Whit Stillman talks about the genesis of his categories

“The flair factor at Millbrook school, is that it had a school zoo, and the cool thing to do at the school was to be a zoo head. So you had these woodsy, nature types who were the cool guys at the school, and what they do is take care of little animals. That was the cool thing to do, to take care of little animals. It was a really great atmosphere at Millbrook, really nice people, real eccentrics. The school loved eccentricity. If someone was really eccentric they became the most popular person in class, because they were so crazy. And there was a huge dance culture, it was ‘dance Bob, dance,’ because you’d go to a mixer with the girls’ school, and if you could be a cool dancer, a ladies man, conqueror, and break hearts, or at least win hearts, and dance well and be cool. I remember a guy coming into my class when I first got there, and getting my clothes, and my poor mother had bought most of my clothes at the local Giant supermarket, and it was humiliating, the clothes I had, but somehow the spirit, the attention paid to you, was so funny and so nice, it was completely disarming. It was this frank materialism, and these people were total characters. This one place in Washington, they supposedly had good, anti-materialistic values, versus this place where they had just no pretension to good values at all. Except they’re nice to eccentrics, and animals, and people who bought their clothes at Giant. So Millbrook was exhilarating and liberating. I had a wonderful uncle, and he used to tell stories about how Mrs. Rummell, the style maven of the ‘30s, brilliant architect, who designed Avon Old Farms’ really beautiful campus, and she had a rule that everyone would wear a gray flannel suit from Brooks Brothers. He said it was so liberating, you just get your two grey flannel suits and we all dressed in these nice suits, but that’s all there was, so there’s no competing dress or anything like that.”

- from interview w/ whit stillman

http://www.acontinuouslean.com/2012/04/06/elevated-sensibility-the-whit-stillman-interview/