important than ever, this is not a new thought. Decades ago, our great friend Harwood Ellis left his career as a teacher at a prestigious Boston area prep school (where his father was headmaster) to take over a Maine coast camp (which admittedly was equally prestigious), because he believed he could better build boys’ character in the two months during the summer than he could the rest of the year.

Whether organically or deliberately, one can see snippets of this ethos playing out, summer after summer, where the next generations are:

• Experiencing responsibility by being responsible for the lives of kids out on a mountaintop or sailing trip during a lightning storm

• Being the first to get out of a tent on the seventh consecutive rainy day when leading a canoe trip.

• Making a very, very expensive rookie mistake at the boatyard.

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I live in boat shoes in the warmer weather. We all do. And we always have. They are, in many regards, a perfect shoe.

In the beginning it was always the (Paul) Sperry Topsider because pretty much that was all there was. And it was all we needed. As I have mentioned ad nauseum, the Topsider factory was about an hour’s drive from where we lived on the Connecticut shore growing up, and we made regular treks to buy for the whole family. That segued over time to buying them from local boat yard stores, or upscale island shops.

And over time as manufacturing shifted from the US to lower cost countries, other companies jumped in and made their own version, mostly produced overseas (such as Dubarry), while a couple (like Quoddy and Rancourt) were still made in Maine.

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All photos by Muffy Aldrich

There are so many summer towns that dot the New England coast. Summer towns, or villages, or neighborhoods. Or enclaves1. Or islands.

In some cases, these communities’ summer populations are twice or more their winter population. In other cases, that ratio is a bit less, tamped down by a gentrification of sorts, as more people move in year-round.

What is Critical to a Summer Town?

So what makes for a perfect summer town?

Sometimes there is just a feel and it is hard to pinpoint exactly what gives one that feel. We’ll call it charm.

But this is the result of a combination of factors. And even as so much about them changes and evolves over the generations, as most things do, at varying rates, some factors mostly stay the same.

And sometimes knowing the specifics can help a community to protect and preserve mightily certain touch points, while gently improving and growing others.

My Town

I was organizing these photos that I took not too long ago in town, the same town in which I have lived for nearly all of my life. It is a lovely summer town on the Connecticut shore. My town is large enough (just under 20,000) to not be too small, it is upscale and incredibly well managed, clean and safe. And I have watched shift to ever more appearing to be a legitimate year-round town. But in its DNA, it is still a summer town.

For me, these photos summarizes a lot of what makes a summer town a summer town.

The Beaches are the Heart

The sine qua non that most defines a New England summer town is that the beaches are the thrumming heart of the community.

Yes, there are town greens with white congregational churches. There are downtowns with stores (even if too few hardware stores and too many liquor stores), and school campuses (private and the others). In most cases this list would include golf courses, but in my town, the golf course is barely a stone’s throw from the water.

But the real action is, especially in the summer, where the lands meets the sea.

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Photos by/of Muffy Aldrich

I will never forget when I first saw the L.L. Bean Boat and Tote Zip Pouch on their website a handful of years back. I was sitting in on one of my husband’s conference calls, and in its deadly dullness, I was scrolling the L.L. Bean website.

Click here: L.L. Bean Boat and Tote Zip Pouch

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I find some items of clothing perfect. These include pure cotton khakis. Baggy oxford shirts in a handful of certain colors. Boat shoes, Scottish Fair Isles, British made trench coats and tweeds, D-ring motif belts, and Maine made bluchers and boat shoes, English toggle coats, tartan cashmere scarves made in Scotland and Aran sweaters hand knitted in Ireland.

Perhaps it is because these clothes blend into the New England coast. They are ideal for getting in and out of boats, for prep school students to throw on as they run across the quad - hair wet - on the way to class. Or for casual business meetings that turn into hikes across Cambridge to find some obscure used bookstore.

The bright pinks and greens match the beach roses along the New England coast, the deep blues feel like the Atlantic Ocean, and the Donegal sweater I am wearing right now has the rugged complexion of the rocky Maine coast.

These clothes also fit my highest compliment, which is ‘class-feral’. They are the Herreshoff yachts or Sarouk carpets of clothes; they are good looking and they last. Rather than drawing attention to the wearer, these clothes blend in and improve the scene.

