Robert F. Kennedy Jr., essentially the most attention-getting impartial candidate for president since Ross Perot, could not have the ballot numbers to finish up on the controversy stage subsequent month. However he more and more has one thing else: a repute because the electoral “X issue.” Which suggests it’s more and more unimaginable to disregard what could also be termed his “P issue.” And even “Okay issue.”
“P” being prep and “Okay” being Kennedy. In an election fought partly by means of the pictures that inundate social media and pit archetype towards archetype — Donald J. Trump, the Eighties red-tie-wearing sultan of actuality TV, versus President Biden, the aviator-clad deal maker of D.C. — Mr. Kennedy affords a Rorschach check of a unique sort. A minimum of stylistically talking.
His look — skinny rep ties, button-downs, shrugged-on fits, shock of grey hair and weather-beaten tan — not solely units him aside. It additionally speaks on to associations with the early Sixties, a golden age of promise that represents “vigor, wit, charisma, change,” mentioned Sean Wilentz, a professor of American historical past at Princeton College, and which are buried deep within the American hive thoughts.
And that comes from what Lisa Birnbach, a co-author of “The Official Preppy Handbook,” calls “the model semiology of the O.G. Kennedy males”: John F. Kennedy, Mr. Kennedy’s uncle, and his father, the presidential candidate for whom he’s named, together with all of the Camelot-era mythology and hope they characterize. To not point out the traditional New England model they assumed as their very own type of camouflage, the higher to align their Irish Catholic clan with Boston Brahmin custom.
And by affiliation, Mr. Kennedy. High quality-tuning his picture to evoke his father and uncle, has the impact of creating folks assume they know him and what he stands for. That picture in flip offers Mr. Kennedy’s extra outré positions an aura of credibility, even when his phrases don’t: He has claimed that chemical substances within the water trigger youngsters to change into transgender and believes that Wi-Fi can result in power sickness. There’s additionally his anti-vaccine stance.
Consequently, whilst members of Mr. Kennedy’s prolonged household have formally repudiated him as a candidate, throwing their help behind Mr. Biden, his image-making has labored as a counterargument with out his having to say a phrase.
“He’s cosplaying as a Kennedy,” mentioned Avery Trufelman, the producer of the podcast Articles of Curiosity, which included a seven-part sequence on the historical past of preppy, or Ivy, model — doubling down on a way of costume that’s, she mentioned, deeply related to the Kennedy identify, though that affiliation itself got here from its personal type of WASP cosplay. At this level, it has change into, she mentioned, “a really highly effective instrument.”
Mr. Kennedy has lengthy been conscious of the facility of the traditional Kennedy picture as expressed by means of clothes, and the way it may be used to his profit. Way back to 2006, he was the face of Gant, the ur-preppy sportswear model, posing together with his household in a $8.5 million marketing campaign partially to learn Waterkeeper Alliance, then his nonprofit. It was “the primary time in my reminiscence that anybody within the political area has allied himself with any model within the vogue area,” Marylou Luther, then editor of the Worldwide Vogue Syndicate, then informed The New York Occasions.
Later, he and his household posed for a Gant catalog shoot entitled “Adorning the Kennedy Summer season Home,” through which he wore khaki shorts and a navy polo whereas boating, fishing and barbecuing, with red-white-and-blue towels stacked close by.
On the time, Mr. Kennedy described his model as “denims and khakis” and “skinny ties.” His image-making is, Ms. Birnbach mentioned, all about “nostalgia.”
However nostalgia “refracted by means of a fun-house mirror,” Mr. Wilentz mentioned.
Largely, that’s as a result of the issues of the Kennedy-prep origin story have pale into historical past, leaving solely the legend behind: the Kennedys, in these garments, representing generational change, dressing to be the breath of recent air they promised to deliver.
It’s an image of “the younger president rolling up his sleeves on a ship,” Ms. Trufelman mentioned.
It’s soccer on the garden. It’s Brooks Brothers button-down shirts, rolled up shirtsleeves, khakis and fits that will have been inherited from a father or a brother. It’s college crests and shirts with the highest button left undone. It’s a spinoff of New England prep-school uniforms redolent of wealth and legacy; of an easy ease and birthright that’s notably engaging when occasions appear laborious.
Such sartorial elements compose a “set of symbols that represents one thing pleasant, competent, approachable,” Ms. Trufelman mentioned. And it’s a signature a part of nationwide model. Amid the rise of streetwear and the autumn of the swimsuit, preppy model nonetheless occupies its personal territory within the cloth of the American closet, woven into the romantic historical past of the nation and used as a reference level in films, advert campaigns and vogue exhibits.
“That’s the a part of the legacy he’s attempting to copy,” Mr. Wilentz, the historian, mentioned.
If unsure, take into account the February Tremendous Bowl advert that immediately mimicked John F. Kennedy’s 1960 electoral advert and for which Mr. Kennedy later apologized after his household complained. He mentioned it had been created independently by a brilliant PAC and never by his marketing campaign, although the truth that most viewers assumed it was his advert displays the message intertwined together with his mere picture.
Contemplate the mimesis concerned: his look on VladTV, the hip-hop information website, in a button-down yellow shirt, sleeves rolled up, and a thin navy rep tie. Or the numerous movies of Mr. Kennedy shirtless and in denims doing push-ups, as if he had simply dropped to the bottom for some train throughout a sport of seize the flag, that he posted on his Instagram web page final summer season, a not-so-hidden effort to distinction his boyish vitality (even at age 70; every part is relative) with that of Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
(The Kennedy marketing campaign didn’t reply to requests for remark.)
Or, for that matter, the truth that his marketing campaign merch retailer options not solely the usual T-shirts and caps bearing slogans like “Make Earth Nice Once more” and “The Treatment Is Kennedy,” but additionally the “Resolute Assortment,” a line of substances that includes a sailboat emblem. The gathering, presumably, is a reference to the Resolute, the Nineteenth-century Arctic exploration ship given to the US by Queen Victoria. The Resolute’s timbers later turned a part of a well-known Oval Workplace desk utilized by 5 presidents, together with John F. Kennedy. (A duplicate is housed within the Kennedy Library.)
The boat illustration, nonetheless, appears much less just like the multimasted warship than a contemporary sailboat, which makes it laborious to see with out as soon as once more tumbling down the rabbit gap that results in ideas of well-known footage of Kennedys crusing in Hyannisport.
It’s a placing element but additionally a telling one, suggesting a calculated, button-pushing strategy to visible content material. One which has been there for the reason that starting of Mr. Kennedy’s run.
To wit: When he declared his candidacy, he enlisted the assistance of Tom Soluri, a fancy dress designer in any other case recognized for his work with “The Golden Bachelor” and on the movies “The Storied Lifetime of A.J. Fikry” and “West Facet Story,” and who posted concerning the job on his Instagram web page. Mr. Soluri dressed Mr. Kennedy in his trademark skinny tie, white button-down and darkish swimsuit.
“I had the privilege of working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his presidential announcement and run,” Mr. Soluri wrote, including the hashtag #americanstyle to his publish, underscoring the purpose of the look.
The one downside? In line with the tags, Mr. Kennedy was carrying Zegna, the Italian model. Suggesting, as soon as once more, that the attract of this type of WASP-prep royalty is within the eye, and creativeness, of the beholder.
