JFK: Authentic in Brick Reds

I think it was Toad…correct me if I’m wrong, who said that since he’s never been on Nantucket, he’s reluctant to wear Nantucket Reds. There’s an authenticity play here folks, and Toad is anything but a poseur. And I for some reason, even though I’ve spent time on Nantucket, now feel the need to confess that I owned the Murray’s magic togs long before I ever set foot on the island.

I happened upon a treasure trove of JFK Kodachrome while looking for visual props (where the eff would I be without visual props?) to complement another Trad Indifference story. And the gem of the harvest was Jack in Brick Reds.

JFK effortlessly swathed in the sailcloth talisman of New England prep/trad sprezzatura.

George Frazier IV knows a thing or two about Nantucket. Even though he doesn't spend time there anymore, it’s an inextricable part of his journey. He summered there with his parents and brother, retreated to Nantucket when necessary and he bought his Reds at Murray’s. George shared with me a story that is fraught with Nantucket authenticity and connectedness. I wish that every email paragraph I got was as rich…

“…I got disgusted with New York (believe me: it's a different place when your parents are picking up the tab), and moved to the cellar/servants' floor of my mother's house in Nantucket one winter. My wife-to-be was working at Murray's, and when I went in for my semi-seasonal Brick Red (what Nantucket Reds were called in the Beginning, and by me even now) fix, I met my wife, who had just graduated from Newcombe (now Tulane), and was killing time after her family had left its summer digs to return to Louisiana. I knew her elder sister and brother (summer folk from Louisiana were a rarity on Nantucket in those days; the only people I know of who spent their summers on Nantucket way back then were Northeasterners, with the exception of a family from Santa Barbara, one from (gasp) Texas, and the above-mentioned Louisianans). In any event, I fell in love with New Orleans and moved there….”

I reckon you can’t manifest any greater Brick Red authenticity than Mr. Frazier IV. A trip to the Toggery and voilà …a wife and a life…still being lived in full, in New Orleans. 

Onward. Waiting for Red times again.

ADG II
(Thanks very much to George Frazier IV of New Orleans, for permission to reference our correspondence)