They overlap with ‘preppy’ clothes, but only somewhat. Less twee, of course. More subtle. Less “look at me!” Less working the room. Not exuding over-confidence but readiness.

To describe this aesthetic to myself and others, I had to come up with a new term, “The Thing Before Preppy.”

The Thing Before Preppy

For me, the origin of “The Thing Before Preppy” style started back in the 50s and 60s, maybe earlier, around the shoreline of Connecticut. A specific culture was codifying, influenced by the wealth and access of New York; strong schools of New England; and the culture of so many early settled New England towns with their deep British roots.

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Despite the fact that I woke up to snow yesterday morning, and the concomitant below zero temperatures, t…

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Growing up on the Connecticut shore, Block Island was just sort of always there. I never gave it much thought, even though we went out fairly regularly.

That’s probably because when I was a child, there wasn’t all that much to do on Block Island. The ferry rides were fun, though my mother usually got seasick. In fact, I included a photo of her on the ferry only because I so love her patch madras wrap-around skirt and white oxford shirt. I always love seeing her outfits, or get ups, as my father would always call them. I did however crop out her face as, well, she was seasick.

I must admit it came as a bit of a shock when I learned that Block Island was actually in Rhode Island, not in Connecticut. Not my proudest moment, but I was young. Like most places in New England, it is old (by US standards), first settled by the English in 1661. Original purchasers and first settlers include a handful of our own ancestors like John Clarke, John Alcock, Nathaniel Winslow. (Although it was sometimes Winsley back then.) In fact, to say not much happened there then may even be an understatement, not unlike the Vineyard and Nantucket back in those days, which were also purchased by some of our other ancestors, a bit earlier in the 1650s. And look what has happened there.

However, if Block Island was boring then, it sure isn’t now. (Or rather, just “Block”, as those who are exquisitely in the know will remind you. More than once.)

Once a place gets a reputation as a party island, it’s a bit hard to go back. Beach drinking and live music. It all started with the advent of Block Island Race Week, New England’s answer to Cowes Week, which Storm Trysail Club started in 1965, just about the time these black and white photos were taken.

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Back in the day it went without saying that women’s khakis were 100% cotton and made in the USA. The only real challenge was to find the right cut. I have had a great many pairs over the years in a variety of styles – pleats, plain front, tapered leg, wide leg. To think back to the details about which I moaned now seems like folly. I would kill to have those minor “problems” today. (I am looking at you, pleats.)

I spend (waste) hours in search of women’s khakis these days, each new season bringing a false hope of manufacturers/vendors getting their act together and offering a decent product. Virtually everything is sweat-shopped out now. And even more recently, fibers are diluted. Stretch, performance, whatever they call it, have infiltrated virtually all garments at a breathtaking speed.

So I ran an experiment to test a hypothesis: “I can buy decent-enough khakis from a popular, mid-market clothing vendor at a reasonable price and work effort.” (Mathematicians and scientists may recognize my approach as Proof by Contradiction. Our H₁.)

Here’s how it went:

Background:

A classic summer uniform is khakis, oxfords, boat shoes, and canvas totes. (I am calling khakis what many people now call chinos.) Currently, khakis are the most difficult of this quadrumvirate to source, especially for women.

What goes into a great pair of khakis is fairly straightforward:

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From the Connecticut shore, along the Rhode Island coast, up to Massachusetts (and The Islands), with the final destination of the Maine coast, this is the time when we feel most at home. The season is opening up.

Thus, here are the top nine reasons why this is the best time of year at New England boatyards.

9. Animals milling about

“That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs: they love animals and hate people.”

- Gordon Gekko, Wall Street.

There are always dogs around a good boatyard. The launch driver probably has a Golden named Spinnaker or Fender.

But they seem more plentiful, more free, even happier this time around. They smell everything. The explore. Their joie de vivre is infectious. They are the good will ambassadors, the greeters, and the food cleaner uppers.

8. Fewer Competitives

Obviously, this thing — whatever you want to call it, such as “preppy” or “WASPy”— abuts a culture of voracious narcissism. (Or worse, aspirational voracious narcissism.) Nowhere is this more on display than along the New England coast in summer - boatyards, yacht clubs, anywhere near the salt water.

