Teenage Iconography?

As a designer, I am much more fascinated by how proper adults live and dress than by youth culture.  Maybe this started years ago when I interned at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and did some research for their exhibit Blithe Spirit: The Windsor Set. My research mainly consisted of reading 3 decades of American, French and British Vogue*. Two things stood out in this reading:

1.  Vogue should have a comprehensive index that catalogs everything including advertisements, photographers, subjects, and everything conceivable.
2. The great beauties and fascinating figures were proper adults. They were not teenagers or young women, but actual grown ups. 
   

So, I spend an inordinate amount of time studying how men with strollers and mortgages shop for live with, and wear clothing.Despite my fascination with proper adulthood, alas no stroller or mortgage here, much of what I keep going back to for visual inspiration is related to my teen years or my romanticized idea of my teen years.

I don't think I'm the only one. Please watch the above video and note Jason Lee's cap. And then check out Mister Mort and J.Crew's caps. The teen style you grew up around is probably the first style you consciously reacted to and had the means to choose on your own. All else is to some degree or another memories and reactions to that. In the sea of east london slim trousers and fixies, those huge jeans are so exciting. And now designers my age are reaching positions with decision making power where these collective memories can be put to use.  For my own research I keep downloading varsity letters from A Reference Library's sharp eyes:

 

I'm not sure where these varsity letters will lead me. They aren't really appropriate inspiration for my current work. 

* Lee Miller referred to these publications as Vogue,  Frogue, and Brogue. Isn't that the funniest thing you've ever heard?