All things all-American are back in style, from rustic and vintage to preppy and casual.

A simpler, no-frills American look is influencing a design movement where the wellmade and durable inspire collectors of antique signs, leather couches and vintage tools. “I like machineage things, cleaner things” that aren’t “too embellished,” Grace Kelsey told The Times. She is a prop designer and collector of early 20th-century Americana who has helped spread the look to stores, restaurants and hotels in New York City .

A coveted bit of this classic chic is the camp blanket from heritage brands like Pendleton and Hudson’s Bay. A point blanket from Hudson’s Bay once sold out at Colette, the trendy boutique on the Rue St.- Honore in Paris, wrote The Times.

Khakis, penny loafers and stadium coats - uniforms of New England prep-schoolers - are inundating Paris in a “reverse colonization.” Michael Kors, known for his American sportswear, just opened a flagship store on the Rue St.-Honore, where there are also Tommy Hilfiger and Brooks Brothers outposts of the preppy style.

Ralph Lauren, who perfected the aesthetic, opened a store on the Left Bank last summer and coming soon is an Abercrombie & Fitch megastore on the Champs-Elysees. “Just like the Americans want to be sophisticated, the Europeans want to participate in that cool sporty attitude,” Ken Downing, the fashion director of Neiman Marcus, told The Times. It is all part of the “casualization of fashion.”

That laid-back look, typically American and once typically slacker, has become a style in itself, led by Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old creator of Facebook who wears baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts. His anti-fashion style is spawning imitators, wrote The Times, or at least has come to symbolize “success for a new generation of would-be billionaires.”

Nathan Tone, a blogger in Austin, Texas, said that it feels like one can’t get venture capital without wearing sweatpants.

But some people are living in their gym clothes. Jocelyn Greenky Herz, who works at an event-planning company in New York, told The Times that she can often be found at work or out to dinner wearing any one of her more than 10 pairs of elastic-waist pants.

Only 4 percent of women in the United States say they wear strict business attire, with 31 percent claiming to dress completely casual, reported The Times. And exercise clothing like yoga pants has become so popular in the office that designers like Alexander Wang and Mr. Kors are making luxury sweatpants.

Some chief executives have discovered the power of informal attire.

Steven P. Jobs of Apple wears Levi’s and black mock turtlenecks, presumably not to overshadow the brand, The Times reported. Sergio Marchionne of Chrysler wears a black sweater and a checked Oxford shirt as his uniform. “The message he wanted to pass is not wearing a tie, not wearing a suit, means we are more flexible and what really matters is not the uniform but something else,” Cristiano Carlutti, formerly head of used cars at Fiat, told The Times. But for makers of bespoke suits like Bruce Cameron Clark in New York, the trend is a “casual scourge.” “Twenty years ago, it was different,” he told The Times.

“People were much more interested in their appearance. Today, I would say we’re circling the drain as a society.”


ANITA PATIL