Leaning into the snark, if I may, their presence is pervasive. While most of us may prefer to be in a world where all boats are the same size or size doesn’t matter, others want the biggest boat. While some value sportsmanship and comradery, others value winning above everything else. While some crave the sea, other crave photographs of themselves at sea.

And this has always been the case. Making progress with strange bedfellows is table stakes. (Hunters and environmentalists against developers, et al.) It is only together can much of this world be preserved.

But one can be forgiven for appreciating that this time of year around the water has a mix of people more skewing towards the former in the list and not the competitives. We do enjoy that, while it lasts.

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There is no shortage of picturesque towns and fishing villages scattered throughout Mid-coast Maine. Nor craggy peninsulas (peninsulae, to keep my Latin teacher happy), where the roads are long, narrow, winding, and hilly. And with sharp drop-offs at the edges. Ditches if you will. Everyone drives fast. And at night, Maine is dark. There are very few street lights.

This is why, back then on these trips, I never really knew where we were going, or where we had been.

The driver was a family friend. My parents were relegated to the back, and I was always in the front passenger seat. (Plus ça change.)

This friend, Chester, had bought the property next to where his parent’s summer house had been, which they had bought when he was a freshman at nearby Bowdoin College. And his own summer house had the most breathtaking view. Literally you gasped, every time. Up on a hill looking out over the bay, the islands and out to the Gulf of Maine. Lobster boats at sunrise, sailboats at sunset.

He would host us there many times each year. (We both lived on the Connecticut shore, and during the hottest summer days he would call us and say, “I am in Maine and you are not.”)

Part of staying with him included his taking us all around Mid-coast. Either in his shiny new Volvo wagons – silver or grey (he bought a new one every year) – or a bit later, his magnificent Mercedes wagon, diesel. The Mercedes, I remember, was heavy and stately. Always playing was classical music, and on Sunday mornings, it was Robert J. Lurtsema. Pro Musica on WGBH out of Boston.

Shopping was one raison d’être for excursions, mostly for antiques. (Antiques hadn’t yet been verbed.) The Maine coast was, and still is, filled with old Captain’s houses and barns out of which antiques are sold. Sometimes by appointment only, or if you were lucky enough to see an open sign. Maine is an independent sort of place.

Partridge Antiques — a highlight — was in an unassuming but vast old barn, filled with brilliant English antiques (mostly Georgian, hence the brilliant) which they regularly brought back from their native England. They kept exotic Egyptian dogs, greyhound-like in appearance. At that point Mr. Partridge and his wife were quite old, and they were elegant and friendly and I enjoyed their lovely British accents.

But the majority of drives centered around eating. Or later in the day, drinking.

Breakfast could be at the Bristol Diner, probably 17 owners ago, the earlier the better to hear those rich Maine accents of the older generation of lobstermen. Or at the Pine Grove restaurant, somewhere in Damariscotta (I never really knew how we got there). Once we went in search of the alewives fundraising outdoor breakfast being held on a Saturday morning, which I now know was in Damariscotta Mills. We slowed down, saw a cluster of men cooking under the tent as the rain poured down, slickers on. We decided to keep going. I always felt a bit guilty about that.

Sometimes it was a longer ride down one of the peninsulas — although it was always a long ride to get anywhere — to Christmas Cove and the Mitchell’s popular waterfront inn/restaurant. Decades later, an early childhood friend would marry into that family.

Going to Camden and then to the Sail Loft restaurant in Rockport (with their petite blueberry muffins) were regular treks. And somehow always twisting ourselves into fits of uncontrollable laughter, especially at the Sail Loft, which Chester could always do with my mother.

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I am often asked, what is the foundation of a preppy shirt wardrobe?

This quickly spirals. So a more focused and practical way to think about it is, “What if there was some unfortunate accident on a large scale and I lost it all. What would be the first seven shirts I replaced?”

And because it is preppy, then…

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“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade” (Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.)

For each pairing, which are you more likely to wear in early spring?

Give yourself one point in your preppy column for every A choice, and one point in your Sloane column for every B choice. (You cannot choose both.) Where you have neither, take no point.

All photos by/of Muffy Aldrich.

1. Light Outerwear: Stand Out vs. Blend In?

2. Boat Shoes vs. Wellies?

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