Here are a few things that are popular among the more advanced consumers of contemporary men’s wear: Gucci horse-bit Birkenstocks, tie-dyed denim, Patagonia shorts, tactical vests, hooded sweatshirts distended to absurdist proportions, $90 logo socks, Guy Fieri-esque short-sleeve shirts in hyper-real prints.

Which is to say, there is no centrist narrative anymore, just a set of microstyles jostling up against one another — not competing for the same turf, necessarily, but finding ways to coexist. More than at any time in the last decade, loyalty to an aesthetic is withering.

Instead, men’s wear has turned into a pachinko game. Where the ball lands, who can say? Or control?

But one place it most assuredly is not landing is in the prep arena. Prep is proper. Prep is polished. Prep is a rigid framework. It feels like a relic, not just of the 1980s, or the 1950s, but also of the 2000s, when men on the internet were first gathering around ideas about how to present themselves.